Some final pictures from the show as well as exploring , I’m back in Canada and the jet lag is setting in but I should have some final thoughts in later today.
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Today I learned: Old town Munich is a near-twin of Bern, Switzerland.
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That last photo of Andrew and DMS is spectacular
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I thought I would share some brief impressions of my own from the Munich High End show last week. Please note that I did not take hardly any photos at all, so if you are looking for pretty pics, that is not me 
I am someone who tries to avoid trade shows in general, having done far too many in the past, but this is actually the first time that the show was more of a personal thing than business, so I guess it was a little different and I am very glad I went.
My time at the show was limited to the Saturday only, as I had a lot on my plate on Friday in the office and also needed to be back in the office first thing on Monday, which limited my travel options to being at Munich airport at 6am on the Sunday, with very little sleep I may add.
But anyways, on to the show experience…
As someone who lives a long way from any headphone store, nevermind a decent one, I actually got to try out a lot of things in Munich that have been around for a long time but I have never had the chance to try out. This included things like Audeze LCD series, ZMF (although I only came accross one model, not sure which one), Dan Clark Stealth, RAAL-Requisite, Stax, Abyss and probably many more that I forget.
Obviously these were not the best listening circumstances, nor did I have enough time, to be able to give my opinion on how good (or bad) these headphones are, but it did give me a chance to get a taste of them and be able to relate to refrences to them that I find on this forum and other place online.
However, there were a few things that I did get to spend a little more time with, one of those being the Meze 109.
Early Saturday morning I spotted @Resolve & DMS and made my way over to to say hi in person (until now they had only seen the black and white version of me 
) and after getting over the strange looks of “who the **** are you”, Resolves first comment was “did you check out the Meze 109’s yet? go check them out”.
Of course, I always do what I am told, so I headed straight over to the Meze listening room and spent some time with them. My first impression was “wow, these are not Meze!”.
I mean, the Meze comfort is there, as is the build quality, but there is also a clarity that I just didn’t experience with othe Meze models. I’m not saying other Meze models are bad, far from it, just that these are different, in a way that I find very pleasing.
I actually went back again (twice) to spend some more time with them later in the day and although I would love to spend some time with them in my own set up (away from the show noise and the DAC’s and amps that I can only dream of), the Meze 109 were most definitely the most surprising thing I heard at the show, well, at least surprising in a good way I mean 
One thing that I did focus on while at the show was getting to, finally, try out the Hifiman Susvara.
As some of you may know, I am a big Hifiman fan, with the Arya v3 currently being my favourite headphone and other models (HE1000se, Arya v2, Ananda, Edition XS) all getting listening time at home when I have chance. I have been in love with the aesthetics of the Susvara for a very long time and have heard so much praise for it that I was expecting huge things upon finally getting to listen to it.
So, off I went to the Hifiman booth, or more specifically, their listening room, where they had the Susvara connected to the EF1000.
I know that the Susvara needs power and as the EF1000 is the size of a compact car, I had no doubt that it has the power to drive the Susvara, I mean, they designed it with that in mind (at least that is my understanding).
My first impression was that, yes, it is a great headphone, but it didn’t actually blow me away. Maybe I had already created such high expectations for the Susvara that I was ready for it to blow my mind, and that just didn’t happen. Again, I thought it was a great headphone but I didn’t find it to be miles ahead of the Arya v3.
I did listen to other stuff at the Hifiman booth (like the HE6, which I plugged into the EF1000 and found it worked quite well ) but sticking to the Susvara experience, I got to listen to it on another two set ups later on.
One of the set ups I can’t even remember the name of (that’s the problem with not taking photos or notes) and it was in quite a noisy enviroment, so I didn’t even count it. But the third set up, which was later in the day, was with the Feliks Audio Envy.
This combination made me fall in love with the Susvara and the Envy. If I could only have one thing from the show, that would be it, the Susvara powered by the Envy. I only got to spend a short while with it (which could probably be considered a long while for show conditions) but I was lucky enough to get the listening room at Feliks to myself at the time, and they even had music that I actually knew (more on that in a second). So I spent some very enjoyable time with the combo, followed by some even more enjoyable time talking to Lucasz Feliks, one of the nicest guys you could wish to meet.
Other things did leave positive impressions on me throughout the day as far as gear, like other Feliks amps, some of the Violectric set ups (mainly paired with Audeze headphones) and the Ferrum stack, which left me with the impression that it is a great set up for the price. I hope to be able to spend some more time with that set up sometime in the future.
