The perverse consumer/audiophile distinction we hit upon with JBL applies in spades also to Pioneer. TAD is their high-end division which makes seriously expensive loudspeakers with complete audiophile street cred, Pioneer has trickle-down models which might dilute the street credt but could give a vast percentage of the TADs' performance? Your call.

Progressive Audio was a German brand I'd not encountered before. Their CD players and integrateds start at €8.800/ea.

PS Audio has shown versions of their new front end for a while and here is what they brought to Munich.

PSB is one of the quintessential Canadian budget brands but also has very high-reaching models.


This room treatment probably wouldn't go over too well in most homes but as Dan Wright of ModWright has shown with his own, printing such panels with graphic art can convert them to quasi paintings.
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As already profiled in our Klangschloss 2009 show report, Quad Musikwiedergabe is a German outfit which refurbishes classic Quads as well as builds them from the ground up on original equipment procured from Mr. Walker.

R&S Audio is German Rossner & Sohn GmbH who brought their high mass turntables, then filled out the system with Accustic Arts machines and Penaudio speakers.

Raidho, the 5th of the 24 Nordic runes and also a Danish speaker house, showed their Eben speakers with proprietary ribbon tweeters.

Restek is a German electronics brand with a rather deep lineup.

Rethm contributed their Saadhana speakers to the Emillé Labs exhibit and here is designer Jacob George with a reporter in the background. Franck Tchang who walked the show this year to accomplish nearly more than being bound to his own room made a simple but profound observation. "Every speaker sounds like its designer. I'm a very loud high energy man so my speaker has to be very dynamic and full range. Jacob is a soft-spoken, gentle and very refined man. His speaker is very much like him." There's more to this than a pat answer.

Revel's own Kevin Voecks manned this exhibit with electronics from the Mark Levinson brand.

Revox again showed their leather or fur-clad speakers models but this old Swiss company also has plenty of vegetarian offerings.

Scanspeak once again is a wholly Danish company after key employees and original engineers bought it back from the Chinese Tymphany Corporation which still owns Peerless and Vifa. Shown here is Scanspeak's Illuminator woofer unit. I suspect an interesting story awaits its telling in this particular development. It could have rather more far-reaching implications over time as other euro and US firms consider consolidating back operations. As Living Voice designer Kevin Scott and his lovely wife Lynn put it: "We've always loved their drivers but for us as a small specialist manufacturer, there's a night 'n' day difference between working with a huge Sino Corporation versus a Danish drive-unit house that is willing to collaborate on custom projects and smaller volumes. We're thrilled with this latest development."

Scheu makes very highly regarded turntables, one of which is so Acrylic as to even include the entire tone arm.

Sennheiser turned heads when the announcement of their new HD 800 model headphone first made the rounds. It seems to be a complete rethink over the HD predecessors and uses a far bigger driver unit as well. I've made arrangements to procure one - which isn't as easy as you might think it ought to be.