No, that's not it. I'm not against CD players although there don't seem to be many that beat the Transporter. I had a showdown between the Transporter and the Audionet ART v2 recently and the Transporter walked it - and that's with CDs that have been treated in every way we know how to get a better sound from a CD player. Thankfully the ART's new owner loves it.

At this show, the vinyl demos that I heard (and I didn't hear them all) seemed to have considerable distortion that is absent from digital sources - and these were not cheap TTs.

However, my main criticism is I think with speakers and amps. My Croft gives a more relaxed approachable sound than I've heard from an awful lot of solid state amps. The Croft is of course solid state in the output section itself. It uses MOSFETs but in a valve-style circuit.

I hope I haven't given the impression that the Croft is a typical soft warm lush valve amp. It isn't. It has superb transient response, deep firm tight bass, airy highs, excellent detail, crystalline transparency but it seems to do it all without adding a 'hardness' that many SS amps seemed to be adding at the show. It has very good timing and just sounds involving and natural.

One thing I didn't do at this show was to look at the cables that were in use (except in one case where the Nordost was being showcased). Cables could have explained some of what I was hearing.

Lack of running in would also have explained some of what I heard.

I find it interesting that the one system that did really capture my interest and sound very good without sounding cold or hard or harsh was a relatively inexpensive Mission/Audiolab system. I never thought I would find myself saying this about Audiolab having hated their stuff and the TAG MacLaren stuff in the past but if Audiolab have discovered at last how to make a hifi amp that plays music then all credit to them.

And then there were the ribbons and AMT tweeters. On paper these devices look very good. They have very low moving mass, very low stored energy. They have superb transient response and exemplary CSD* plots. They also have rapidly increading harmonic distortion as one approaches the lowest frequencies of operation (1 - 2 kHz typically). They need to be crossed over high or very steeply (or both). They are also quite directional and don't vary in their directionality the way a dome does. This makes them a bugger to integrate with the midrange driver and makes a mess of the off-axis performance of the speaker. This is why they are not more popular - that and they are harder and more expensive to make than domes. From the ones I head at this show, it seems that nobody has got it right yet. Pity, they hold much promise.

Errm, I seem to be rambling. Did I answer your question?

*CSD - Cumulative Spectal Decay (aka. waterfall diagram)