The main problem with most of these experiences, apart from the noisy show conditions, was the fact that I was mainly trying headphones I had never listened to, connected to source gear I had never tried, along with music I didn’t know. This makes it very difficult to form anything other than brief impressions of set ups, but it did give me at least the chance to make a short list of stuff that I would love to spend more time with and will definitely focus on should the possibility arise.
Although I got to experience a lot of equipment I hadn’t heard before (or even heard of in some cases), the most enjoyable part of the trip to Munich was meeting and getting to spend time with some great people.
I only got to spend a brief time with @martintransporter but it was great to meet up with him in person and hope to spend some more time chatting some time in the future.
Lunch with @taronlissimore , @andrew, @Resolve, DMS and a few more was great, just listening to them I felt like I learned a lot more than I did at the show.
The evening was spent again with Taron & Andrew, along with @GoldenSound, Doctor Juggles, Skedra, plus the guys from Focal and Audeze, and while it was quite an effort to make it to the airport at 6am (and the evening probably erased half of my knowledge acquired throughout the day), every minute was enjoyable and I am very grateful to have spent the time with them, hoping to repeat sometime in the future (maybe with a later flight the morning after ).
I guess that is enough of a ramble from me so I will leave a quick TLDR…
The show was great, the 109’s are suprising and worth checking out, I am in love with the Susvara + Envy, and the best part were the people!
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Thank you for taking us with you on the trip! Sounds like a fun weekend 
Hope next time, there’s no other important appointment, that I have and we can hang out bit more
and you were right about the ZMF VC not being at the Violectric booth -it was at the Felikz Audio one - at least at around 10am, when I got in with the first wave
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@Resolve 's write-up from Munich High-End is up and ready to read! Munich High End 2022 Impressions
It’s a lengthy one so make sure you’ve poured yourself a drink and grabbed a snack
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Thankfully the forum functions as the more stream of consciousness for those wrapup articles, so I apologize for a bit of redundancy there haha.
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Thank you for sharing this experience here as well as YT. Very impressive, not to mention just a tad bit jealous! 
I’ve got my tickets to the Chicago CamJam next month and it will be my first audio convention…come to think of it…possibly my first convention of any kind I have gone to since I was a kid.
Not to get off topic, however, so again I appreciate you guys sharing this!
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Anyone able to take any pics of the updated RAAL-requisite SR-1b?
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Wow. The new Auris aesthetic is much better IMO. Im suprised they were willing to change that much tbh. Guess lampi and auris swapped box factories 
They were having supply issues with the wood. So decided to swap to the chassis they have now for more consistent production. Props to them as I know a lot of other manufacturers would stubbornly stick through it and only get 1/4 of the product out compared to demand.
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Excellent writeup. You sound like you had a fabulous time.
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Thank you @SenyorC and everyone else who attended the Show and was kind enough to post pictures and impressions. I really appreciate it as I can’t travel myself due to health issues. I feel like I was there with you guys. There seemed lilje a great atmosphere between you folk’s too when you met up.
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some more thoughts/listening impressions/pictures in his writeup here:
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Aint that the truth. Good on them for making the lemonade. IMO those box designs came out damn well (especially for something their hand was forced on)
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Some thoughts from your write up:
This I think suprised me the most out of everything you said. I have an AIC-10 and love it to death! The amount of impact/control/grip/etc it imposes upon susvara is just magical even with the stock tube (what I’m assuming was used at the show? guess ill email and ask). This stepped up even further with several other slightly more neutral tonality leaning NOS tubes (G73R black text medical is quite neutral but has the most control and the tungsram ecc82 dual getter support red text has been my overall favorite so far for its great detail but better balance despite being a 70s tube).
I actually messaged taron about envy last night, but I fully expected envy to be the far more romantic/classically “tubey” contrast piece to the hybrid AIC. Its quite interesting to find out that isnt how you heard it. Im now quite curious what tubes were being run in it (guess I have another email to send) vs how much is just the natural sound of the amp. Hell, if the envy has even more control than AIC I may not even seen a SS option at this point!
I am surprised by the near universal praise this can has gotten. Ignoring the price complaints I don’t think I’ve seen people actually dislike it yet which is quite surprising given their other cans seem quite divisive. I’ve wanted to try one of these for a long long time now. Ill get to eventually, but this show has properly maxed my interest level out tbh.
Overall fantastic write up and a fun read! Seems like you had a blast to boot!
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Excited for this one to hit the market.
For those who haven’t seen them yet, here are some short impressions on the Meze 109 Pro and the Raal Circumaural Prototype:
Meze 109 Pro
Raal Circumaural
The hype is real for me on both of these.
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Nice videos, do you have any more pics/snaps of the CA-1a to share?