Munich Show 2018 Report - Including Hugo TT2, Fact Fenestria and Innos Zenith Statement

Hey everyone, you may know we recently visited the Munich high end show earlier this month. The show gives us a fantastic opportunity to check out the latest products from brands we stock, while also giving us the opportunity to take a look at products and manufacturers that could add to our ever-growing portfolio. Not to mention the some of the weird and wonderful esoteric products that aren’t really present in the UK Hi-Fi market.

We arrived in Munich on Friday 11^th May with a busy schedule ahead of us.

SME

First up we visited SME’s room to take a look at the new Synergy Turntable. Priced at £14,949, the SME Synergy is an integrated turntable, the first ever released by SME and comprises of a completely new turntable design combined with the highly regarded SME Series IV tonearm, the Ortofon MC Windfeld Ti cartridge and a specially designed phono stage by NAGRA, all coupled with mono crystal silver wire by Crystal Cable. Due to the SME Synergy being a fully integrated turntable minimal user set-up is required; with optimised phono stage design for cartridge specifications. We have placed our order with SME and should receive our demo stock September 2018. We heard this deck with Boulder 1110 Pre, 1160 Stereo Power amps and YG Acoustics Sonja speakers, with Siltech and Crystal Cables throughout.

Sugden

After that we made sure to visit our good friends Sugden Audio. Sugden have unveiled a new edition to their Masterclass range, the ANV-50. This integrated amplifier priced at £3999 marks fifty years since Sugden audio released the world’s first Pure Class A amplifier.

The Sugden ANV-50 is a very interesting amplifier design; it uses a Pure Class A circuit, which is coupled to an advanced ‘ideal’ final Class B output stage. This unique two stage amplification system delivers the Sugden's signature pure class A sound, with greater efficiency.

This is also using a brand-new type of switching power supply; the first time they haven’t used a toroidal transformer in their history. We did find out from Patrick Miller, the MD of Sugden, that as part of the selection process they installed the new switching power supply in the Sapphire series FBA800 power amplifier – this held its’ own against a high performance toroidal and didn’t compromise the presentation.

It’s power output, is now 50 Watts into 8 Ohms / 100 Watts into 4 Ohms this means it will comfortably match with most loudspeakers.

Sugden are not a brand that release new products every year; but when they do it is because they have developed something special. The ANV50 embodies traditional Sugden values but also demonstrates an outward looking approach to amplifier engineering. Due September, we’ve already ordered ours!

Innuos

We got the chance to take a look at the new Innuos line up at the Munich show. There are quite a few new products on the horizon.

Mk3 Music Server Series

All the MKII servers will be replaced with MKIII’s in July 2018 and were on static display for us to admire. We also had the benefit of Antony, the UK Sale’s Manager taking us through the changes and benefits

First, the ZEN Mini MKIII £899 1TB – The case work is not quite as mini with greater case depth. It was displayed alongside an external power supply, in identical case dimensions, which will sell for £499. Don’t worry this also compatible with ZEN Mini MKII. It has a customised motherboard, twin ethernet and optical outputs.

The Zen MKIII employs Dual Linear power supplies, Custom-made motherboard - With improved EMI treatment, Asymmetrical isolation feet – this design trickled down from the ZENith SE. This will retail at £1849 for 1TB, so I would suggest quite a lot of improvements for a smaller price increment.

ZENith MKIII, this is the product which benefits from last years ‘SE’ model. It incorporates a Premium Triple-Linear Power Supply - With ultra-low noise regulators and premium Mundorf Capacitors – trickled down technology from the SE model. As well as, improvements to vibration and EMI treated SSD. This will retail a £2999 for 1tb, therefore it doesn’t compete with the SE but definitely benefits from the research and development in SE model.

Next to their display stand was a demo room, in the demo room was the ZENith Statement… Blimey. We had no idea servers could sound that good! It was up against the aforementioned SE model in a back to back comparative demo. Both the Statement and SE where connected up to Kii active speakers, with exactly the same power leads and USB cables, the same tracks where played on each unit. Server products are developing at a fascinating level and Innuos seem to be ahead of the curve.

