Bristol Show - Saturday meet up with Titian

A big thanks to all the guys for turning up and showing support Both Steve & I much appriecate it
A very busy day today, lots of people in the room showing good interest, and were getting to grips with the sound today, better than yesterday too by a good margin.
Also to Doug Graham, for taking time out to visit and chat.
'After hours' sampling of vibes was greatly lifted by the removal of Plinque enhancement algorythym, allowing Big 'W' to hint at what she can really do if allow to stretch her legs, she has only one day left in 'restriction mode' after tomorrow she will be able to roam free once more. Again cheers and thanks to all the people who visited today, we certainly enjoyed it and hope you did too. Tone

 

Nice to meet up with everybody, and thanks to Timpy, Tony and Steve for turning the Seventh Veil/Omiga room into a ZG hangout at closing time.

Heard virtually nothing that impressed me overmuch. Listened to some very expensive speakers (JM Labs, Cabasse, Townsend) and didn't think any of them sounded as good as the price tags warranted, at least not under show conditions.

The simpler, cheaper, less flashy systems were the best to listen to: Quad/Wharfedale sounded fine, as did the Revolver room (with prototype preamp and class A power amp driving their speakers).

Missed the Rega room with their 2 new TTs and new speakers, ran out of time. Bugger.

Living Voice was playing some cool Indian classical music through a Resolution Audio Opus 21 CDP and some unfamiliar amps, but I didn't get time to stay long enough to hear the SME 20 TT.

The Totem room had a completely duffed up installation of the Rega P9 TT, which was a shame, as the Rega/Totem setup last year was the best room of the show for me. The Sugden Masterclass/Proac room didn't sound particularly good either, which is a surprise, but I'm not convinced by the bigger Proacs.

Plenty of TTs but not many of them in use, I noticed.

In the spirit of research I sat through Lars' of Nordost's famous Hissing Sid demo of power cables, starting with a stock cable and moving up through the Nordost range to the uber-expensive Valdoonican cables. The changes were subtle at best to my ears, so subtle I could (and do) easily live without them. The demo did nothing to convince me that Valdoonican and the like are any more than expensive tone controls.

In the cool toys department, T+A's new valve amp (as recently raved about by Ken Kessler) and turntable easily won, they look absolutely gorgeous in the flesh, and match perfectly, although I wasn't convinced by the T+A hybrid electrostatic speakers. Not outrageously priced by some standards either, £4K for the amp and £3K for the TT (including the same SME arm as is on the new MF TT, and a Benz cart). A matching CD player is apparently on the way, with a valve output stage. They certainly *look* expensive, and beautifully styled in real life (in the photos I've seen they looked a bit OTT). T+A's a bit of an unfortunate name, though no doubt it helped get some punters into the room who were looking for something else...

Good to finally get to hear Steve's Seventh Veil speakers and subs, and, although no crawling is intended, I thought 7V and Omiga put together one of the better sounding rooms at the show, despite being hampered by having to use WM's Wadia.

Very good to meet up with new and old faces, this forum is all the better for for these real life meet-ups I think.

-- Ian

 

As the others have said, great to meet up with some of the forum members. For me, the social aspect is the main reason for going to the shows at all.

Overal sound quality was not too impressive (not surprising really, considering how little time is available to set up beforehand!). There seemed to be a lot of rooms having real trouble with room resonances and bass timing going AWOL.


Kudos to Steve and Tony for putting together a room which definately is up there with the best/most musical in the show. I though the Sugden/Proac D25 room was OK, the T + A stuff looks fab, the Pathos smaller room was nice. The Bryston/PMC rooms were fun as well as the exposure/vandersteen room.

The best room of the show for me was the living voice room. I really must look into those speakers further. I also want a pair of WB discoveries because they look cool.

The private ZG party in the 7V/Omiga room after hours was fun too.

