Manchester HIFI show

Has anybody been to the HIFI show yet? I have just realised it was this weekend! I am hoping to pop in tomorrow some time and have a look.

Does anybody know how much the tickets are?

 

Was going to go on Sunday, but sadly other engagements are having to prevail, and we play Bolton tomorrow, so sadly I'm going to have to give it a miss.

 

Jolly Good Show.

I popped in with fellow forum lurcker Chris.Gally. It was my first 'Show' actually and I was impressed. I had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. At only 3 quid in, the ProAc CD-ROM was worth the entrance price alone. Won't go into great detail at the minute, but will give you a few thoughts.

Firstly, it was heavily weighted towards A/V, which was abit disappointing. However music set-ups (2 channel and multi) were pretty good. Some better than others. There was one rather strange surprise as well.

Starting with the good stuff. The best 2 channel Red book system by a mile (for me) was a system comprising of Burmester Rondo CDP and Integrated, matched with Canton Ergo 902s. Some of the better Nordost speaker cable was involved as well (not sure of the name). Now like I say, my ears are abit green to the more expensive stuff(1st show and all), but this was probably up there with the best I've heard. It pretty much had it all. Detail, slam, subtlety and a great transparency. Instruments were just so convincing. The weight and realism of guitar 'plucks' and drums was excellent. It was a real eye opener for me as I was not familiar with either manufacturer before I walked in the room. Therefore I had no preconceptions or expectations. I just sat down and was 'took in' by it. As you can imagine I was abit gutted when I was told it would cost the thicker end of £6000 to leave the room with the Burmesters. But at £1000, the Cantons might be getting a second audition later next year.

A nod goes to the Quad room as well. They had the little 99 series combo hooked up to the stand mount L-Series. The Sugden Bijou set-up with Pro-Ac's sounded good too.

Sony also put on abit of a SACD demo with their new reference gear which was impressive. The SCD-XA9000ES with the TA-DA9000ES and 6 SS-X90ED speakers with 2 brutal looking subs. They did the predictable Redbook, 2-channel SACD then 6 channel SACD, but the results were undeniable. 6 channels of super audio was great. However it got me thinking. Price for a start. I was surrounded but upwards of £10,000 worth of kit. It also did a good job of filling the entire room. There was room for about 6 chairs in a double hotel room along with the kit. The amp would have filled the bathroom on its own. Unless you happened to have a listening room, the Sony Ref set up was out of the question. Very impressive though.

Now for the strange bit. Stumbled upon the Cyrus room quite early, which contained all the usual suspects. Sat down to listed to the 8 Integrated, 8 CDP(both PSXR's) through a pair of Dynaudio Audience(42s I think). Initially it sounded very poor. Now I have a 7 Amp, so am not just Cyrus bashing here. I Gave it 5 minutes but it seemed to get even worse. I was just so forward and bright, uncomfortably so. Very brash and instantly fatiguing to listen to. Anyway moved on feeling quite surprised, and eventually found the Dynaudio room, using Cyrus kit. Almost identical set-up to the Cyrus room. 8 CDP and Int, but only the CDP had a PSXR this time. However to compensate that, the Bigger Audience 52SE's were employed. Here the sound was far better. Far more precise, faster, really nice and musical. The shrill and forwardness from the Cyrus room had totally gone. It was like a completely different system. I know there were a few differences, but not enough to work a total transformation. I guessed it could have been one of many factors. Better room, cables, support or maybe just a good long run in versus out-of-the-box new. But it was a first class example how a good system is more than a sum of its more obvious parts.

A good day. A real eye-opener to be honest.

Cheers,

Dave.

 

good write up dave, and interesting point with the cyrus/dyn's. Did you mention/ask the about it?

 

No mate didn't ask about it. I didn't really feel comfortable telling the Cyrus rep that his gear sounded crap I guess I could have put it to the Dynaudio rep, but the fellow was quite busy. I recon it must have been one or both, of 2 things. Room dynamics and length of run-in on kit. The Cyrus room was quite pokey and very narrow. The seats were very close to the (almost on top of) the speakers. The Dynaudio room was quite the opposite. Big and airy, a good distance between listener and speakers. Also the speakers were well spread.

