One evening during the Munich High-End Show, at the Image HiFi 2010 Awards ceremony, the AMR CD-77 Compact Disk Processor was awarded the very prestigious Image HiFi 2010 “Digital Source of the Year”. This came as a complete surprise to AMR and truly capped off a fabulous Munich showing for AMR.

The German audio sector is one that is best summarised in two words “vinyl” and “conservative”. The culture of many a German music lover is that he/she still holds onto their record collection dearly and never lets go.

Second, when it comes to product branding, stability is key. The most traditional of traditional brands dominate the market and customers seldom stray. The manifestation of this is that many a brand has tried to gain a foothold in this lucrative but steady market and failed. We at AMR believe that the CD-77 has shown it can be done and with the upcoming reviews of the PH-77 Phono Equaliser, big things are now expected of AMR in Germany.

To land Image HiFi’s “Best Digital Source Product 2010” is no mean feat given the prodigious field of digital source components that exists in the German market.

AMR and Fast Audio were invited to the Image HiFi offices 40 kilometres west of Munich. The food was simple but very tasty - curried frankfurters (yes) and with extra Cayenne pepper, these frankfurters were going faster than their Porsche namesake. With an “open bar” (free beers) of wheat beer and lager, no-one was shy and by the end of the evening, with only a little difficulty, we managed to gingerly make our way to the podium to receive this most prestigious award (first of many we hope).