Cheers, Robbo

 

good to meet some more you people who make ZG such a fun place.

personally i quite liked b&w's room (and not just because i own a pair of b&w speakers) they were playing a specially commissioned 10 channel mix of 'ambient' music an hour long and on continuous loop. certain bits of the music were awful and absolutely pointless, it did recreate the ambience of an underground station fairly well although to be truly there they should have mixed in a talentless busker and had an actor dressed as a tramp come in to wee in the corner. some of the more relaxed bits were quite good and you could see the potential of the system it was entertaining to see the poor little 705's get an absolute caning - if b&w have any after show 'special offers' on 705's, don;t get them is my advice.

the exposure / vandersteen room was sounding quite boppy but like most rooms had a hint of room bass 'reinforcement'

the living voice room was very nice sounding.

i'll second robbo on the wb discoverys, nicest looking speakers at the show but 5k new!!!!!

the quadraspire room sounded good. but the guy in there was annoying, bopping about like ivors little monkey - in fact a lot of rooms seemed to have proprietors with st vitus dance.

the naim rooms were quite good, the arrivas were sounding a million times better than they did at heathrow. the mid range system next door was going nice things to treble and midrange but bass was not very full and giving a 'dry' sound that so many associate with naim. it wasn't terrible but it was frustrating knowing that there was a whole lot more that the kit could give.

the ukd room was full of some gorgeous italian kit. there was a new pathos 'super logos' (not sure of the name) driving some final 'statics which although it was on a plinque fest didn;t sound bad and the origonal logos next door was sounding vbery nice indeed. in fact if i was ever to down size to a single integrated amp i'd be very tempted.

the jm labs room as awful sounding but it was funny watching normal pepoles faces when told that the 'cd player' (a full dcs) cost 19k.

the other big ticket room with cabasse speakers and halcro amps was ok sounding but didn't 'rawk' like 50k should mind you expecting clapton to rawk is perhaps a bit much.

the tube technology 'corridoor' was sounding nice even though the accoustics must have been a bugger.

the new mission speakers were a bit shouty for me but looked like mini WB's so i could forgive them a lot.

a big thanks to steve, tony and the 7v guys for turning their room into club zero gain and letting the system off the leash. the speakers and kit was sounding very good on the day. shame we had to call it a day as tony and the guys were off for some debauchery with some magazine guys.

a fun day and worth going purely for the pleasure of meeting the other ZG'ers, but nothing there kit wise that really shook me up.
cheers


julian

 

Sounds like it was a good day out - gutted I couldn't be there but it just fell in the middle of my two week stint at home in Portugal

Michael.

 

Hi All

Not going to repeat everything others have said about the show.

Just wanted to say great meeting with you all and thanks to Steve and Tony for indulging us at the end of the show.

Actually apologies to NSherin for not saying Hi at lunchtime. Wasn't sure if you were a ZG'er, but should have known by the shifty looks.

 

Your distraction, I went to listen to Sonus Faber Stradivari with Theta CDP, KRELL top pre and powers and some infamous Transparent cables, nice looking TT too, couldnt get over the size of the black boxes on the speaker cables...

Bad room and setup, but showed promise... :MILD:

 

Hi,

Good to see everyone again. It was good to meet Titian & Penance for the first time. Big Thanks to big Tone & Steve M for the after hours gentlemans club music session. Great fun. Pity we didn't have longer.

As mentioned, the general sound quality was disappointing. I did like the Living Voice room & 7th Veil room the best. I did find the more expensive Naim room sounding alright but alot of expensive stuff didn't do their price tags justice. Lots of nice looking stuff though.

There didn't seem as many hifi companies there this year. Plenty of AV. The show is more mainstream than some (i.e. Manchester) with not a lot of really high end stuff.

The session in the 7th Veil room was good with the music flowing. We did get the turntable going & it did sound very good. It was a big pity we didn't try it earlier. I hope it gets some use today.

Sorry to NSherin for not saying hello, we missed you in the bar (we were all in the B&W room next door). Was that you in the 7th Veil room at around 5.00pm, sat in the middle on the front row?

