The Manchester hi-fi show

What did we think, people? I had the usual impression of demonstrators playing lots from the 'Apologetic Mumbling and Hey Don't Hit that Acoustic Guitar Too Hard, it Might Make a Noise' school of music. Come on, demonstrator chappies, let's hear something with a bit of oomph in it. Hats off to Coherent for playing Green Onions - a groove if ever there was one - and having fine sounding kit.

One thing that really stood out for me was the Rountree speakers (omni's with ribbon tweeters). I often find myself unimpressed at shows, but these were fantastic. A demo consisting of no music I actually liked had me rooted to the spot - I really didn't want to leave that room, it was wonderful. And if I was rich enough (£5000 a pair) the credit card would definitely have been out. They were hooked up to an LFD pre-power, which sounded great, but I'd love to hear a good valve amp through these things. Or perhaps I wouldn't, seeing as I haven't got the bottle to rob a bank. If you get chance to audition these, jump at it.

The Mowgan Audio speakers were also outstanding - big and clear and coherent and grooving. The Rountrees still have it for me, though. Me want. Now.

 

The eletrocompaniet room to me was best

went to a demo in the naim room they had a new phono stage on show

Also they our bringing out a new power lead only available in 2m lenghts but £495 a go

Nothing really blew my mind at the show maybe next year

regards Steve

 

Take your own music and if you hear a system that sounds interesting, get them to play something of yours. I will see what's what tomorrow...

 

Yes, I wanted to see that, but we were told come back at half past for the next demo - and when we did, they weren't letting anyone in. Ten minutes hanging around in the corridor was enough and we moved on. Sounds like I should have been more patient.

Re taking my own music along (Isaac's comment), yes, I agree, but the point I was trying to make (and didn't explain very well) is that if a demonstrator plays something with a groove to it, they're more likely to get bodies through the door. My angle was more 'show the product at its best' than 'play stuff I like'.

 

I went with friends, we had an excellent time.

The Music First Audion room was sounding nice with a very limited selection of tunes, the Marten speakers impressed with their top end air. Though the powered subs had a certain quality about them, can't out my finger on it, though they sounded nice, they weren't right.

The guys with the Zu speakers were making nice sounds until he started talking about what a 'shocking' difference the Beldeni Clarifier made. It make f-all difference other than the 30 seconds of silence would have anyway. They were pushing this little unit hard, the word charlatan was mumbled in the audience at one point.

I didn't think the B&W802's sounded all that, nice big sound but not very Coherant.

The Tannoy room was a huge dissapointment, not adecent size DC speaker to be seen, it was all 5.1 style surround speakers, nice looking but nothing to listen to.

The Harman rooms i didn't bother with, likewise the Arcam room was sounding like Arcam cliches of old, a bit grey, warm and fuzzy, not great sound, i've heard £500 sound better.

The Audio Note room was tuned to perfection for the demo material they were using, ie double bass played on the AN-e speakers. it sounded very accurate tonally with the box colourations making it sound even more natural. I'm sure the same box colourations didn't help with other insruments, but they were playing to their strengths. The An2 deck and arm looked nice, £1500 - cart seemed very fair.

The DCS room sounded super, to my tatstes. The speakers could have been a bit bigger for the room maybe and they had them spaced for a wide sweet spot. But once in that sweet spot it sounded very very good, expansive, tonally accurate with great timing and rhthym and about as undigital as i've heard. Thbe speakers were the verity audio parsifals, though they had the next model up there as well. The shiny DCS Scarlatti stuff is a bit too bling for bling sake, not my idea of fun visually.

Then to the Monitor audio room, this new Platinum range are the best looking box speakers i've seen in a long time. Despit being driven by a rack full of top end Chord gear, they still managed to sound utterly convincing, there's something about Chord amps that doesn't sound rigth to me, it's all there, but it's just not right..i can't pin it down. However the speakers still sounded superb, whichever room they were in. They sounded exactly like i'd wanted the B&Ws to sound, big, powerful, detailed, coherant and dynamic, like a big floorstander should. They are jam packed with good technology and frankly a bargain at £5k, if such a thing exists.

