What are the members views of the show? I arrived on Saturday about 2:50pm and first went to the ART room. The look of the loudspeakers they were playing seemed to follow to many other 'modern contemporary' designed boxes, in silver too! I have always been one to say that looks are low down on my list so spending time trying to listen in this room wore my patience very thin.
First there was the clan of people who seemed to know the exhibitors and spent considerable time getting excited over certain pieces of vinyl in the room, but above all, both the exhibitors and their 'associates' were creating far too much noise of their own.
When I was able to listen I found the ART sound to be very dry and thin. More time was needed here to really exploit a wider musical genre with less background noise from the idiots in the room!
Next room I went to was my old Buddies Ian and Peter of Alium Distribution. They had a very nice Consonance set up with their new CD player at £1800, passive pre-amp at £1700, mono-blocs at £4000, and some new spkears from France costing around £3000.
We got a chance to play a wide selection of music and considering they only received the speakers from the manufacturer on Thursday morning, I was very impressed with the sound from this set-up/room (probably one of the best at the show). There was some definite signs of lack of control in the bass but we put this down to the speakers still needing to be run-in, so I'm quite looking forward to hearing this system again once there are a few more hours on it.
TacT room sounded terrible, so I will stop there!
Dropped by the (I think) Audiophile Club as I noticed they were using a KR Audio Antares 320 in the demo system. When I arrived they were also using some other mono-blocs by a different manufacturer which I think were about £12k but I could not tell which units they had set up and the exhibitor was busy. I planned to go back but never made it.
A Audio Solutions room with the Dali loudspeakers and McIntosh components was pretty impressive, but, as many visitors may testify, Andy likes to toe-in his speakers considerably and while in the past visiting his other demo systems which have worked quite well, this time I felt the toe-in was just too much, creating a 'confused' image on one particular CD. Still, this system has huge potential (I did ask Andy if he is still carrying the Korato line and he responde dby saying that he is but finding it difficult to get dealers to take a product that performs at such a high level but is priced considerably less. He has managed to sign up only one dealer so far).
My next lengthy stop was with the Noteworthy Audio boys who were running some very large corner horns. I know that Peter is a big tube and horn guy and he put together a very nice system, but for my tastes I felt it was purely 'nice', just not involving enough. Mark Orr was also in attendance, he builds the Something Solid range of equipment and speakers stands. All the equipment was stacked up on Mark's tensile wire racks, which Peter testifies perform superbly. I know having spent time looking at other similar types of designs in the past Mark's prices probably represent a true bargain for what you are getting.
I have to say that I was not overly excited by anything I saw or heard at the show, and what was worrying is that (as one exhibitor expressed it),..."There is a serious lack of young people here today, everyone seems to be well over 30 and it's becoming more and more like and enthusiasts/geeks industry".
Exhibitors expressed to me that more dealers are going out of business and if we get another hot summer there will definitely be more to follow. Yes, there was plenty of woe and grief expressed to me, but then I was once part of this industry so maybe it's just people who know me well enough using me to vent off at because of how slow things are.
Be interested to read what others felt about the show and what they thought was memorable. :JOEL:
) or my own CDs. I think the dealers can never win in this situation. If they play something with balls, it empties the room quickly. In other words anything other than middle of the road stuff is about as welcomed as a fart in a lift.