I enjoyed overall. It was a good social event.

SCIDB

 

Excuse me, can you keep the noise down lads:spank:

 

Me too, Tony only told me who NSherin was after he'd left, so apologies to him for not introducing myself.

Nice to see everybody, and thank-you to everyone for coming up to see us. I do really enjoy the social side of it.

Sorry I couldn't stay longer at the end, I'd come back from a week in Hull the night before to be there, and was off up there again for a week today (Sunday) , so apart from all the problems with logistics, I was under pain of something nasty to spend a few hours at home with gf etc. so had to duck out at 6, especially as I'd left her on her birthday the Sunday before......

Haven't had the chance to read this thread fully, so I might resurrect it next week when I'm back.

Cheers

 

Sharp intake of breath! You believe in living life dangerously :lol:

 

that's right tim, treat her mean keep her keen... no golden thumbprint award for you.
cheers


julian

 

An enjoyable day out overall. Went along mainly for the meet up but thought I'd browse around a couple of rooms whilst I was there, going into the rooms where there the non a/v or slightly more specialist brands were, or if a room happened to be playing some interesting music at the time I'd pop my head in.

It was good to meet a lot familiar faces again, and to meet Titian and Penance for the first time. My apologise to nsherin too, we didn't really stay in the main bar area for long after 2, before being told that everyone else had already adjourned to the area that B&W were using for their multi-channel presentation.

Now, a/v and multi-channel isn't really an area of interest for me, but as one of the rooms which gave me the most enjoyment/grin factor was in fact an a/v set-up, so I thought I'd start off by giving Canton a mention whose room I walked in on towards the end the day. They were demonstrating a 5.1 speaker package whose appearance was decidedly aimed at the contemporary designer interiors market. The front and rear speakers were identical, very slimline cylindrical floorstanding units finished in aluminium silver coloured cases and making use of tiny metal coned drive units (a bit like the units in 7V's Seventh Veil speakers but they're probably not Bandor units?). To complete the speaker complement there was a matching oblong cylindrical shaped centre speaker that lay horizontally under the big plasma screen and a single subwoofer which sat in the corner of the room. A sat through a number of tracks from the "Queen - Live At Wembley Stadium" DVD that was released last year. Those slimline cylindrical speakers really disappeared, but the sound wasn't obviously thin or weedy sounding. The sub was doing a great job of supplementing the output of the main speakers when required, but yet I couldn't say that I could really detect its presence in an obvious way such was the integration. The sound was really immersive, and what with the lively overall presentation there was a real sense of being there at the concert - this system was really rocking out. Great stuff. Have no idea what this system would sound like with more subtle music or films, as I only heard it playing a handful of track from the Queen DVD. They also had some ordinary box speakers which I sat briefly listening to after the DVD had been taken off, and whilst they match the a/v speaker package in the bass department without need a sub they sounded more run of the mill and didn't disappear as well as the a/v speakers IMO.

As with others, I really enjoyed the sounds from the Living Voice room who were playing a wide range of music from vinyl on a rather desirable looking SME 20 t/t when I was there. Music ranged from the famous bit from Albeniz's Suite Espanola (orchestral version), through some dub and D'n'B which I didn¡¦t recognise but enjoyed, through to 90's Seattle based rockers Mad Season. A decent mix of hi-fi and musical communication attributes demonstrated on a wide range of tracks there then.

A controversial thumbs up next... Chord Electronics! Although I must state that I only heard 2 classical tracks in this room, they playing the Playful Pizzicato from Britten's Simple Symphony and Delius's On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring, it was certainly one of my favourite sounds for classical/orchestral music that I'd heard all day. A very open and spacious sound. Although I know a lot of people came away with that usual accusation that the Chord room was sounding "hard" when they were in there, I didn't get to hear any more contemporary music in there so couldn't really compare meaningful notes.

