Heathrow show.....

OK, I succumbed (again and organised a visit to the office - which is a few stones throw away from Heathrow - so I decided to have a few hours browse at all the hifi porn.

To cut to the chase - it was kinda OK, but I doubt that I will go next year.

Low points - the car hifi stuff. Just what do these guys get out of these shows?
- the music (as always pling pling simple easy to reproduce easy on the ear shite.

High Points.
Zanden - one word....WOW. Pending a lottery win, I will have this kit.$$$$$$

Wilson with AudioResearch - Again.....WOW.$$$$$$$

Tact - This is the first year Ive like the tact kit - new CD-1 seems rather good. Still a little dry to my ears (no doubt that'l be the wax).

Dali - I had a little dem of the halcyon 300s standmnts - Apart from the Thule kit seriously underperforming I like this dem.

Totem - how the fcuk do they get the Aros to sound like that? Impressive.

Living Voice.....WOW$$$$$$$

....Wonder what the Manc show will be like

cheers //lamboy

PS - the new Naim 555cd was OK - buts that as far as it wnt with me. Groovey? Certainly. £15K? Hmmmmm....No.Maybe it was the naim spkrs letting them down.

 

unfortunately the show has coincided with other plans so i'm not going however it looks like the highlight of the show would have been the usual zg meet up in the bar rather than any kit on display. those who do go - hoist a glass in my direction i'll try to make to to the next one...
when is the 'manc' show?
cheers

julian.

 

i think end of october....
www.home-entertainment-show.co.uk
....but I do remembr one in Jan or Feb at the airport hotel - this one is much better than the one in the middle of manc - but it look slike they have a better line up this year.

 

Is there an agreed ZG meeting time?

 

Manchester is 28th/29th Jan if I remember, it'd be good to see you Julian!

 

it doesnt sound like so many are going this year..

I'll be there in the afternoon, at least.

Maybe we need big ''ZG'' badges

 

If I see someone with a ZeroGain badge I'll say hello!

I will be wearing a Guinness T-Shirt (like last time I think) and have overly long straight hair! Damn I need a hair cut... Say hello if you like. I should be meeting Titian and Lee (LioLee) and Kev (Ya-Boo) is giving me a ride so if you see me you will most likely see them as well.

 

IMHO there was only one room with really great sound on Friday - Nottingham Analogue Spacedeck/some tube amps/ Shahinian Compasses. Audiofreaks with their outrageous stuff (Avalon/Reimyo/cj) were OK, and I liked those huge Opera speakers. Tact room was a teenage dream, Dali was OK as well, but most other systems sounded just lousy. This is incredible - people use Valhhalas and other esoteric stuff and make no effort to bring a couple of bass traps or at least try to kill side reflections.

 

I thought I would also add I'll be wearin' my bright yellow, green and red trainers. I don't normally wear them as I have been beaten up a few times for it, so when I get the chance I may as well! They should make me quite visible, if not a little stupid

 

I got my tickets but then we had friends fly in from the USA so that took rpiority. Seems like I missed nothing by all accounts.

 

Hi,

I went Friday and had a good look around. We did not exhibit this year for a number of reasons, seems a good choice in the end.

The show itself. Many interesting brands where AWOL, Car HiFi in, much smaller "traders" area (First show I bought nothing!!!), sound in the rooms of many mainstream brands was between barely acceptable and truely awful. It seems they actually didn't give a toss what their stuff sounded like, or at least that is what it sounded like to me.

Branko from Audiofreaks for telling off his stuff for playing some of our CD's (He admitted it was great music anyway - gop figger)

Definitive Audio, (Kondo, Living Voice) but the speakers really did not do the electronics justice. Nice Vinyl Setup.

Zanden in one of the Audiofreaks room, but the speakers where well below par to show what the stuff is capable of. No Vinyl though!

Ensemble was excellent, except the speakers where a bit limited with larger scale stuff and Pop was not treated as well as acoustical music, but still excellent.

A product in whose genesis I had a major hand and whose fundamental principle I have had some influence won "Preamplifier of the Year 2005", I'm pleased as punch

On Saturday my wife did rather well at the Miss African Caribbean Queen 2005 Culture Pageant in a packed Hackney Empire (you missed something if you where not there, if you where, she was Miss Liberia), especially her "talent" song (Labbi Siffre "Something Inside So strong" came across most excellent. She did not win, sadly, but hey being there and seeing here there on stage was great. We all had a great time.

Dartzeel over in the Park In was quite good, the speakers again did not seem to do the electronics justice.

Marshall Chong Dipole Speakers with Lowther drivers, the system overall sounded modest, but had occasional glimpses of greatness. I blame the electronics they used.

Nottingham Analogue for bringing only Vinyl and for a sound rather decent.

Ferguson Hill again sounded odd but still looks great and is great idea, not sure if it is the actual gear or if it just is not suited to hotel rooms.

47 Labs sounded pretty nice, if quiet, Kimura San's new Turntable would have made Rube Goldberg jealous, love it.

Perhaps surprisingly (given the many good comments here) I mostly disliked the Heed Audio stuff a lot. It was completely incapable of giving a reasonable performance with classical music, sounding thin, diffuse and veiled, it did okay and had a nice strong foot tapping effect with pop, but with strictly acustical music it was completely off base, BY MILES, might have been the CD Player or the room, I'm puzzled.

