I had every intention of writing about this audio demonstration while I was in Vienna attending High End 2026, which was held from June 4 to 7 at Austria Center Vienna (ACV). The experience I’m about to describe was one of the highlights of the entire trip. But High End is an all-consuming event. Once the show begins, the days become a blur of appointments, discussions, photography, video shoots, late-night writing, and too little sleep. And because our primary responsibility is covering High End itself, some things that deserve attention inevitably get pushed aside. But what senior editor Jason Thorpe and I heard at an after-hours demonstration held outside of High End couldn’t be kept a secret forever.
On the evening of Friday, June 5, we attended a presentation at Piano House Opernring GmbH—Steinway & Sons’ flagship store in Vienna—located just off Vienna’s Ringstrasse, which is near the Vienna State Opera. The event was conducted jointly by representatives from the store and from Steinway Lyngdorf, and it centered around something I had never known existed: the integration of a Steinway Spirio player-piano with a Lyngdorf Audio stereo system.
Peter Lyngdorf
Steinway & Sons and Lyngdorf Audio have been collaborating for nearly two decades through Steinway Lyngdorf, the ultra-high-end audio venture spearheaded by Danish audio entrepreneur Peter Lyngdorf, who spoke at the presentation. The partnership combines Steinway’s legendary piano-making capabilities with Lyngdorf’s expertise in digital amplification, room correction, and advanced audio-component design. The goal was ambitious from the outset: to reproduce the sound and scale of a Steinway piano as convincingly as possible in the home. According to Peter Lyngdorf, the project reached a turning point when even Steinway & Sons’ own piano tuners became convinced by how realistically the first Steinway Lyngdorf system reproduced the sound of the instrument. From then on, he liked to joke that he would also “throw in an orchestra for free.” What Jason and I heard in Vienna felt like that philosophy taken to an even more literal level.
The setup itself was visually striking. Up on a large, raised platform was a Steinway Spirio Model D concert grand flanked by a pair of Steinway Lyngdorf Model C loudspeakers. Lyngdorf Audio electronics and subwoofers tucked further behind completed the system.
The purpose of the demonstration was straightforward enough: to show how Steinway’s Spirio player-piano technology could work together with a high-end stereo system to create an experience that blurred the line between live performance and reproduced sound. But we weren’t told that beforehand.
So when we arrived about halfway through the first of two presentations, we experienced a bit of confusion. A recording of Howard Jones performing “No One Is to Blame” was playing, accompanied by video footage showing the recorded performance—just Jones singing and playing a piano in what looked to be a fairly ordinary studio. I caught on to what was happening because of where I was standing, but Jason told me that he initially assumed the piano in the room where we were standing was simply there for atmosphere and that the entire performance was being reproduced by the stereo system. He said it became apparent to him what was happening when he moved to the side of the room, where he could see the piano keys moving. At that point it clicked: Jones’s singing was being reproduced by the speakers, but the sound of the piano was not coming from the loudspeakers at all; instead, the Steinway itself was physically playing the piano performance in real time right there in the room.
By the second demonstration, Jason had fully grasped what was going on—and honestly, even knowing what was doing what, the effect still felt uncanny and impressive to both of us. It opened our eyes to an entirely new way music could be reproduced in the home—something we hadn’t even imagined before. But clearly Peter Lyngdorf had imagined it long ago, because he explained that he had spent years pushing to get technology in place that could blend Steinway Lyngdorf home audio with an actual Steinway & Sons piano playing.
Still, what impressed me most was not merely the technical achievement—the first player-pianos date back to the late 1800s and have obviously advanced since then. In fact, associate editor S. Andrea Sundaram pointed me to an MIT paper written in 2007 that refers to research done in the 1920s intended to improve the accuracy of player-pianos. What truly impressed Jason and me was the success of this fusion itself. The sound of an actual piano being used to faithfully reproduce the piano portion of the music (I’ll get to that faithfulness in a bit) while the stereo system reproduced the other elements created a level of realism and scale that conventional playback systems simply cannot duplicate. That’s because the sound of a real piano playing in a real room has unmistakable dimensionality and physicality that loudspeakers—even excellent ones—still struggle to completely replicate. The Spirio system bridges that gap in a way I had not anticipated by using a real piano instead of speakers.
The speaker-piano fusion also showed the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that has become rare in hi‑fi. Too often these days we are seeing the same sort of products coming out with no or few new design wrinkles. Few risks are taken. Worse yet, some companies are trotting out vintage hi‑fi designs in an effort to convince people that what they were listening to decades ago is superior to anything being offered today—which is bullshit. This Steinway presentation was something new—and that’s to be commended.
And then there is the Spirio technology itself, which was developed by Steinway & Sons and is something I’d like to learn more about. Neither Jason nor I knew anything about it before we walked into that presentation. But I’ll briefly report on what I’ve learned so far.
From what was explained during the presentation and the Q-and-A sessions afterward, the system doesn’t just replicate keystrokes by mechanically pressing keys. Instead, the recording captures extraordinarily fine information by measuring and storing the velocity of hammer strikes against the strings during the original performance. Reproduction involves replicating that same velocity inside the playback instrument. To make this all work, each piano must be calibrated two to four times a year by a certified Steinway & Sons technician to ensure it’s performing exactly as it should. This allows recorded performances to be reproduced just like the original performances across all Spirio-equipped Steinway & Sons pianos.
Perhaps more important is what the technology enables beyond mere playback. Owners can also play back performances from famous artists on their own Steinways in their own homes. We were shown a tablet containing a whole host of performances Steinway & Sons Spirio owners receive with their piano purchase. Spirio pianos start at around US$125,000 and range up to about US$300,000 for the one used at this demonstration. The inclusion of these recordings isn’t too much of an ask when you’re laying down that kind of coin. Furthermore, using a variant of Spirio called Spirio | r, pianists can record performances directly onto the instrument and have them played back exactly the same. That has to be beneficial for practicing and learning. They can use the system to edit the recordings as well.
For me, most fascinating of all is that the system can receive livestreams—called Spiriocasts—from performances occurring elsewhere in the world, allowing the piano to reproduce those performances in near real-time in an owner’s home. This capability was not demonstrated to us, but in practical terms, it means a concert taking place somewhere else in the world on a Steinway piano could be reproduced through your own Steinway in essentially the same way. Of course, room acoustics are going to vary, but it’s still mind-blowing when you think about having your own Steinway reproducing the music exactly as it’s being played elsewhere pretty much simultaneously. When we learned that, Jason turned to me and said, “Wow, I could have Lang Lang playing in my living room—if I could actually afford one of these things.” Sadly, neither of us can. But we sure could admire the ambition behind the initiative.
The irony is that, despite High End being considered the world’s most important audio show by many—and despite it being filled with enormous, expensive stereo systems—the demonstration that stayed with me the most took place about 20 minutes away by subway from ACV. It was also the one I found myself talking most excitedly about afterward.
Ultimately, this reinforced something I have believed for years: truly memorable demonstrations rarely happen when you play the same old music the same way that people have already heard many times, which is what often happens at audio shows. Instead, the best demonstrations are about creating listening experiences people have never encountered before. In Vienna on June 5, 2026, that’s what Steinway & Sons and Steinway Lyngdorf did.
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstage.com