Interestingly, the new compact floorstanders that JM Lab were demonstrating in their own were, I also noticed being used by Chord Electronics as well as by Sony in their SACD room. Erm, JM Lab's own room IMO produced by far the worst sound from those speakers, very muddled. I've heard the pairing of Spectral amps and dCS front-end with Transparent cables driving my very own speakers and sounding so much better than what JM Lab were getting in their room, quite a surprise, as it did sound like the driving electronics were compromising the sound to me rather than the room in this case. The same speakers on the Chord Choral system produced a much more transparent than I'd ever heard from a set JM Lab speakers before, whilst the pair that Sony had on their room on the 5th room was also a lot more acceptable than in JM Lab's own room. I'm not a great fan of JM Lab speakers personally, as almost every pair of I've heard sounds very coloured in the lower mids and just generally matter of fact in presentation.

Another couple of speaker pet hates would include for me Mission and Wilson Benech. Missions always seem to have a very toppy balance, nothing I heard yesterday blew away that image. Wilson Bench always seems to have a very thick and artificially over thumpy mid bass character, again heard the same thing that I've heard every year as I passed through those rooms. Both ranges would give me severe headaches after any kind of extended listening I'm afraid.

Spent quite a bit of time up on the 10th floor in the two Naim rooms. Now, even though I've heard components from the 5 series on a number of occasions both at dealers as well as in real systems around at other people's houses, I must say that I've never heard Naim kit sounding as laid back and un-anxious as it did in both the rooms I sat in on yesterday. The room housing the entry level system with 5i components didn't seem to offer anything special or unique at the price point IMO, although that same system with a Rega P3 (and a nice green one at that ) into the new Stageline phono stage was OK and enjoyable enough if veiled in the usual way that Naim can be IMHO. The Classic system next door when driven by the CDX2 CDP was probably the most enjoyable sound I¡¦d ever heard from an all Naim rig, even the Allae speakers were surprisingly inoffensive. At the end of the day though, even I found both systems to be a bit lacking in grooviness and forward momentum with more upbeat material.

The system that UKD were demonstrating I felt definitely had potential, although there was definitely some very bad room interactions effects going on with the tall and narrow electrostatics that they were using in there. There were some very definite phasey and beaming effects destroying the otherwise decent coherence which could be heard if you sat in the right place - neck brace anyone? It was certainly refreshingly to hear a pair of stats after all the box speakers that I'd heard everywhere else ¡V it simply reinforced the fact in my mind that every box speaker really does sound boxy/coloured and masks low level detail unless played loud. The music being played was the laid back "Neck and Neck" guitar pickin' album from Messrs Atkins and Knopfler, certainly enjoyable enough. Would have been nice to hear how the stats would have coped with something a bit more rocking, but then only out of curiosity's sake rather than because they were being eyed up as potential purchase material.

On an amusement and entertainment level I'm going to have to give the Quadraspire room a mention. :lol: I was the only other person in the room at the room at the time, as I witnessed one of the Quadraspire reps being a bit acerbic and belittling of a guy who was already in the room and dared to even contemplate buying a Fraim. Taunts of "you'll completely screw up your system if you do", "you'll kill the music", etc. The rep proceeded to demonstrate the difference between 3 different stands with a 20 second burst of a Vanessa Carlton track played on an Accuphase CDP which was subsequently moved between the other 2 racks from the initial one. First rack was a steel and glass rack which gave a comparatively sharp sound and made the vocals very sibilant. Second rack was wood, which gave a much more muddled rendition - interesting to hear the rep tell us all that "it's out of tune isn't it?" - OK I don't agree that the pitch of notes of change but I can see what he means, yes pitch definition in the pass was now more muddled or less defined, the presentation/flow was a bit more turgid, but the piano and vocals remained the same pitch as far as I could hear. The 3rd and final rack was acrylic, which produced a half way house between the two, yes it was the best out of the 3, as the guy from Quadraspire had wanted us to think. For me, the differences were significant enough, although whether I¡¦d spend that much on a rack to fine tune those differences would be quite another matter. Instead of buying an entire rack, why not buy whatever rack looks good, then get some isolation platforms of the appropriate composite/construction to suit to taste, surely a lot cheaper.

