hi-fi+ Global Network Magazine

Mid-way through the schedule of this issue, we had a true bellweather audio event. High-End Vienna, 2026 - the first show from the High-End Society at its new venue took place over the first weekend of June. While the Munich High-End show it replaces typically took place a couple of weeks earlier, the fledgling show suffered an unexpected delay because Austria won the Eurovision Song Contest and was hosting it in Vienna. That’s one heck of a clash!

This delay was the straw that broke the camel’s back in the eyes of the naysayers. “It’s doomed!” they said. “No one’s going to go to Vienna... it’s not a hub airport like Munich” was the grumble. “There aren’t enough rooms!” and “The rooms are all wrong!” went the cries from the audio industry.

Well... no!

The show was a success. Far from the dramatic fall in attendance, numbers were up across the board. OK, so they weren’t ‘significantly’ up compared to Munich 2025, but this comes after several years of at best stagnation and and occasionally mild decline in attendance at Munich. The ‘no one will show’ fear was unfounded, especially on the trade days and Saturday. The Sunday was the Feast of Corpus Christi, which the Viennese evidently take quite seriously.

The rooms were still ‘to be determined.’ Learning the dynamics of the rooms (in terms of physical space, how the rooms behave, and - hardest of all to determine – whether there is some noise-polluting interaction between the rooms) was still an untested quantity until manufacturers began installing their systems. But, manufacturers and distributors learn fast, and next year rooms that showed musical promise will likely blossom.