Vinyl was mostly absent, shame.

Too much multichannel and AV and little of it done well enough to bother. Shame. I think I personally might re-focus on the Spring show, better quality competition and visitors I feel.

Ciao T

 

Did anyone hear the Leben valve integrated amplifiers? look very retro, but small and cute and allegedly good sounds?

 

I just came back from the show.
I prefered last year's one but nevertheless I enjoyed the whole weekend stay. I saw some new faces, met familiar ones and also from the hifi point of view heard some interesting products.

 

Interesting. No'ones mentioned my favourite rooms.

1) Kings Audio (room 1).

They had large electrostatic panels, and they were my equal favourite speakers of the show. Sounded fantastic, the best panels of the show (and I heard about 4 pairs of stats there, including martin logans etc).

These are made in hong kong, and will cost $5000 US, so about £3000. If I was startin g over, I'd probably get a pair. Seriously great sounds, better than stuff costing much much more on the day. I cant find any pics

2) My other favourite room showed off a pair of BC Acoustiqe, with their great A4 speakers. These were big full sounding full range speakers, with a fostex horn speaker. I'd have definately given these house room too! About £5,500.

More details here : http://www.bc-acoustique.com/produit.asp?Langue=FR&idproduit=4&serie=2

They were using what looked like '845 monoblocks to power them.


I'd have chosen those 2 rooms to take home with me over the others I heard, by a country mile.

Dissapointments aplenty, a few very decent also-rans, and plenty of nothing-special sounds...

I wont list those that came further down the list, because theres no point!

 

Hi,

I did not mention the Kings Audio room as I was not impressed with the sound and made an aboutface about the second I walked in. I "dont get" most stats, they do one thing great and about nothing else and the one thing they do well is not high on my list of desirables.

BC I did not mention as they have been long familiar, pretty nice stuff, but they too sounded better in previous years.

Ciao T

 

I didn't realise the King Audio stats were that cheap. Very, very good for the money then!

They even handled harder alternative rock stuff pretty decently as well I thought! I expected them to sound very thin. They were not great for it, but if your taste in music is suited to stats then they would be great.

 

Shows how subjective speaker preferences are!

They were on balance, my equal favourite speaker of the show.

I certainly think their choice of music was extremely lame... ''michael buble'' type stuff mixed with some classical small scale stuff... but then that could be said of many rooms.

The BC Acoustique showed what a good horn tweeter can do IMO. A presence and realism that made a lot of the soft-dome tweeters/metal dome tweeters used in other rooms sound lacklustre.

The more stuff I listen to, the more I like stats and horns. Horns for their presence and realism, full range stats for their top-to bottom cohesiveness and clarity.

I think there is no perfect speaker, just a prefered set of compromises



On another note, I really like the fact that the exhibitors have a really rough time trying to get to make good sounds in naff sounding hotel bedrooms, instead of custom made demo rooms in showrooms. How much more like the average brit living room to have to compromise on the performance of equipment due to the constraints of the room - and what a great leveller... !

 

Hi,

Indeed.

Also the effect of omitting the bandpass filtering for the midrange (similar to Epos).

To me this kind of thing is not surprising of course, I have been using this kind of "fullrange operated wideband plus horn supertweeter" for a long time on and off so to me it is not news, but merely par for the course.

Ciao T

 

I really enjoyed this show. Far more than the last one I went too which was only in the Park Inn.

My favourite rooms were.. hmm..

The Yipsilon (is that spelled right?) room which had two giant 150watt valve amps, a cd transport and some big speakers which looked similar to Wilsons. I think it was all made by Yipsilon. It had a huge soundstage and good imaging, really 'real' but a bit coloured around 400-600Hz. The electric guitars had body and guts too them, unlike, well, all the other systems I heard there.

Definitive Audio was good as well. The system handled most of the music thrown at it pretty well. Very airy and detailed.

Ferguson Hill was not at all suited to my wide taste in music but for acoustic jazz and stuff it was amazing I thought. The sound was so effortless and made me feel really relaxed.

The guy running the room with the Merlins was nice but the system was top heavy. The bass was well extended, but too light.

So yeah, lots of interesting stuff, but I would only be happy with the Yipsilon system for my taste. Lots of really siht rooms but I wont say which.

It was also great to meet the ZG group there on Saturday. Dev, Sidshow, Merlin, LiloLee, Robbo, Titian, Ya-Boo. Sorry if I missed anyone! Bottleneck too maybe? It was hard to put names to the faces so quickly.

It feels like there should be far more to say, but it was just a great time and to say all I liked, disliked, my thoughts on things would go on forever!

It has made me realise I probably need a better front end to get what my system is really capable of.

Bit of a pity I missed you there Thorsten but it couldn't be helped I guess, I think you would have got on really well with Titian.

It was also good to hear some new music.

 

Hi,

It sounded pretty good, but most likely because of the huge room as much as because of the gear. Hence my reservation.

The Amp's are hybrids BTW, not Valve.

If I do get the OK to build my "modest proposal" speaker I'll have to make sure we include a suite of that kind of size in the budget.

I noticed the same charateristic with classic on many systems (BTW, I used the same Gary Karr recording, Saint Saen and a track from Spiritual Life Music - eg all tracks you heard during the MEG Audition).

Ciao T