Briefly popped my head into TCI's (True Colour Industries) mains cable demo, but only because the sound of Madonna's Pappa Don't Preach track caught my attention as I walked past the room. Didn't stay for long though as the room was crowded, although I have sat in on TCI dems at other shows in the past, and it was nice to see them carting around their usual demo system made up of components which are very real world and don't cost the earth including items which you can buy second hand like the MF Tubalog DAC and B&W 7NT (?) speakers.

Finally, Seventh Veil speakers. Nice to hear these speakers for the first time and what with them having received a total internal rewiring since they were last heard by many forum members. Some nice coherence from the 7V speakers, and the sub/sat integration really works. The Steinhart valve amps were also quite a surprise too, giving the impression that impression of authority that you usually associate with SS but not always with valves, quite pricey though IMO. Only one criticism with the 7V speakers, hopefully a constructive one, but I'm sure I could detect some kind of cabinet resonance going on in what seemed like the lower mids - noticeably on certain male vocals or other instruments which appeared to add colouration. Apart from that a musically transparent design, congrats. Also sharing the Seventh Veil room was some cables and mains treatment devices from some nice guys calling themselves Omiga Audio, but did they really make a difference?

 

No worries guys - it's always tricky to recognise people the first time round There's always another time though.... I'm sure 7V and WM pulled out all the stops to make the private demo a good one - I was very impressed with what I saw

Oh - another bit of kit that impressed was Onkyo's range of receivers that link up to a PC - either via wireless or ethernet, enabling you to access any music stored as WAV, MP3 or WMA on a PC hard disc. An interesting alternative to the pricey hard disc recorders - especially as it is so cheap to add more storage to a PC - about £46 for an 80GB drive ATM, IIRC. Still, at £1100 for the less expensive receiver, the Onkyo is still well out of my price range I'd like to see the likes of Yamaha follow suit on their budget AV receivers, but I doubt that would happen, as they've already got pricer products such as the CDR-H1300 and the MusicCast Server. Perhaps Pioneer or Denon could get their finger out and do something like Onkyo - but more affordable, please!

An interesting tid-bit came out of the Meridien DVD-A demo - the fact that dual-format - i.e. DVD-A and Redbook CD discs should hit the market later this year. This should really fuel the DVD-A market, IMHO. If that's the case, methinks a hi-res multiformat player will be on my shopping list at some point to replace my Pio DV-350. £175 isn't too bad for the 565A, but I'm waiting a while till they drop further in price.

And lastly, I finally managed to pick up a copy of 'Hell Freezes Over' on vinyl, from Diverse Vinyl, having already got the DVD-V and CD-A versions. It's playing now as I type and is an excellent pressing - highly recommended for any Eagles fans with a TT!

 

nsherin, sorry to have missed you!

I didnt mention the Quadraspire room. Although the demo guy was rather irritating, and there was not a great deal of difference between the standard and the reference racks, I thought the accuphase/spectral/monster valve amp and JM lab speakers was a pretty decent sounding system.

 

