It's a bittersweet moment for hi-fi lovers everywhere. After roughly two decades of finding a home in the depths of Bavaria, the High End Munich Show will no longer be in Munich at all. Book your tickets to Austria, because it'll be High End Vienna 2026, folks!
In the meantime, plenty of manufacturers have been looking to go out with a bang as they get ready to say goodbye to the mighty Munich. Yes, there's a place for the best speakers, amplifiers and headphones being displayed, but the High End Show is also a chance to see those attractions that are a little off the beaten track. Big horns, stunning dragons and some kind of alien vortex; these are the wildest speaker designs we've enjoyed from the show floor in 2025.
IO Design Grand Reference
You may not have heard of Italian loudspeaker maker IO Design, but you'll struggle to get them out of your head if you ever do cross paths with one of their striking pairs of loudspeakers.
Exhibiting a proclivity for skeletonised open baffle designs replete with drive units mounted on an open aluminium frame, the Turin-based brand's unique configurations bring to mind a racing car's roll cage or something from Michael Bay's Transformers movies.
We haven't even arrived at the price. The pictured Grand Reference floorstanders, which tower over the tallest and handsomest of our roving reporters, will set you back a bank-busting €500,000. Even the most generous of sparkly-eyed grandparents might struggle to get you a set for Christmas.
Once Nar
No, you're not having a psychotic episode of a long overdue acid flashback, they really do look like that.
Once is a quirky hi-fi manufacturer based in Turkey, and they're clearly a team that doesn't have much of a tolerance for boring old straight lines. The Once Nar are unquestionably eye-catching, boasting an 18cm paper cone bass driver alongside a 19mm ring dome high-frequency unit.
They're some of the oddest speakers we've seen in quite some time, but there's something about that curved, tapered design which, as it puts us in mind of something organic, even alive, we find to be rather charming. You can imagine them being discovered deep under the sea, maybe in the Mariana Trench, writhing and wriggling from the murky depths.
Strange, but very charming.
Aries Cerat Pallas
If size is all that matters, the Aries Cerat Pallas are the undisputed kings (or queens) of Munich 2025. Pictures can't quite do justice to just how colossal the Pallas are, looming over their awed spectators at around seven feet tall and making us only slightly fearful for our safety as we approach ever-closer. If one of those drops onto you, it's lights out and no more looking at turntables, buddy.
Each speaker is fitted with eight 30.5cm drivers, and we'd imagine that, if they were in the mood, the Pallas could go extremely loud. Happily, their attendants had the good sense to keep the volume dial from straying into Spinal Tap territory, allowing the gigantic towers to showcase their talents at their own pace.
And you know what? They sounded pretty good.
Avantgarde Acoustics
Avantgarde. You ain't kidding.
Its maker describes the Trio G3 as an "ultra high performance horn system", boasting "unbridled efficiency across a huge frequency range". The G3 speakers themselves employ a trio of horns consisting of a 20cm tweeter unit, a larger 57cm spherical wave design and a massive 95cm horn. They're all daubed in bright red, too, just in case you were in danger of missing them.
If that wasn't enough, there are twin subs working to ensure you've got sufficient bass power to have the floor shaking in the next room. It's always nice when a manufacturer deigns to actually turn their speakers on (some don't, or can't), meaning we were able to briefly discover what the Trio G3 sounded like.
ESD KunPeng
We've become relatively familiar with Chinese audio brand ESD in the last couple of years. Indeed, if you read our roundup of the weirdest and wonderful-est speakers at High End Munich 2024, you'll remember the whopping red horns of the ESD Super Dragon behemoths. Retailing at a rather spectacular €811,111, they're not exactly easy to forget.
The companion KunPeng are a far more modest proposal, costing a much more wallet-friendly €50,000 per pair – mere pocket change if you've just been eyeing up a set of the Super Dragons. The horns are still there, albeit in a smaller form and sitting atop a slimmed down cabinet, but it's the look of the KunPeng that we find so appealing. That swirling white dragon adorning the central horn is worth at least half of the asking price by itself – if you're into it, this is as close to art as hi-fi gets.
Horns Uniwersum Reference
Okay, it's another set of horn-based speakers, but have you ever seen a pair, horns or otherwise, that look quite like this? It's hard to know where to start, or even what you're looking at, as your brain adjusts to the curved, almost modular design of the four-way Uniwersum Reference.
After you've figured things out a little, you'll discover that the circular unit rising above the main body is a 20cm aluminium midrange driver, while the bass duties are performed by a 45cm coated paper driver.
That's all well and good, but once it's been pointed out to you that, when viewed as a pair, the Uniwersum look like a crab with its claws raised above its head, you'll struggle to think of anything else.
Aries Cerat Aurora
Like the quirky lead of an insufferable indie teen movie, Aries Cerat has out-uniqued the competition at this year's High End Munich showcase. Nice job, you kooks.
Out of everything we've seen this year, the Aurora might actually take grand quirky prize, mainly because, were it not housed in the halls of the biggest hi-fi expo in Europe, most bystanders wouldn't have a clue what it actually was. A modern art project? A prop from a sci-fi blockbuster? A massive piece of caramel popcorn? Some kind of alien vortex leading to a parallel dimension?
No, it's a speaker, obviously! More specifically, it's a "semi-active three-way horn loudspeaker system", leading us to conclude that the main brass-coloured swirling "vortex" is the horn in question. Digging deeper reveals four 30.5cm woofers per channel, as well as a bypassable active bass module and a dipole horn tweeter.
MORE:
High End Munich 2025 highlights: streaming amplifiers, large high-end speakers and more exquisite hi-fi
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
