I got back from Munich High End 2025 late on Sunday evening and as ever it was a superb show and a great few days away. This year it felt bittersweet in many ways as 2025 is the final show based in Munich. It’s a fabulous city which has become almost a home from home over the past 8 years, but from next year we will have Vienna High End.
As ever the show is a very busy few days, lots of walking, lots of meetings, catching up with friends and meeting new ones, of course between all of that there is also the opportunity to listen to some great systems and music and to evaluate and explore the hi-fi landscape with the arrival of many new products and to see how the industry is developing and moving forward.
Kroma Atelier premiered a new loudspeaker this year, the Callas, this is their first speaker in their flagship reference range, priced at £95,000 a pair they are are firmly aimed at the upper reaches of the loudspeaker market. Kroma were sharing a room with Engstrom who were using their excellent Monica pre-amp and Eric mono power amplifiers, there were 2 sources in the room as well, the brilliant Wadax Studio Player (more coming soon on this) and a TechDAS turntable with the Engstrom Phono Stage.
This was a room I spent a lot of time in over the course of the show and as it often the case every day the sound was improving and developing as the system settled down. The Callas are a large speaker, utilising a 10 inch Purifi woofer, an 8 inch Purifi mid-bass driver and a dedicated 8 inch Purifi midrange driver. The speaker is complemented with 2 AMT ribbon tweeters per speaker, one at the front, but also one at the rear of the cabinet.
The presentation of this room was exquisite and incredibly elegant, very liquid in the way the music was portrayed. Timo Engstrom always plays superb music and this year was no different, he’s never afraid to mix it up and Tool sounded fantastic, certainly not your typical show material but it makes for a refreshing change from the usual musical choices. Kroma loudspeakers always sound seductive, with great scale and weight and the Callas certainly did not disappoint.
I was thrilled to read late on Sunday that the online magazine SoundStage! Global presented their award for “Best Sound at the Show” to this room, a brilliant achievement for all involved, over the past few years Kroma has definitely been making in-roads to getting themselves included amongst some of the larger, more established brands and the performance from this room combined with this award shows that they are moving n right direction. On the ground floor in Hall 2 there were another pair of Callas partnered up with Orpheus and again this room made a great noise.
It’s been a great year so far for Kroma and it will be exciting to see what they do in Vienna in 2026.