As for run-in on kit. You'd think Cyrus would have known better. Perhaps they were given the Dynaudio's a bit late?

 

What I didn't like about it is that a lot of the audion rooms where quite noisy so it was hard to tell what certain products sounded like. To me most the kit on show sounded smooth and well controled but quite lifeless, I am sure if they where in my own room they would not sound as bad as they did.

I was quite impressed with the AV show Marantz did, although to be fair I didn't see many of the others. The NAD stuff was impressive. I think the show was better than the prevous years though, and I liked the sales bit they where some bargains to be had there.

 

I know what you mean about the noise polution. There was alot of A/V kit there. I think there were having an unofficial 'loudest sub' contest at one point

Did you manage to listen to the Burmester/Canton setup? If so what were your impressions? I was well impressed as I've said above. Has anyone else had any experience with these products? Any one know of any 2nd hand bargains???

 

I agree with most of what Kasperoff said about the show.

One thing that was not mentioned was the musicality of the sugden equipment. In the sugden room the Bijou system was doing the honours (CDMaster, Headmaster pre, Musicmaster power) these were driving a little pair of Dynaudio Speakers (sorry, cant remember which). The total cost of th system came to around £4000. Very nice for the price and sounded far better than many much more expensive setups. The setup seemed the perfect for the size of the room (double room).

One of the biggest dissapointments was the Kef and Pioneer Demos. Kef were using there new XQ series (XQ5 front, XQ3 rear, XQ1 side, XQ2C and the reference monster sub). The electrics were the top of the range pioneer with the digital link. The sound was congested, bloated, horrible. Maybe had something to do with the room (Too narrow). The DVDA sounded the same.

I agree with Kasperoff on the differences in the Cyrus and Dynaudio room

Also, the Sony demos were enjoyable. The demo in the second floor room being the better. This showed the differences between the RedBook (nice) SACD 2 ch (nicer) SACD multi (tasty, but different). If this was just a demo of the redbook layer I would of been pleased, it had good detail, dynamics aplenty. Then when the 2ch SACD played the difference was quite huge, the 'texture of the voices could now be heard, the environment of the recording was now more clear giving the music a more realisic appearance. The multichannel demo nice, we were transported in the the church, around 3 rows back. Sill got a few voices panning around the room, still pretty satisfying. I prefered the 2 channel SACD. Just a little too much going on in the multi channel.

The little valve amps of Classic audio (£850 for pre and 20w monos) showed alot of gusto. These were mated with their own High sensitivity speakers (£1800). Nice big 3d soundstage, reached all the peaks that was asked of it. I could of sat in there all day (comfy sofa, too)

A big thumbs up to rel, who had the prettyest ladies.

Dissapionted with the T+A room. Dissapionted when i found out that they were a HiFi manufacturer

An interesting show

Chris

 

I didn't here muich of the sugden system but it did impress me. I was disapointed by both Kef and Mission, never of these demos did anything to stand out.

 

Oops.. forgot to mention the Canton/Burmester room.

I'd agree with what has been said already. Easily the best sound of the show. Detail, power, nice mid-range. What i found helped greatly was the fact they turned the plasma off (after request) and allowed us to play our own music

Id only ever heard of the top of the line Burmester stuff (CD transport and DAC) and the similar high end Canton Karat (Carrot ), through reading their reviews in Stereophile and TAS, so i was pleasantly suprised to see these items at a small(ish) show.

I also enjoyed seeing an Aibo dog thing from Sony. I;ve read alot about these and really fancied one. Bloody thing wouldn't fetch the ball though . Anyone ever spent time with one??


More as it comes to me.

Chris

 

Did anybody think there was a bit of a bias towards home cinema stuff? Also there seemd too much of the same sound quality from a 5.1 that form a conventional 2.1 or stereo setup. Some of those home cinema systems sounded ok but for me music I am interested in. I can live less sound quality from films.