The Henley room was nice, lots of shiny vinyl gear, we like vinyl. I wasn't too taken by the look of the Roksan stuff, but i didn't hear it so thats all i can say.

I didn't venture into the Naim room which was by all accounts very Naim. They were closed door demoing with power cables, which seemed to be a theme for a few dealers, if you cxan't sell hifi, flog em cable. More on which later.

Then to the Max/absolute sound room, the Krell idock and ML sounded crap, nice sound but not the moneys worth, and most likely due to the bad positioning. On the other side of the room were Sonus FAber Cremona Elipses, Krell FBI 300 and a selection of prologue amps, cds' Kuzma cheapo deck and the Anatek Phonostage.

Both front ends sounded great, the KREll better on cd than sacd. Truly, pink floyd sounded better on cd than just about anything i've heard, ever, if you forgive the Elipses some mild colouration in the upper bass.

The little Kuzma deck and Anatek P-stage sounded amazing, utterly rich and vivid with no self noise, and a wonderful tone. This was the best phonostage i heard at the show, or at least the most convincing vinyl replay.

I slkipped a few on this floor.

The Densen and Focal room left me utterly underwhelmed, ACDC and RATM sounded good but the gentler stff didn't fare so well. I though it was actually dynamically lacking and a little bland, i was expecting more pzazz from their pre-power studf and 400whatever cd. The focals didn't sound so hot 1027's and chorals. Though i heard them sounding sublime elsewhere, not the Coherant room...

The Coherant room...Ok it was a very small room, but Sp10-sme- phono10 Bel Canto into decent Focals,27 or 37's can't remember which, i'd stop taking notes by now. I was just underwhelmed, it was anything but Coherant and T's selection in vinyl was not helping. I'm sure he can do much much better, though the Bel Cantos are always going to have that 'class D' thing about them. Not my cup of tea.

The Totem room, bejesus, those little floorstanders rock some bass, these have to be the highest WAF speakers on the planet, they even had AMAF (almost musical acceptance factor). I could live with these if my house was designery enough to demnad such things as small speakers. fortunately, it isn't.

The Robson Audio room, using the same tweeter as half of the speaker manufacturers was nice, good sound, prices are a pisstake 2.4k for a 2 way standmount from a new company, sorry mate build some brand credibility first.. nice sound though...

Then the MIT room, cable parlour tricks all around apparently, i skipped this, despit being a pro cable guy.

Quad, my my those electrostatics sound nice, small room but great sound, very impressive, a truly first rate design, looks sound and price. Not for the ass kickers amongst us but for anyone serving up a diet that stops just short of the most complex hard rock, worht a listen.

 

And then.........



Then we ventured into the AudioWorks room. Spectral Amps, Avalon Speakers, DCS Paganini, i think, all wired and fired with his selection of hi-zoot mains blocks and interconnects etc etc and all on his new guitar shape shelves.

Well frankly for the cost of the gear it sounded crap, just plain bloody awful, i have heard better in Dixons.

But there was more to come.

This guy got the award for player of the most obvious parlour game demo. His demo was removing his 'quality' mains cables and replacing them with kettle leads, and we were mean to pick up on the drop in sound quality along the way.

So off he goes playing some music telling us about how fantastic it was, clicking his fingers and tapping feet, smiling away, really getting into it. (we declined to follow suit and sat quite stoicly).

"right, that was great yeh, now see if you can spot the difference now i've taken out the hi-end cable from the DCS player"

The only differnece was that this time he didn't jump around clicking his fingers and tapping his feet, he stood there and scowled at us. ( so me and my two mates sat there tapping our feet and nodding our heads, while other people joined in, easil;y duped by our happy demeanours.).

He looked pissed.... he knew the game was up.

He asked who thought it sounded much much worse after all " if you couldn't hear that difference you should give up and sell your hifi". Naturally i volunteered that i couldn't hear any difference, then asked the guy next to me if he had. (i'd noticed that he had been easily lead by my foot tapping so thought him a cert to identify with me rather than the shop guy). Naturally he heard no differnece. The Audioworks guy is looking for a rabbit by this time.

So one of the audience asks how much the DCS player costs, "that's a 9K cd player" the guy says super pleased to show how much his gear costs, "9K just out this month".

