Manchester Show

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Anonymous

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matthewpiano:cacophonix, did you not go into the UKD room with those stupendous Opera floorstanders powered up by that wonderful Unison Research amplifier?

That was the best hi-fi I've ever heard and I just can't imagine anything else getting closer to real live music.

What appealed about the Wharfedales in particular? I was bitterly disappointed with them.

Yes, I spoke to the UKD guy, but I'm a bit sickened that opera would have gone in for this. The philosophical stand point of "getting close" is nowhere near what you need to be in the business of sound REPRODUCTION. I think that with wharfdale, they're a big name and have a much wider range than most... so they could afford to get all the parts of the system right on the day. They also seemed very open with their designs (not as proud as others).

matthewpiano: I just noticed you work with sony, and for me they usually get a lot right. Probably for similar reasons to wharfedale - they're a broad ranging company. Unfortunately all I saw was one of their TVs sitting silently on a stand. I was focusing on hifi
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doctorrock

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Living in Cornwall, a bit far to come and generally when the Bristol show is on I seem to be at work. Anyone any news on what the new Cyrus product launch was? It's not even updated on their website and surprisingly that they seem to have won numerous awards this year, no one has updated any details
 

Pete Shields

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What do I think of the show?

Plus points:

Good advice about my future setup from the Sonos stand.

WHF demo suite - as I don't have a HD enabled av amp I have never heard the difference between 5.1 and HD audio. Stunning. So much so that I'm going to buy the Sony Bluray player with analogue outputs next. Brilliant stuff.

Still haven't bought those new speakers yet (probably the EB acoustics eb1's), but also had a good look at each of the speaker rooms. Checked out the Cyrus room first and noted they were using dynaudio 110's. For some reason, I wasn't really impressed with their setup on show. There was a lack of standmounts on display (all floorstanders and AV), but I did like the Roksan Kandys and the Monitor Audios and the proac floorstanders were impressive.

Negatives:

Choice of music being played. Jazz club was constantly in session. All acoustic with female vocals. All very test disky and bland. An old guy even offered up a test disk to the Cyrus boys and guess what, jazz club/woman singer....Everywhere I went the cd of choice seemed to be have a blue cover with a car wing mirror on it. Should have written the artist's name down to avoid it in the future. Does anybody actually listen to this music other than to show off their systems?

Too many turntables being used as a source - not my thing sorry...

Too much Av. Too much James Bond and Pixar's Cars on display

Very bland stands from all of the TV boys, particularly pioneer. Never saw the Sony stand as I was too AV'd out to wait in line for the next demo...Kef had a good setup, although one room was playing HD jazz again...

Waited around for a while twice at the Chord stand to buy some interconnects, but gave up. Two guys working there looked very helpful and were really busy, more staff next time chord...you missed out on a £200 sale from me.

Audio T organised the show well, but when I have been to other format shows you have been able to buy discontinued/surplus gear at a good price at the show. Only one room upstairs, with what looked like the Audio T sale rack from their Manchester shop. Surely the company have more on offer...

Overall

Brilliant day out - wife and kids call it dad's nerd day out. It looks like the list above has more negatives than positives but the positives far outweighted the negatives. Roll on next year.

Just say no to the jazz next time.
 
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Anonymous

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I must admit it would have been nice to hear some music that I actually liked. I did take a couple of CD's along but its a bit rude to walk into a room where a dozen people are apparently enjoying their folk/jazz/acoustic/female lead on ballads stuff. I kept dropping back in to various rooms to see if they had quietened down so I could perhaps hear my kings of leon/lady gaga/guns and roses/eminem/beatles/elvis/bon jovi type stuff. Still I appreciate you cant put music on that everyone likes. It wet my appetite and gave me a very good idea of what the products sounded like. I suppose the next logical step would be to go to dealer with my CD's in hand.
 

Pete Shields

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I agree totally with you barnsleydave. I'm becoming a bit of an addict to the WHF forums and when the Beatles remasters were released, there was a massive interest in them. I expected to hear them somewhere at the show.

Also if you go to the what I've been listening to this week thread, very little jazzy music to slit your wrists to is mentioned.

Probably the majority of active forum posters are sub 50.

Saw a lot of 30 the 40 somethings on Saturday, but also many (no doubt affluent) fleeced up seniors with their matching fleeced up wives (who tended to carry the monitor audio carrier bag brimming with the sales literature for everything on show on the day and also the big handbag with jazz club cd demo disks in).

