Audio Consulting on fire at Munich High-End Show

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the fire started in the amplifier sitting on the floor. Just look at the pictures. Thanks to the fast action of the fire department, nothing in the room caught fire. Most of equipment is intact. The amp on the floor is in cinders. As an aside, I won’t buy an audio component that isn’t UL approved.

Actually, that doesn't quite seem correct. We're talking about battery-powered electronics so it's not an amp that would have caught fire but rather, a battery charger for it. Why could a battery charger have caught fire? As my show report mentioned, line voltages of 300V (instead of the standard 230V) had been measured at the show during show hours. If such over voltages indeed occurred, they could have been higher yet during low-load evenings (and the incident did occur during the night, with none of the components left powered on but the battery chargers were connected and 'working').

Is that really what happened?

I'm not sure anybody is completely certain at this point but it seems to be a reasonable guess and along the lines of what Jean Hiraga was quoted as saying in the StereoTimes show report.

The links at Munich fire department changed with end of month:

PDF with pics:
http://www.feuerwehr.muenchen.de/bda0pres/ba01beri/ba012g05/PDF_0509/230509.pdf

Overview of May events:
http://www.feuerwehr.muenchen.de/bda0pres/ba01beri/ba012g05/ba012g05.htm

BTW, I think overvoltage might be real problem with tube equipment, where safety margins are on the low side. I ha´d been on a Berlin gathering of DIY folks on that weekend of the HighEnd show, and in a thunderstorm and lightning, we also experienced overvoltage and had some smoke coming from one tube power amp, until the building's fuse triggered.

Then, exploding batteries during the process of charging is not unknown. Friends of mine, who work with mains generation for their gear, experienced that.

best regards, Hartmut