"you'd think for nine thousand pounds that a company with a history of firsts in DSP and audio development would be able to cobble together a mains lead that didn't reduce the quality of their product".

he didn't respond.

"i noticed that they used standard leads downstairs in the DCS, they must think them all right"...

By this time, he realises that we are hear for a little fight, we hadn't come for a fight, but his parlour game was too clumsy to put up with, him foot tapping and clapping when he was listening to the expensive stuff, then the scowling and abrupt language as we moved down the kettle leads.

truth was there was absolutely no fucking difference at all, not even when all the gear had shit leads or when it had all his leads.

Pissed that we'd kinda sabotaged his demo, which we never intended to do, he did that himself, we decided that it might be nice to discuss the merits of his cables with him.

So we did.



"so what exactly do these cables do then" we asked, as it hadn't yet gone 'totally' south at this point.

" they allow a ''''''better harmonic structure to propagate up the wire'''''', and they damp out unwanted vibrations within the cable, it's a very fine selection process getting exactly the right amount of damping you don't want to over do it."

"surely you damp out all the vibration?" i asked

"no, if you over damp it it sounds bad".

"but it's just a power cable into a cd player, how can it be microphonic, have you eve measured it at the outputs.

"you can't measure it... you just have to trust your ears" he says.

"well i was trusting my ears, and i heard no difference at all, between the cheap and the expensive leads, so i just wondered what we should have been listening for, you know before i sell my hifi.."

"before you shoot yourself in the foot", says he" you might like to know that i also designed a nine thousand pound valve amp, so i know my electronics".

"did it sound any good" someone asked from the back"

So naturally i said "isn't it a bit bullish of you to assume that i have no electronics knowledge, after all you dont know me and you haven't stopped to ask what i do for a living. Do you always take the high ground with your customers and assume them to be idiots. if so how does that tally wiht telling them to trust their ears, aren't you just telling them to trust yours? Anyway about this damping... so does it damp the microphonic cable vibration out completely?

"almost" he said.

"so wouldn't that lovely 50hz vibration coming from the traffo inside the DCS player just put it all back in?"

and after that it fell apart, he lost the audience completely, we went around the houses on the subject of the only difference in the demo.... the sound of his own carefully placed tapping of feet and clicking of fingers to support a positive air during replay with his expensive cables, and him not tapping his feet and scolwing when he wanted people to react negatively to the cables...... and then he asked us to leave.

"If you don't want to learn anything from me, then why don't you give you seat up to someone who can hear the great difference these cables make to the sound?"

" we will mate, Dave said standing up, but i'm guessing you better take that seat yourself, because you're the only person in this room who thinks there is any differnece between those cables"...

and we went back and listned to Delicate sound of thunder in the MAX room, simply awesome music and no hard sell.

He was super pissed, for which I, Dave and Mark, make no apologies. if you want to demo gear then don't assume your customers haven't worked in the trade, don't use parlour tricks and slapdash NLP tricks, and above all, do your fucking research so you know what you are talking about when someone asks you a question and don't be so fucking rude...

 

Superb.

 

Really, excellent.

Did you get the whole conversation recorded to tape or video? I'd like to see that on YouTube!

 

I have to agree that high price mains leads alter the sound of a piece of hifi NOT improve it to the extreams some manufactures suggest.

I notice Naim are now bringing out a new mains lead for £495 I went to the show demo yesterday and i couldnt tell any difference but i notice on the Naim forums they are raving about it

Regards Steve

 

I thought the Zu speakers sounded awful - distorted from the mid to the top and all rather thin and lifeless. They sounded like cheap drivers set into biscuit tins, to me. Now, I don't doubt that your opinion on the Zu's is any less sincere and valid than mine. And I'm not suggesting that you're in any way mistaken. The reason I bring it up is that I find it fascinating how two people can have wildly differing reactions to the same sound.

