Countdown. Sitting by the open window of my Schlicker Hotel digs behind the Viktualianmarkt at the Marienplatz, I waited for the church bell's one strike at 9:15 on Thursday morning when it'd be time to collect my bagman goods and hit the taxi stand.


Unlike Friday when the public overran the venue like the Visigoths did ancient Rome, the first day for the press had far more manageable traffic. I pulled my Club Swiss membership card and went to work. With Piega, SwissCables and Vovox missed for various reasons, here's some patriotic perspective in alphabetical order to kick off.


Audio Consulting participated in the second Swiss Affair with CH Precision and Stenheim, contributing the latest iteration of their Meteor silver-wired transformer-gain phono stage. A twin precision display confirms dual-mono settings.


Boenicke Audio shared a room with Computer Audio Design, Trilogy for their hybrid integrated and Isol-8 for a clear power feed. The big new thing here was the enormous Swiss SwingRack. Custom-made for AudioPrana who'd support a 300kg turntable in the middle of the top shelf...


... Sven had run two steel members through his massive solid-wood shelves and built in a minimal upward arch for the upper one which, under the turntable's weight, would compress to just +1mm above flat. In the rearview mirror we also spot a new umbilical off CAD's revised DAC which leads to a ground station to eliminate Mega/Gigahertz noise on the ground plane. For further extreme tweakery to demonstrate how this stuff matters, check out...


... the whisker sticking up behind the positive terminal of the W8; and that mysterious outboard box connected in parallel to both terminals. Spotting these, I shot a querying glance at Sven Boenicke. He simply smiled and put an index finger across his lips. Since I rather live than tell and be offed, the photo shall suffice.


Here we have the first mass sighting of CH Precision fronting the superb Wilson-Benesch Endeavour super monitors with partnering subs.


Having missed the carbon-fibre clad British 3-way über monitor with isobaric woofer system last year when they showed in the Kempinski, this year's demo in the M.O.C. filled my gap. Inspector Morse's successors deserve similar fame to the detective novels and popular BBC television series.


Credo Audio do loudspeakers and, as of late, also electronics.


Here we see a stack of them in silver and black.


Eternity Jo run with one of the more unusual names in the biz but are a Swiss provider of valve gear, captured here with shots of their - er, imaginatively christened EJ-PA1 10-tube preamp...


... and this 16wpc ET-2 integrated with Emission Labs 300B bottles in parallel single-ended mode.


Nagra finally ticked off the "drive anything" box with the twin towers of their enormous HD Amp monos, using telltale Wilson Audio speakers to prove the point.


€75'000 take home a pair. That's half of what you'd pay for the big Soulution monos - or three times what I forked over for our used Volvo C3 T5 with 9'000km on the clock and a peace-of-mind 150'000km warranty. Relativity and all that.


This was probably the best I've ever heard Nagra's traditional room at Munich sound. These amps are very serious contenders. The also new Classic Amps in bridged 200-watt mode did alternate duty on the Wilsons.