A good day out, if only really to meet up and catch up with the usual suspects. Good to meet Michael(ab), Steve (7V) (and non Zero but -0.5 junior 7V designer in waiting Jack
) for the first time.
Considering at the beginning of this week I didn't have any particular rooms in mind that I wanted to visit, I'm probably the only one who didn't feel like today was a total waste of time. Also going against the grain, I don't always find my system to be the absolute best of day when I get home from hi-fi shows, but for the first ever, even I felt glad to have what I have at home after only 5 minutes of getting in the door and slapping on some tunes. Sure, there are one or two things I've heard elsewhere or maybe even heard today that I thought, I'd like to have a bit of that, but I was quite startled to find that even my system now does thing that systems at the show weren't getting close to doing... Now I really now where WM's coming from when he complains about the sound of most system (compared to his) "lacking life"...
Didn't get around to listening to all the rooms, or even the majority of rooms but there was one room which I did miss out on which I suspected I might have liked... Quad. Why? Because my favorite room of the day was using panel speakers much to my surprise...
"Sound By Design" are the UK distributors of a little known French brand called "Vecteur". Before today, I'd never come across either company before. The system on show in their room was the I-4 integrated amp and L-4 CD player. Paraphrasing some the literature I picked up from them, the I-4 is an assuming little solid state (push-pull MOSFET) @ 2x80W and comes with remote, whilst the CDP is 24/192 upsampled with 3 internal power supplies each with its own power transformer (not very much shielding inside but the fundamentals look like they the player should show plenty of promise). Apparently, each component is also supplied with a decent mains lead of the manufacturer's own making, whatever next? To finish things off, and the part of the system which interested me the most were a pair of Magneplanar MG12 speakers - never heard any Magnepan speaker before so this was a first for me. Hmm, total cost of the hardware in that system, just a little over £3k (amp £930, CDP £1200 and speakers £1200 approx - not heard many if any £1200 speakers that sound like that). In a word/phrase, VGFM. Sound By Design don't import the Maggie speakers, but apparently they might have plans to soon. I'd certainly be interested in hearing a bigger pair, especially if they are all as reasonably as priced as the MG12s for what they do. Oh, and also the sound we got from that system, was IMHO, very valve like and lush in the mids but not bloomy or imprecise, there was a human quality to the music making, not bad from a cheap tranny amp, but the reviews I've got in front of me say that the amp isn't lush sounding at all so must be the Maggies that do it - good system synergy going on there I guess with the results outweighing the sum of the parts?
The Overkill Audio Ovation speakers were a very strange experience. Not what I was expecting at all. I was expecting something a bit more open, dynamic and lively. Maybe the speakers would have produced a sound more to my tastes with different ancillaries (they were using a full dCS front-end but doesn't seem to sound like what I have at home), but the sound to me was quite matter of fact, almost over controlled, sterile and shut in - as if someone had gone OTT on the use of mains conditioning/main regeneration devices. The plus side was the sound was very non fatiguing, and the claim for a hot spot free listening experience was certainly true, off axis the speakers did disappear and you were still left with a sound stage the stretched in all direction with speakers that weren't localizable at all - as if they were omni-directionals.
The f**king huge top of the range Neat Ultimatums that were playing (Frankie Goes To Hollywood's ââ'¬Å"Relaxââ'¬Â) as I walked into the Neat Acoustics room to my ears showed promise. I think I'd like to get an extended listen to the next model down from the ones they were playing at the time. The really big ones which just overwhelm my room in the bass department I'm sure, as they did sound like a big PA/disco system. Didn't sound quite open or box free enough in the mids to me when I heard them at the time, a touch dark sounding maybe, but with different electronics a different story I feel could be told.
Yes, for those that haven't clicked, I am sort of eyeing up a potential speaker purchase/upgrade at the end of this year or beginning of next. Then again, going on what I've heard today, maybe I'll stick with what I've got and carry on improving the isolation/room and getting better cables for the subs - the subs really are integrating much much better with every upgrade I make further up the chain (at least they do IMNSHO
). Problem I had with most of the stuff I heard today was that the sound always sounded like it was coming from a box, or that I could hear a multiple array of disparate drivers producing sound at different frequencies coming at me from different directions (Proac big D's for example - room filing bass but don't disppear as I'd like). My speakers at home are still the benchmark for what I like in a lot of ways, for what they do well at, and for out of the box sound. Now if I could find a single box solution that did the bottom end I require in the room I have to live with without the need for a separate subwoofer, and add some of that very engaging sound that I got from the Magneplans todayââ'¬Â¦
Nice to hear the guys in the Garrard (Loricraft?) room cracking a joke when they asked "Anyone with any requests... as long as it's NOT Norah Jones, please!" - LOL. On the subject of music though, it was good to hear a much wider range of music being played throughout the show (and without show goer prompting), than say compared to what we heard at Bristol this year. Caught some of my favorites including Pink Floyd, Dire straits and Jean-Michel Jarre (yes OK, very middle of the road but hey at least it's what Jo Public listens to). Enjoyed the Van Halen that another guy got played in the Vertex AQ/Perigee room, who surprisingly wasn't a Zerogain member despite the fact that we had rather manopolised that room at one point ââ'¬â€œ hang on I can hear ââ'¬Å"G3 In Concertââ'¬Â blasting out of this next room I bet I know who's in there before I look in there
! What was the name of the Van Halen album again guys, for those that were there, me want to buy a copy? :MILD:
IMO it simply plays music and (hush descends), actually has one of the best soundstage capabilites I have heard
not even fast, let alone dynamic, clouded very badly too off axis, and muddled mids plus a split on hardness factor.