The MIT room. I wandered in and got caught in a demo I hadn't intended to get caught in. First part of the demo was play a bit of music; speaker cable was decent quality OFC copper (looked like one of the Chord cables, actually). Part two was feed the speaker ends of the cable into two little MIT boxes (£80 each) then the boxes plug into the speakers and play the same track. The boxes don't look like much and I was sceptical anyway. My scepticism was misplaced, as the improvement - and I do mean improvement, not just difference - was substantial. Enough so that I'm seriously considering buying a pair. Everything got clearer and fuller, seperation was much better, and the music was more enjoyable. Good stuff. The next part of the demo was plugging in £1200 a metre MIT cable. It sounded better in every way, but not so much better that if I had £1200 I'd be buying them. The law of diminshing returns cut in with a vengeance here.

BTW, was anyone else wowed by the Rountree speakers?

 

thrudge, when i say the zu's were making nice sounds i mean that in the context that they are farty-nosed paper coned hi-sensitivity speakers, that make saxophone sound like parpy trumpet.

they were interesting as a leftfield option, but definately left of nuetral by a margin. I valued their dynamics and their timing, which stood out from tonality.

I thought the rountrees were an interesting blend, they lacked coherance between the two drivers, it was obviously a fast ribbon v's a slower coned mid unit, but they made nice sound nvr the less. Quite vigorous sounding, thouhg with box and port overtones

I could live with the big quads n also the MA platinums and the Verity speakers, maybe even the SF Cremona Elipses if i had more space.


i think we might go to the next show just looking for trouble...lol.

 

Simon, post 6 was brilliant and well done for having the balls to stand your ground.

I made a similar comment last year and the standard response is to imply that you are deaf and then get you out of the room.

Nordost employ the same tactics.

 

LOL! Nice one. Seems our perceptions of the Zu's don't differ that much after all

 

I was impressed by the Arcam system. The FMJ CDP and amp, playing through some GB1s. Very simple, no fuss and very enjoyable, and compared to a lot of what was on display, reasonable money.

I thought the Zus were horrible.

The Benchmark/Nuforce/Robson system was very nice, with those tiny standmounts really making some great sounds.

The Electrocompaniet/KEF system was probably the best I heard all day, but then again it was probably of similar value to my mortgage, so it should have been good really.

That's the third time I've heard the DCS/VTL/Verity system. The first time was at CES2006 and it was indescribably awful. At Manchester 2007 it was much more promising (with the newer generation DCS kit), but then when playing one of my own CDs on it, it all fell apart big time, muddled and closed in. This year it didn't sound much different to last year.

The Rountrees were interesting, and plentiful at the bottom end, but something did sound disjointed. Along with the Duevel Planets, they're in the "promising with a bit more work" category.

Thiel speakers show some promise, although would need more demoing to really get a handle on them. However, you'd expect that I would like them...

 

yes - on of the best posts I've read on here!

 

I still have this horrid image in my mind of some middle-aged guy dancing around the room when the "good" cables were in use.

It's similar to the image of my father dancing to Kylie Minogue at our wedding five years ago (I'd never seen him dance in the 32 years I'd been alive)

 

I was there on the Saturday. One thing about hi-fi shows, and it applied to some rooms at the Manchester event, is that manufacturers/dealers seldom match the equipment to the room. The B&W room for example, large speakers resulted in a boomy indistinct sound. Not a great example of B&Ws or of hi-fi in general. Not a sound that I would be happy with.

At the end of the day the question must be asked, do people want to hear a good sound or hear equipment that has been recently reviewed in the hi-fi press - equipment that they would not (normally) get to hear?

I agree that the sound of the Martin Logans [Absolute Sounds] room was dire. Using an iPod as a source is simply daft as every other room is using CD or LP. No sensible person would buy a pair of those MLs to use in that manner. The logical way to use those speakers [IMHO] is with a QUAD CDP which can accept other digital o/p thus making more use of the equipment. In that case I think they would be a good buy but not as demoed. An iPod has its uses but it has limitations too. Absolute Sounds ought to know better.

 

re the Thiel speakers.

I thought there was a huge discontinutity between their physical appearance and the sound they made. i was expecting them to rock like hell, brash and shiny, but oh no, they were delicate.

i was sat rigth in the sweet spot front row for the demo, and with my eyes shut i absolutley could not pinpoint their position, a wonderful dissapearing trick/

 

Yes he made me laugh.

 

Personally I was disappointed with the show. less rooms than last year.