Heathrow Show

merlin - if its that room at the back of the bar, its one of the better rooms IMHO.

Do you remember it? It was used by Steinhart last year I think.

Maybe TACT have a good chance this year of making good sounds. Last year did them no favours.

 

You be careful Chris, you may end up wanting to spend some money, and its too late in day to break the habbit of a life time

 

Chris,

are you not thinking of the Heathrow show in March?

The Tact setup is f***ing huge - 46 drivers I think including six foot ribbon arrays. But it's a big room. I hope you will love it if you enjoy "hi-fi" I asked Peter to play some music this time! And am trying to setup an AB of the new dCS vs iPod!

Naim have a DVD player :SLEEP: The little McIntosh room was sounding nice with mastertape and a new Opus 3 tt. Revel loudspeakers are there with CSE. Proac have the D38 (nice) - it all seems far more two channel orientated than Bristol so it should be fun.

 

I'm there Friday, Saturday and er Sunday Will be with Titian Sat and Sun so see you in the bar Sat 1:30.

 

?
Somebody ought to tell my bank manager that I dont spend money on hifi! I dont think he'd believe you.

I dont pay silly-money RRP's though, which makes me entirely sensible in my book

Chris

 

No Chris not in the slightest, your just a tight wad (By your own admission )

 

you're up early Tone! you saw my last post before I edited it, deciding it was a tad harsh..

 

Chris,
I have a lot of orders to catch up on sir, more speaker cable, just the the sorta' of job for putting you in the right frame of mind for the weekend

 

Hi,

I might make a guest appearance on Saturday.

SCIDB

 

I won't be making it this year but have fun y'all.

BTW, if anyone runs into the speakers by Art Audio, please let me know how they are. Thanks.

 

Steve,

The Art Audio room was a standout for me - excellent!

The speakers did seem to be working hard though.

 

Well I must admit, Mike, that you've always seemed to have a good ear, in a bad sort of way, so ...

shame.

Seriously, you know I've always rated the Bandors. I gather these beasts had two of them with one (or two) woofers and a ribbon tweeter. Which department were they working hard in?

Oh, and did you get to see how Tom was loading the Bandors?

 

Steve,

no idea on the loading but the two Bandors were moving a lot! It appeared to be a 1" dome tweeter with a forward facing 150mm driver and a side facing 175mm assembly which apeared to be in a seperate enclosure

My only concern was the amount they seemed to be working in a realively small room - but I didn't notice any breakup.

 

it was a dome tweeter IIRC.

Steve, have you considered using a tweeter in your designs? I find there is quite a lot of useful information above 10Khz in music












(Only joking!)

 

yes

 

For me, one of the better sounds of the day was the RPM room, with oracle digital sources, Perreaux amps and Merlin speakers. The AR/Wilson system was impressive also, but that might be because they were winding it up a bit. Also, the PMC DB1+ put in a phenominal performance for a pint-size pot.

Disappointments were many. I'll not mention one of the disappointments by name, but it wasn't worth getting out of bed early for...

Another, unfortunately, was the Avid room with the Meadowlark Blue Herons. A lack of volume, and poor system synergy left very little worthwhile impression.

Image quality out of naim's DVD5 was somewhat suspect. I much preferred the many examples of the Denon 2900 that were scattered around the show.

Very interesting to see the uptake of "digital" amplification. Tact and Bel Canto on display of course, but also 3d-labs had a range, Max Townshend and Van Den Hul were showing prototypes and sony had their S-master on display (but not playing). Some people are convinced that switching amplifiers are the future, some think they have a place, and some think they sound ****.

Bumped into a few acquiantances, both from ZG and professional ones, including the extreme chance, random ones (bumping into someone from a small mechanical parts supplier I dealt with in a previous life, and into someone I spoke to on the phone a week ago about a piece of faulty test equipment and ran into by complete chance, recognising him only by the name on the badge).

My feet hurt.

 

That's weird. It sounds like the Bandors are being run full-range (or at least without a high-pass filter) and either open-baffled or in a sealed enclosure that's on the large side for them (they only need 2-4 litres).

I used to get a lot of movement with an older design which had a largish enclosure and an attached TL. To be honest this didn't degrade the sound too much, perhaps slightly on complex orchestral pieces, but it did give me problems with the longevity of the drive units.

Still, looks like I'll have to try to get to hear these speakers.

 

Steve,

I feel the results owed a lot to the Art monoblocks and the superb Opus CD player. I honestly feel the 7V package would have been far better (with maybe an atd ribbin above 8k and the Bandors fed from a highpass at 120hz ). Hey some of the best speakers the world has ever seen accept such compromises mate!

Isaac, I was very disappointed with the Rpm room. They really did the Merlins do favours at all IMO - when we were there they were not using the bam and had the bloody grilles on They can sound a million times better than in that room.

My favourites included Nottingham Analogue (with the new Deco at £17K ), the Ferguson Hills were sounding good. The Walrus room was sweet using Maggies. Finally the A Audio demonstration was very good. Bo Hansen was there from Opus 3 where we were treated to an A-B-C demo starting with a live saxophonist, followed by mastertape of the sax, then a vinyl pressing on the new Opus 3 tt. It was surprising how faithful the end result was - oh and they were using McIntosh valves

Worst sounds were the MF/Sonus Faber room, the main Sonus Faber room, both of which were terminally dull to my ears, and the Naim AV dem

Finally, the new Harbeths are really nasty in the flesh although we did not get to hear them as Alan did not seem to be able to master the remote control on a 5.1 system

 

Where was this room Isaac? We missed it.

 

I think the Meadowlarks in the Avid room might be Nighthawks - still rather limp as my learned friend pointed out