Good stuff at Heathrow

Hopefully if we all get together tomorrow we can have the Proac room to ourselves and let those D100's loose with some of Graham N's sounds:JOEL:

I remember listening to Faithless on a pair at the factory and they really kick. And we were in the car park 200 yards away

 

How nice of them to provide lifting handles

 

Hi lil. I wonder how Tina Turner would sound in those tubes


regards

 

Dont think her arse would fit. Its way too big.

Maybe a 300b

 

Best:

1. Neat

2. Overkill Audio on vinyl

Worst:

1. AudioFreaks

2. Overkill Audio on CD

Alex

 

Alex,

I tried to like the Neats, I really did, but for me they have suspect bass, it just doesnt time very well to me.

I do agree with you on the overkill audio on CD. The very worst of high end sound, no timing, life or interest in the sound whatsoever.

Tbh, there was very little that I did find good. Quite liked the steinhard room, and the rogue audio/amphion stuff was nice. The sim audio/perigees were good with the rock that we put on. Kind of like a posh Naim system.

the cheap Naim stuff seemed reasonable value for money, and I liked the nottingham analogue room.

Thats about all really.

Robbo

 

for me the sound quality at the show was pretty poor, i didn't enjoy anything i heard as much as i do my home system but then i was expecting that.
kit that didn;t immediately offend was..
47 labs - very delicate and detailed yet with a lot of speed (if no real bass thanks to the single driver speakers being used)

bow / zingali - very good bass, slam and thwack with some safri duo (the closest thing to decent music being played at the show really - the rest was all nora jones / guitar / plink whcih sounds nice on anything and tells you nothing)

the sim moon / perrigee room. again decent slam but not that integrated and i felt the top was a bit in your face.

gless audio a tiny set mid / treble - solid state sub amp running from a pioneer dvd-a player into a/v speakers. this sounded seriously good for the size (about as big as a large match box with some valves sticking out the top).

the sony 'm' digital amps - truly miniscule 100wpc digital amp / dac that didn;t sound too awful.

the avalon / conrad johnson stuff was probably the best overall sound but the room was full of tube traps and other room treatments it was very safe sounding though.

the russ andrews gear was ok. the speakers were jammed into the corners of the room so i was expecting boom galore but no, they sounded quite ok and could just about carry a tune so they may be ok.

naim - i disliked the sound of the new baby speakers too much flabby out of control bloomy bass. the mid and treble was ok and the baby 5 equipment was good too. the main gear i thought sounded very nice - the sl2's not being any where near as bad as some have said but then they were being driven by 20+ k of stuff so they should sound good.

the neat stuff was unremarkable imo.
mark levinson comes in as the 2nd blandest kit i've yet heard - 1st place bing the krell kav 300i.
pro-ac d series were ok but the bryston / pro-ac room upstairs was a lot better imo but it was rammed so difficult to tell.
the totty-watch service reported that the audio salon, overkill audio and soundation had the best lookers of the show with naims label booth comming in a close runner up.

a good day out and worth the petrol if only to see tony, tim, neil, henry, dean, lee and graham again and to meet out host michael.

cheers


julian

 

any more views on the russ andrews speakers? from the web site
http://www.russandrews.co.uk/
these look interesting, especially with that very high sensitivity.

On another thread I asking for speaker recommendations, and had stated a range of £500 to £900. These, however, are twice as much.

 

they were OK, not boomy at all, although russ was only playing classical and opera at the time. seemed very coloured in the midrange though. I was not that impressed to tell the truth.

 

Have to agree with Robbo here. The RA system showed a distinct colouration in the midrange. You could hear it in all of 2 seconds.

Total contrast with the Harbeth room, which to my ears made some magical sounds with a basic Meridian CD player and Arcam AV amp.

Finally really liked the Alon Lotus Elites. Oh and WM's face as we dragged him into the Quad room

 

I forgot to mention the Usher room, I like this kit every year. True VFM if not entirely original. They always have some serious spkrs running through their biig amps - all off of a 300 squid cdp!!! Amazing. If only they had a better distribution deal (imo their current one sucks big time) they would be better represented against the current fare around the land.


And the Taiwanese totty was the best in show (sounds like crufts ), but MEL audio (the italian job) always get a nice set of ladieees.

ho hum.

 

Right Neil, enough of that

The Sim Audio kit does indeed share that tune playing capabilities of Naim gear. But it really has a sound of it's own that's bloody difficult to pin down.

