True high end stands for silly prices, feel free to move along if you have issues with that.
For those who care this was a rather interesting and must admit well sounding room. I have never been a huge fan of Göbel, not only because of the steep prices, clearly out of my league but mostly because Oliver Göbel insisted on bringing those humongous bass towers consisting of 16 drivers that simply wrecked havoc on Munich’s rooms. Standing waves a go go and the sound was a so so for several editions of the High End show. This year he showed up with only two of those puny little 8 driver subs! Electronics might had something to do with it too, the pairing with AD for example was not my cup of tea.
This year it was different and much, much better. CH Precision provided the whole rig with gobs of quality juice and more importantly Louis Desjardins, designer of Kronos turntables came in with his latest Sparta Pro fitted with his new, tube phono stage with external power supply, all within the Kronos dedicated stand. The complete set up including cables came down to three quarters of a million whatevers. List as follows:
– 1 pair of Göbel High End Epoque Reference loudspeakers / price = 175.000 Euro for a pair
– 2 pcs. of Göbel High End Epoque Baforce Petite subwoofer in the active version / price = 72.500 Euro per piece
– 1 pcs. Göbel High End Epoque Baforce Controller (active and fully analog subwoofer controller) / price = 9.500 Euro
– 1 pair of CH Precision M1 amplifiers in Bi Amping / price = 91.000 Euro for a pair
– 1 pcs. CH Precision L1 Preamp / price = 30.500 Euro
– 1 pcs. CH Precision D1 SACD & CD Drive with synchro option / price = 34.500 Euro
– 1 pcs. CH Precision C1 D/A Converter with ethernet and synchro option / price = 33.000 Euro
– 1 pcs. CH Precision T1 10MHz Clock Generator / price = 22.500 Euro
– 2 pcs. CH Precision X1 External Power Supply with two regulation boards / price = 18,500 Euro per piece
– 1 pcs. MELCO N1ZS Music Server / price = 8.000 Euro
– 1 pcs. Kronos Pro turntable / price = 38.000 USD
– 1 pcs. Kronos Stand / price = 7.000 USD
– 1 pcs. Kronos Scps 1 power supply / price = 13.500 USD
– 1 pcs. Kronos Reference Phono Preamp / price = 40.000 USD to 45.000 USD depending on options
– 1 pcs. Kronos Black Beauty tonearm / price = 8.500 USD
– A complete loom of Göbel Lacorde Statement cables. (Lacorde Statement Power cables, Lacorde Statement Speaker cables, Lacorde Statement XLR cables, Lacorde Statement RCA cables, Lacorde Statement Ethernet cables) / price in total for all cables used in our setup = 287.000 Euro
Yes, that is what a true high end system costs these days and let me add it was also what a true high end system sounds like, visceral and transparent at the same time, even under show conditions.
