Vienna is the New Munich and Why We Still Go To HiFi Shows

May 31, 2026

In a few days, we will be heading off to Vienna for the High End show that will be held away from its long-time home at the MOC in Munich. Preparations are underway at HiFi PiG Towers, and we’ve been working out which of the team will visit which halls and which booths, as well as deciding which of the gazillion and one invites we can accept and who from Team PiG will attend them.

This still feels a bit weird, to be honest. For more than twenty years, the MOC has become part of the identity of the show itself, and we’ve been going for around 15 years. People didn’t just say they were “going to High End”. They said they were “going to Munich”. The place and the event became tangled together in people’s minds in the same way Glastonbury, muddy fields, lost shoes, and Welsh mushrooms are forever connected.

But now it is changing.

As you would expect, some people are unhappy about that change. Humans, and especially HiFi humans (Homo stereophonicus), are creatures of habit. We will happily spend six months fannying about with different cables, but ask us to change venue, and suddenly it is as though we are witnessing the fall of civilisation. Personally, though, I think Vienna is going to be brilliant, and I can’t wait to get there, settle in, and get on with covering the show.

We visited the new venue already, and it feels fresh, modern, and, importantly, like somewhere capable of giving the show a slightly different atmosphere than we are used to – “a change is as good as a rest” is the old adage, I believe. Vienna itself feels right, too. It is hard to think of many cities with a deeper connection to music. There is something really rather lovely about thousands of folk obsessed with reproduced music gathering in a city so tied to actual musical history. How much of that rich history Team PiG and I will actually get to see is a completely different matter – if we are at a show, we are there to work, though some of us (I apologise in advance) have very different definitions of what work actually means.

Lin: “Why are you in the bar enjoying a glass of wine at 11:30, Stuart?

Me: “Work!”

All this got me thinking about shows generally, and why we keep going to them. Because we do go to a lot of them.

One week you are in Warsaw. Then Munich. Then Bristol. Then Hong Kong. Though perhaps not in that order. Then somewhere else entirely, where you are standing in a hotel room listening to a million-quid loudspeaker system whilst trying to remember whether you ate lunch or what day it is – I refer the learned reader to having been in the bar at 11:30, enjoying a glass of wine. Different countries, different adult beverages…research!

Work!

But people do ask why we go to so many shows. After all, we live in a world where you can watch product launches online, stream factory visits, join Facebook groups, read reviews, and have direct conversations with manufacturers from your sofa whilst wearing PJs, eating toast, and sipping a glass of wine at 11:30 in the morning. So why fly halfway around the world to sit in a series of conference rooms listening to plinky plony jazz and earnest men with questionable facial hair explaining techy stuff that has limited appeal to me?

Well, firstly, because HiFi is still a physical thing. You can’t really understand a product from a press release. You cannot fully understand a loudspeaker from photographs. You cannot appreciate scale, build, finish, atmosphere, or presence through YouTube videos compressed into oblivion and played back on somebody’s phone speaker while they are on the toilet. All that said, we know that many people can’t actually attend in person, and that’s a big reason why we go to many of these – we go so you don’t have to.

And beyond the products, shows remind us that this hobby is actually about people. Real Homo stereophonicus people. That sounds a bit obvious, but I think we sometimes forget it. Online, everything can become oddly onliney. People argue endlessly. Valve versus solid state. Streaming versus vinyl. Measurements versus listening. Cables wars. Everybody is entrenched in little camps, throwing digital rocks at one another from behind their keyboards.

But at shows, that mostly disappears. Mostly! You walk into rooms with people from all over the world. Different ages. Different backgrounds. Different tastes. And they are all there because music matters to them in some way. And I reckon that is important. Really important! I have had conversations at HiFi shows with people from countries I will probably never visit. I have sat in bars in the wee small hours chatting bollocks about records with strangers who soon become friends.

And yes, there is silliness too. Absolute silliness! Monty Python silly-walk-level silliness. But beneath all the madness, shows matter because they keep the hobby alive and visible. They remind manufacturers that people care. They allow smaller companies to be discovered – the Newcomers stand is a great initiative. They create excitement and a buzz – I’m currently more excited than an excited thing that’s just come back from excitement training, waiting for Father Christmas to come down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

I still remember walking into certain rooms at shows years ago and being genuinely blown away. Not because the system was uber expensive, but because something connected emotionally with me. You hear a piece of music in a way you might not have before, or you discover an artist you later become obsessed with – case in point, Floating Islands. You realise HiFi can actually move you. And all this matters, I think. Particularly now, when so much modern life is online, screen-based, and pretty much wholly disconnected from reality.

HiFi shows are human experiences where people gather together to listen to music. That is essentially what it comes down to. And perhaps that is why the move from Munich to Vienna is more than just a venue change. It feels kind of symbolic. Not an ending or death, but a reminder that this hobby has to keep moving forward and be reborn. New places with new audiences. New energy. That “change instead of a rest” thing I mentioned!

If HiFi just becomes middle-aged men nostalgically recreating the past in increasingly expensive rooms, then eventually it dies. What keeps it alive is enthusiasm and curiosity. Discovery and lived experience.

And that is why we keep getting on planes, trains and Ubers, and dragging camera gear through airports, and living out of suitcases whilst our feet slowly disintegrate after eight hours walking show corridors. Every now and then, you walk into a room somewhere in the world and hear something that reminds you exactly why you fell in love with music and audio in the first place.

Oh, and the social aspect and the aftershows are legendary, fun, and often start at 11:30 in the morning in the bar whilst enjoying a glass of wine.

WORK!

I wonder if I’ll get my own personalised glass like the one I got in Perpignan recently, and shown in the main image?