We are hoping to offer this very same demonstration at the North West Audio Show at Cranage Hall.

We have placed our order with Innuos to stock the new range of streamers. We’re expecting to receive stock July 2018.

AVID

AVID have been the premier high end analogue source in our shop for the last five years or so, an engineering company, offering outstanding turntables and phono stages to boot. However, they haven’t finished yet, two years ago it was the launch of their speakers and this year they had on demonstration their very own tonearm and moving coil cartridge. This was mounted to the fantastic Acutus – a deck we know very well as it is on permanent demo in our store.

The Barytone Tonearm is the first tonearm AVID have produced. Using a titanium arm tube for its low mass and a gimble bearing design this arm should retail in the UK market for £2000-£3000. Sat on the end of the Barytone was moving coil cartridge Reference Ruby. This employs a ruby canti-lever and a fine line stylus which helps lower surface noise – this is expected to retail circa £5000-£6000.

Ingenium 2. This will logically fit in between the Ingenium and DIVA II, in term of price and performance. It actually uses the DIVA II 24-volt motor and has an off-board power supply, it has a bigger main chassis which makes the product look more substantial and the feature of detachable arm boards will make upgrades easier. We are expecting this to retail under £2000.

Chord Electronics

Chord just seem to continually excite us with new product and the always deliver! We now have a replacement for the Hugo TT – the Hugo TT MKII. This looks very similar to the predecessor, but they have made various changes. As ever with Chord the FPGA DAC chip is written by Rob Watts in house at Chord Electronics HQ, increasing the tap length, making it incredibly powerful, roughly twice the capacity of its predecessor. Playback supports up to 768kHz PCM and DSD 512 – so not quite DAVE territory but still way ahead of the competition! Unlike the previous model, it does not operate on a battery anymore, this now plugs in to the main and uses 6x super capacitors to deliver outstanding dynamics and timing. This increased power has given it the ability to drive any headphones. Interestingly, like the Qutest this has a twin BNC input which can utilise the up-sampling feature of a Chord Blu MKII.

We finally have a new stereo power amplifier for Chord’s Choral series. The Etude has been designed to be a potential partner for the Chord DAVE DAC/pre-amp. Etude features new error-correction amplifier technology and uses a more intelligent system of power delivery to maximise sound quality.

Power is rated at 150 watts into four ohms and 300 watts in bridged mono mode. Connections include balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs and gold-plated speaker binding posts.

Of course, since the Etude is part of Chord's Choral range, it features the same aerospace-grade machined aluminium chassis and casework.

Both units are set to be available in the Autumn of 2018, with the Hugo TT2 retailing for £3995 and the Etude priced at £3899.

PMC Speakers

Finally, we got to see the new flagship £45,000 speakers from PMC, the Fact Fenestria. Five years in the making, the Fact Fenestria features a newly designed cabinet that takes inspiration from the way skyscrapers are built to withstand earthquakes.

Standing at a whopping 1.7m-tall, the cabinet's side panels are engineered to vibrate in opposition to the rest of the speaker cabinet, cancelling out any vibrations introduced by the main cabinet and drive units. The cabinet is also heavily braced and acoustically isolated from the six drivers.

The Fenestria is a three-way speaker design, featuring a 19.5mm Sonomex™ high frequency unit with a neodymium magnet assembly and PMC-designed dispersion grille, the driver is isolated from the midrange unit and sit within a silicone-damped PMC suspension mount, called the Auriole™. PMC’s midrange driver in Fenestria is a new 75mm unit.

The Fenestria also comes equipped with four handmade 165mm long-throw piston bass drivers. Each feature a massive magnet assembly and a flat diaphragm comprising two layers of transverse-weave carbon-fibre, sandwiching a rigid multi-cellular damped core.

It wouldn't be a PMC speaker without the use of its proprietary transmission line bass-loading tech and Laminair vent (first seen in the Twenty5 series) too, designed to improve the speaker’s bass performance.

We were blown away by the power, separation and annunciation of the lyrics.

The PMC Fact Fenestria is set to be available later this year.

If you want more information about any of the products or brands mentioned in the article, don’t hesitate to call us on 01482 223096 or email shop@fanthorpes.co.uk