Heathrow Show

First WM, and now you AK. What's "gay" about HiFi (excluding B&O of course ).

 

Paul,

Alex made an observation some time ago, along the lines of that (most) Pretty looking audiophile speakers sound pants *Defined as bland/non involving/air fairy/twinkle toes/hifi sleep inducing/ear bleeding treble that will remove paint from a 100 year old listed building in Belgravia*
A all that glitters is not gold analagy

 

You really must be very upset indeed to post that.

 

Bub, just for information, the Wilson Maxx2 speakers make yours and mine sound like a pair of Kans. I think you'd like them, although they are little over-finished for your taste. Given that they're half a tonne each, Phase 11 would be a scream!

 

Ah, takes me back to my introduction to this esteemed forum when a certain star from Bucks said of my own speakers:

Golden Days

Hmmm. I just re-read my first posting - quite witty I thought - and my introduction to WM, Merlin, Penance, Timpy, Mo, Henry and crew.

Heaven knows why I stuck around.

 

what did i say wrong??

I quite like the foot stool

 

Even after all the abuse, Steve's still about, a quality guy, round of appulse I reckon !!!

 

Happy days indeed Steve!

Gosh wasn't I argumentative in those days

 

no change then Mr M

 

Whatever happened to Lowrider?

 

An Exhibitors view of the Heathrow Show

Hi Folks,

As I had the chance seeing the show from the other side, I'd just like to throw in a comment or two....

1) Shitty sound

Well, all the small bedrooms are sonic disaster aeras. The large suites SHOULD have fewer problems, but conventional HiFi speakers stand little chance to sound good in these rooms. When we set up Thursday evening I had the first time our speakers sounded REALLY BAD. All through development we had them in all sorts of living/listening rooms and they invariably sounded pretty good just plonked down.

Here, even with some effort before the first note was played they sounded pretty bad. We eventually twiddled and fiddeled the system into giving passable sound (not really great IMHO ro even representive of what our stuff is really capable of, but pretty solidly decent).

So, shitty sound is at least partially acoustics and you are allowed to do only so much in the rooms, we simply run without room treatment because we could, but conventional speakers do not work in these rooms without tonsof room treatment.

Secondly, the mains quality & RFI situation impacts on sound and it is simply awful. We had two seperate chains apart from shared speakers. One runs the barest minimum of mains conditioning internally and sounded rather poorer than I remembered it from home. The other chain has quite heroic on board mains conditioning and sounded just like it does in my living room, after accounting for the acoustic problems.

Now, I agree that expensive HiFi should not be so exposed to vagraries of room acoustics and mains quality, but as long as most people are interested only in mainstream gear which is invariably based on the same design principles with all their fundamental failings that is what you get.

2) Music Choice

Well, Manufacturers and Distributors like to get exposure for their products. That means we like to have our rooms full of people, rather than empty of them. Our room had a pretty near ideal position right at the Lifts on the 1st Floor and I have several days to observe the ebb and flow of people in the corridor and our room. I found a great correlation between playing light Jazz, light pretty classical music, Dire Straights type stuff and "Girl with guitar" music, despite the fact that our system managed all sorts quite well.

So we played the music that got us the most people into the room untill we had all this audiophile crapola coming out of our ears and we felt close to throwing up, at which point we stopped caring about punters and just played what came to our minds.

We at least accomodated ever music request from the public (though I noticed extremely few of them), I would recommend that if you want to hear specific music, burn yourself a suitable sampler CD that contains your "test tracks" and take it along. Most rooms will play it.

Okay, end of rant.

At any extend, we where overall quite happy with the results of the show for ourselves. I had several extensive walkabouts and found most rooms to sound for want of a better word quite ordinary or often quite bad, which is a shame. Rooms that really stuck out in my considerations where Audiopax/Ecosse and Marshall. I liked Fergusson Hill and Townshend okay(is). The Musical Fidelity room was next door and sounded okay, the Girls there struck up a friendship with my wife, generally quite nice in there, played Joss Stone by far too often. That was pretty much it for me, I was in most other rooms but found little to hold me.

Ciao T

 

Over on AudioAsylum these days where the locals are less candid and he can get away with claiming the Showcase & Rels are musical

Shame really.

 

A good summary of the problems, 3DSonics T. It ain't all that easy.

I've found that it helps to have a good tune-up/cables/mains/supports man on site. I just did the basic speaker positioning and then I was expelled to the bar. A couple of pints later and there'd be great sounding, punter-pulling, plinky-plink music coming from the room like nobody's business.











... Or was it the drink?

... Mind you, the foot stalls help.

 

And having a dancing Monkey on hand to amuse the punters too!!!

 

damn, i could of been comfy there. Next time Steve

 

Not upset in the slightest mate, just a few observations, the bit about you and paul was toungue in cheek, the rest wasn't directed at you, more of a generalisation, really.

 

Pervert.

 

Im glad my ill-found comments attracted you to the forum steve!! If I hadnt put something so obnoxious, you may not have come?

Anyway, compared to my impending wardrobe disasters, yours look the picture of beauty. I thought your 7V's were much much nicer looking in the flesh by the way.. and I think theyve grown on me

 

Chris

"impending wardrobe disasters"

Love it.

 

Hey wait a minute. Haven't we decided that speakers have to look like sh*te to sound any good?

Now, you're telling me that my speakers have grown on you and that they're nicer looking in the flesh. You're taking the p*ss Chris mate. :grrr:




















just kidding