It's over for another year, this time on the 'other side of the fence' as it was, its quite 'interesting, there's a lot of time and effort that goes into a show, not just the travelling & humping the kit and setting up. CD can cut the mustard, we left the TT running, and it was nicely amuzing when people got up to check the deck, when the cdp was playing!!!!!
So after our first show, we learn't Ken Kessler is pretty loud & baudy even if he does reseamble Baron Munchaussian and may have a passion for Rugby
Naimies travel and hunt in packs, Jazz at the pornshop, should replace chinese water torture, not all guys over 40 like Plinque , Stevie Ray is approved show material & valves don't always run hot.
The beer was COLD & hospitality was very good, the public were fun & Max Townsehend will do anything for a 5mm allen key
Both Steve and Wm had fun although frought with the odd moment of panic, it ran along quite smoothly.
High-lights of the show for me Best sound Kev scotts room with the SME playing, great sound, mind you with the electronics totaling about £100K's worth, I would hope so, but nothing taken away cracking sound.
Exposure & Vanderstein fun, lively and fine sound for the cash, sorry but the chord room was must be after Krells old title, best jackhammer in an audio enviroment. and was that a 64 & blu transport playing .
A mention to TACT also, showing promise
Not overly impressed with the WB room, I do have a soft spot for there speakers, but on the day, falling short.
WA speakers, with the right Kit will surprise a few people
A big thanks to Whayne & Woody from Voodoo, for all their help & patience cheers god bless here's some rock n' roll
Once again a serious thanks you to all those who ventured in to the 7V room, where it was your cup of tea of not cheers. Wm

 

Sorry I missed everyone

Good to hear about the show reports, Well done to Steve and Tone for putting up a room

Anyone got any photos to put up?

 

Chris, I believe Iassc may have one or 2 offending articles kicking about

 

Sorry that I didn't get to meet more of the ZG folks whilst there on Sat. I would have liked to have meet in the bar at 1.30, but only just made it around the show despite arriving when the doors opened and leaving when the closed.

I also didn't think it was as good a show as last year. What I'm not sure about is whether that's because it was geniunely worse, or whether my own kit has got that much better (new hardware, new room, better setup) that I'm not so impressed.

Things that dissapointed me were:
- The amount of AV kit. Frankly none of the AV rooms did anything for me. Maybe if we ask nicely next year they will group all the av kit onto a couple of floors and put the stereo kit on a different set of floors.
- Mission room. I walked into a very loud AV dem of Clapton, which was truly awful. Probably the worst bass control and timing of the whole show.
I did think that things would improve with the stereo kit off to one side as it was fronted by a Naim CDS3, lots of power supplies and I'm assuming a similarly costly pre and power amp. So probably £15k minimum of CDP and amp. In practice, was also pretty lousy. Lots of colouration and generally fairly nasty. Bearing in mind that the electronics are probably 5 times the cost of my own Naim kit, I think I'll blame it on the speakers, yuch.
- Pathos valve/electrostatic.
With low volume plinky plonky jazz, this kit sounded great. Unfortunately I don't listen to plinky plonky lift music, so asked for them to use the imfamous Bond remix track at more normal listening levels. Well, the system made it to the bass lines, then completely died in a heap. Talk about a system focused on a specific set of abilities...
- Naim speakers. Overall I liked the Naim dems, but still came out thinking that all Naim speakers make music sound artificial. Certainly my Linns sound massively more natural.
- Living voice. Last year this room got my vote for being the best there, being completely fluid, dynamic and generally sublime. That was using a VPI turntable and Border Patrol amps. I really didn't think that changing the electronics helped the situation. To me it was simply OK, and really nothing more. Completely wasted potential.
- TACT. I couldn't believe that I'd walk into their dem room to hear the same drum CD that was running on the previous year. Do they have no imagination. The good news was that I had some real music to play. Yes the kit is still IMPRESSIVE (i.e. VERY LOUD, VERY CLEAN AND MASSIVE DYNAMICS). However, it was also yawn city to listen to real music on, NEXT!
- Acoustic Energy AE1s. I remember hearing a first generation pair of these over a decade ago and thought they were the best small standmounts I'd ever heard. This time around they had no bass and struggled with timing. Hardly progress.
- Quad Speakers. Next door to the Quad room, Wharfedale were doing some rather good things with a Quad CDP, Quad amps and a reasonably priced pair of Wharfedale floorstanders. Amongst the cheaper kit, I rather liked it.
Unfortunately, Quad themselves, using basically the same electronics but their own speakers managed to create a simply offensively shrill noise. Just how did they do it?
- Focal Labs. I found 3 pairs of Focals in different rooms. All of them had massive bass overhang, much worse than the other speakers in the similarly horrible dem rooms. Not good at all, and that's before you look at them (clearly an aquired taste).

