Must Be Funny / In The Rich Man’s World

As an ABBA superfan I found the extremely high-fidelity, smooth-jazz version of “Money, Money, Money” that first came through the speakers offensive on an artistic level; maybe that’s why I did my best to forget what I was listening to and concentrate instead on how it sounded. Slowly I began to feel that pure acoustic soundstage of yore in a dramatic way. Although we were listening to a digital recording, this wasn’t an electronic depiction of reality; it was a whole new sonic environment masterfully rendered by recording engineers into a kind of super-reality I’d never visited before.

I could almost detect fingerprints through the fleshy clicks of hand-plucked contrabass

It was halfway through the next selection, a quietly seductive 24 / 192 recording of “Cielito Lindo,” that I realized I was enjoying the music quite a lot, not because I particularly enjoy bossanova versions of Mexican classics, but because the Evolution One speakers were recreating one of my favorite things about eating psychedelic mushrooms. The singer’s voice felt wider than is usually possible under normal circumstances. The subtle panning of the mic across the vocalist’s ever-so-slight head movements suddenly adopted deep emotional significance. I could hear individual strands of brush drumsticks moving on snares, could almost detect fingerprints through the fleshy clicks of hand-plucked contrabass, and like on an 8K television with a billion-to-one contrast ratio the silent moments were imbued with just as much importance as the music itself. This was a sound that was completely human and completely alien at the same time and all I could do was close my eyes (hi haters) and appreciate everything about each moment that passed (hi) in real time.

“And that,” cooed the TAD representative, “is the end of the show.” Although his North English phrasing was more supple than a well-oiled driving glove it was still jarring because it was just regular-real, not hyperreal, and he seemed to understand this: “I’m afraid we’ll have to close up for today, but we’ll be back tomorrow morning with the big guns.” What? A wicked little smile: The first one’s always free. This man had built a career on gratis introductions. He’d spend the rest of his days cashing our checks in one form or another like the proprietor of a Dickensian opium den.

It turned out the $39,500 system we were sitting in front of (Blue Smoke Black Box audio server, $7,000 –> C2000 preamp, $2,400 –> M2500 amp, $2,100; Evolution One loudspeakers, $28,000 [pair]) was just some pussy shit: A tenfold price increase would bring you the truly top-end Reference One-based system — but that wouldn’t be making an appearance until the next morning.

As trade shows tend to do, High End had hidden the intoxicating products from me until the very end of the day. I was forced out of the Munich Order Center 15 minutes after closing time: I had a fever, and the only solution was more high end.

The atrium level at the Munich Order Center is dense with the dreams of a hundred different audiophiles — any recording would sound like a million bucks (in some cases, the systems actually cost that much). But there were a handful of standouts even in this arena of overachievers, complete systems where every atom was calibrated to a hyper-specific tonal vision. While TAD had won me over in a general, love-at-first-sound kind of way, lesser-known players upped the game in their own preferred categories.