Some compare it to valves, a visitor recently claimed it was a cross between Krell and Levinson IMO it simply plays music and (hush descends), actually has one of the best soundstage capabilites I have heard

Have to say that I was surprised at the show system's ability to have me enjoy Van Halen though

 

A big thanks to all the guys who turned up nice one

Best sight of me today, Steve M (7V) mildly inebrated bopping to the Proac's classic stuff indeed

Ok, I liked the Notts analogue room, with the compasses nice, bit too coloured but good all the same.
The perigees's have potential just need a decent front end and some power, plus a change of cables I feel Naim should take note here
The Neat room was bad, have heard them a lot better, at Robbo's for example with a decent source and proper amps, bass again still an issue, but I still like em
The Overkill audio speakers, nice guy Derek, but those speakers, not even fast, let alone dynamic, clouded very badly too off axis, and muddled mids plus a split on hardness factor.
Rouge audio/amphion, humm can't quite see what all the fuss is about, not bad, but too hifi and not much life
The more we go to these events the more you realise, that an awful lot really is repackaged dross and that going for a beer is far better, than the vast majority of the kit.
The meridain how ever looked better than it's ever been
A quick word about Naim, the £30K demo room wasn't too bad to be fair, better than Bristol, but easily beatable at that dosh range
The new Naim speakers, great B/S factor, "I know, lets do a sealed box, bung the speaker on the floor, and whack it close to the wall", wow listen to the blooming coloured and way off the top bass, so it should sell loads to the sheep in the arcam range
All in all, naff really, however didn't detract from a great day, and general good fun, thanks too Dean/Neil/Tim/julian/Mike B/Mike P/Lilolee/GrahamN/Steve M/Henry T/John C/Max T
But you always know, the best sounds are back home WM

 

Mildly inebriated nothing. 'Fraid that's what I'm like sober.

It was great to meet so many Zeros today and put some faces to the names. Loads of fun.

As for the kit, I thought that most of the stuff I heard was nothing special. The Proac room was the most enjoyable overall. I didn't find anything I'd swap for my home system but I met some interesting people and some kit that I thought might have potential - with the right speakers . The Steinhart Audio amps came into this category. I'm going to be spending a lot of time driving up and down the country taking the speakers along to various front-end and amp designers.

The biggest disappointment was the Overkill speakers. I didn't get to hear them with the Soul amp that I had been so impressed with and I thought they sounded recessed and lifeless with the amps that I heard. The designer seemed to like them though. Come to think of it, I wasn't disappointed at all. Delighted would be a better word.

The biggest surprise - has to be meeting Mike (Merlin). It was a gas.

Thanks to you all for turning what would have been another boring day at the office into a fun day out for me (and Jack who gives a special 'thanks for all the crisps' to Henry).

 

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 “Relaxâ€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 today…

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 – hang on I can hear “G3 In Concert†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:

 

The Vecteur room was also one of my favourites Henry, partly attributed to the presence of the Magneplanar's. The sound was certainly musical to my ears. Thought you may be 'partially' interested in these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3049671849&category=14993

cheers

 

Better than expected:

Cheap Naim (not the speakers though)

Chord/Dynaudio (low expectations in the first place)


Worse than expected:

Reson

Ear (the speakers were not very good for that money)

Merlin's suit

Alex.

PS Robbo, I couldn't detect bass problems with the Neats if you sat near the front. At least the Neat guys play music instead of trying to impress with how clearly the 3rd violinist is farting which is what the AudioFreaks do.

I also liked Notts Analoge.

I really think the CDP in the Overkill room was broken; on the VPI deck with all the Tom Evans kit on Friday things sounded great on opera. We played an Eels CD and had to run out the room.

 

Since I was trawling around with AlexS no surprise that I completely agree with him:


Best:

Neat - best by far if you sat at the front. Sit in the back row of chairs and you only heard the room. The LFD Amps look like bargains. The Densen 400XS is fantastic and the Dynavector XV1 shod Roksan LP spinner was just musical as hell.

Overkill Audio - with Vinyl from VPi through Tom Evans - Superb with an opera piece. If I had this system I would become an opera buff it was awesome and what the High end is about imho. BUT the CD player was dire see below ...

Chord + Dynaudio - actually worked very well when we were there, pleasant surprise.

Nottingham Analogue - baby turntable was agin sounding sweet through valves and Shahinians. Wish they would use some more powerful amps though.


Showed Promise:

Bigger Zingali's were nice, showed promise I thought.

Rogue / Amphion - disappointed after last year, too big and amp driving too big a pair of speakers in too small a room!

Baby Naim stuff - timed at least, speakers were interesting if a little boomy.


Let down ...

Audio Freaks - bloody awful tinkly tonkly music and they won't play anything else!

Chapter - very slow but it was very early.

Overkill audio - with CD, awful, was it broken?


... and too many others to mention.


Cheers

Jason

 

Er excuse me Alex Some of us have proper jobs you know. And besides, it had more colour and life, plus was considerably louder than those snooze inducing high end speakers

 

Hi Henry

I think we've had this discussion before...

I don't know if visiting the Quad room at the show would've helped (I didn't go in but by all accounts, the sound was yawn inducing) but you really should get a pair of ESL-989s home for an audition. WM knows your taste better than I do and he's heard the 989s at JJ's so he should be well placed to comment on their suitability for you.

reg