Things that impressed me were:
- Totem room. Just how did they get such small speakers to do such great things. Very nice.
- PMC. I liked these so much that I came away wondering if I should change my Linns for them. A great combination of skills from a fairly nice looking pair of small floorstanders.
Over the last few years I've developed a real dislike for ported speakers as to me, most seem to have no bass control and struggle with timing. The PMCs are transmission lines and seemed to have no problems at all, yet all the benefits. I wonder if a home dem is in order sometime...
- World Audio. These seem to have massive potential. I love the avantgarde look of them and they certainly had plenty of control. Unfortunately they were fronted by embarrassingly cheap electronics. Lets face it, who uses a pair of speakers which cost £6600 with a £100 Richer sounds special CD player? I'd love to know how well they'd come across with a good set of electronics. I did mention it to the staff there, but they really didn't seem to understand the concept of system matching.
- Audio Research. Personally I didn't like them, finding their bass rather divourced from the rest of the proceedings. Having said that, my wife liked them, so should really mention them.
- 7th Veil. At Julians place, these sounded truly rubbish to me. I've no idea what was done to them in the last couple of weeks, but these were one of the best systems at the show, awesome stuff. Maybe WM should really rename himself Merlin..
- The status PC case. I don't know how many people even noticed this, but near the bar was a group selling PC cases which to me looked gorgeous. They reminded me of the quality of the cases used by Teac on their VRDS CDPs.
I keep thinking about the idea of replacing my DVD player with a home theatre PC, especially as it would be no more expensive than a mid range Denon DVD, but would have better high definition output than probably any standalone DVD player on the market. So finding something that would make the kit lounge friendly was a breath of fresh air.

Along the way, I also got to try some interesting comparisons:
- Naim CD5i vs a CDX2. So, what do you get for another £1700??
To me the groove was pretty much the same, i.e. damn good. The extra cash seemed to buy a far more natural presentation. Is it worth £1700?? Well I guess that depends if you have the cash available to spend. At the moment I don't, so wouldn't spend it, maybe that will change in a couple of years.
- Naim CD5i vs Rega P3. I'd started to wonder whether the LP and CD formats are so different, that maybe optimising a system for CD would make an add on LP deck come across as rather dull and yawnable as most decks lack the extreme frequency range capabilities of a good CD player. In practice, I found the sound much closer than I expected.
To me, the CD5i had more drive, dynamics and better control, whilst the LP was more natural. Overall I'd give them a similar score out of 10. It certainly was no enough to make me want to buy an LP deck.
- Plasma connection using Component and progressive scan, vs HDMI.
This is the first time I've been able to compare the best analogue connection for a plasma to the new all digital connection. There was a noticeable difference, but it wasn't huge. If the price difference is not much, well worth having the improvement.

 

Managed to get there on Sunday. Long trek down from Huddersfield .

Anyhow, Our lass and I had a great time @ the Show as well as in Bristol.

At the show I was well impressed with the new Mission Elegant Range of speakers. Nice smooth sound and they looked good too.

The Dynaudio's sounded very good too. The Spendor S5's impressed me as well, shame they had James Taylor running thru them :SLEEP: .
The Canton Room sounded very good with Fast And Furious DVD playing. As did the Bryston/PMC, with X-Men2 showing.

But I cannot for the life in me understand why show after show exhibitors play the same naff music . OK, so it's recorded fabulously, but it sounds so shite. Do they have to play a top recorded CD's to convince you into buying their HIFI.
Why play some Rolling Stones, Beatles, Blondie (Ok so I'm Biased), but this the everyday sound that people listen to. So why not use it for a Demo now and again?
There is only so much Eva Cassidy one can take .

It was a shame TAGMclaren didn't go and I thought B&W could have done more with the Executive Lounge.
All in all I didn't hear anything that would make me want replace any of my HIFI :MILD: , but it's good to hear the competition. LOL.