Now I think about it seems to me that those "noisy" AV suites were set up for the youngsters (with children still at home), whilst the Hifi rooms were set up for the more affluent oldsters. At 44, I have a foot in both camps. I prefer the hifi side, but my siblings always want to watch a movie or play Beatles Rock Band (Which I incidently love).

I sat there at one demo thinkin to myself, should have brought in some sex pistols or the clash. Not favourites of mine, but the response would have been interesting.
 

matthewpiano

Well-known member
In the Curvi demo room we were asked to fill in a brief questionnaire about our thoughts on the speakers. They were playing some repetitive electronic stuff so I asked them to play something more dynamically challenging so that I could judge the speakers properly.

Some of the AV demo rooms were set too loud and I felt Onkyo did their new seperates (and the MA RX2s) no justice at all by setting them up as something of an after-thought in the same room as a very loud AV demo.
 

Pete Shields

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Sad thing is, as the MA RX2's had some more guttsier music going through them, first impressions were that I thought that they were quite good and I would consider giving them an audition when I finally purchase my mission 751 replacements (the saga continues - expect another thread and another letter in the mag before I finally make the puchase...)

Hung around the Curvi room for a few minutes. Looked like they were well out of my price range. Thought the music made them sound a little lame, so I got my coat.....
 

Pete Shields

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"Everywhere I went the cd of choice seemed to be have a blue cover with a car wing mirror on it. Should have written the artist's name down to avoid it in the future."

I'm curious now, what was the cd?

Somebody must own up to owning it out there
 

matthewpiano

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Pete Shields:
Sad thing is, as the MA RX2's had some more guttsier music going through them, first impressions were that I thought that they were quite good and I would consider giving them an audition when I finally purchase my mission 751 replacements (the saga continues - expect another thread and another letter in the mag before I finally make the puchase...)

Hung around the Curvi room for a few minutes. Looked like they were well out of my price range. Thought the music made them sound a little lame, so I got my coat.....

They were peculiar, those Curvi speakers. Well out of my price range too, but interesting to listen to. At first they seemed to have a slightly nasal character to them tonally, but settling into an extract from Britten's 'War Requiem' showed them to be stunning at imaging, both left to right and front to back - probably a benefit of the point-source single driver approach. They were very revealing and I think you'd need a big room for them.

Never did find out how much they were but I reckon they cost serious money that I'd rather spend on those Focal floorstanders that sounded so good (IF I had that sort of money).
 

Pete Shields

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Did Cyrus launch anything at the show. Couldn't see anything in the room. Problem is it all looks the same. Not so much of a problem when you need to upgrade without the wife knowing....
 

mikegtar

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Hi Pete,
Yes I was wondering what the new Cyrus equipment was myself. Google came up with this [edited by mods - house rules]

"Cyrus CDXT+ & DACX+ (£1,500 each)
Cyrus used the show to launch the first samples of its revised CDXT+ transport and DACX+ digital to analogue converter. The transport now has two mains transformers onboard which is said to make it equivalent to the regular CDXT and PSX-R power supply in one box. However, adding a PSX-R outboard supply to the + unit gives the servo control system its own supply. The DACX+ has a dedicated power supply for the re-clocking system. "

It's crazy that Cyrus still haven't updated their website front page with the info.

Mike
 
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Anonymous

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Thanks for the lovely comments on the 3005se system. The new wireless HTB2SE we were using was an absolute dream all weekend and attracted a lot of attention.
Interesting that someone commented about the Jazz discs being used in our big room on the XQ AV system. There are a couple of points I would like to make about that...

A) It is a fantastic Blu-ray demo disc (Legends of Jazz) which got many, many positive remarks throughout the weekend, but I agree not to everybody's taste (incl. me). It does, however get the point across of how musically diverse and capable the XQ system is.
and
B) When we had a room full of people with standing room only we put on the Green Day live disc to really mix things up and the room emptied in about 15 seconds! What would that say to you, if you were me running the demos?
We did, however, refrain from ANY blockbuster Hollywood movies in that room and stuck to music demo material, leaving the crash bang WALLOP to our neighbours in the other KEF room :)

Hopefully our 'door open' approach left people happier after the negatives we received on this forum after Bristol. Your comments welcome.

Alex.
 

The_Lhc

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Oct 16, 2008
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Alex Foxon:

Hopefully our 'door open' approach left people happier after the negatives we received on this forum after Bristol. Your comments welcome.

Alex.

Heh heh, that was me! I'll let you know after the next Bristol show!
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I was only annoyed because I'm already a KEF owner and I was really hoping to hear to what I thought might be my next upgrade. I still haven't upgraded so there's hope yet!
 

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