Just back home, phew, quite the weekend. In retrospect, I should've stayed over an extra night, but having blown a fair bit on LPs and a couple of Analogue Productions SACDs, that took care of the accommodation budget for night three...! For all that though, it was a really great weekend.
So many highlights, and photos which I'll add later, but some thoughts on the proceedings first, the winners, honourable mentions and what didn't quite work for me.
If you've not been and live within a few hours, it's definitely worth going along; great venue, beautiful setting, can be busy but never really feels overcrowded, there's food and drink available in both the bar and the outdoor catering provided, also coffee and doughnuts which was added this year. As well as the exhibitors, who are mainly traditional hifi, you've got other rooms for audiophile label Chasing the Dragon, who bring their boutique label and recordings and book out one of the larger rooms on the ground floor. Similar, if not identical system to last year, with a Technics SL1210GR deck, some massive ATCs and this year it looked like they were powering them by the new Quad 33 amp (I may have been mistaken so will need to check the pics), but it was a great sound. Their label records "direct to cut" from live performances. I'm not too big on their chosen music, mostly chamber, jazz or orchestral, but their room is very popular and their titles are available to buy at the show.
Upstairs, MCRU, Audioquest, and similar take out some other rooms and headphone fans aren't sold short as personal audio has a good presence in two or three rooms. Just past the entrance, you'll find the likes of Russ Andrews, Avondale, Qobuz, Puritan and Richer Sounds, to name a few, Richers had a nice room upstairs, more of which later. And before you even got in this year, you could've had a listen to the WEM PA that Pink Floyd used for the Live at Pompeii recording!
I tend to do a few circuits of the rooms to get an idea for what's on offer and there's quite an area to get round, but as I was there for opening - and once the initial queue had gone down - it was down to business pretty quickly.
Local dealer Doug Brady brings a good room. Last year they hit money with their ATC SCM20 Active Anniversary model on demo which were my highlight of the show. ATC were present again this year in a few rooms, but they had their passive versions of the same on show in their own room this time round. Lovely sounds (though I'd still take the actives!) and accompanying Technics deck. Can't recall the amp this time round (see photos later), but the album playing when I was there was Roger Waters Lockdown Sessions LP, which was so good I bought it at the record fair later on. I bought a good few things at the record fair this year right enough... < feet shuffling overtime here > ...I digress, let's go back to Day 1 on Saturday morning.
My first room is G Point Audio. They get one of the largest rooms on the ground floor and need it. They're packing it and bringing it with some high end stuff; J Sikora turntables, Lampizator Horizon amp / DAC gear, and Audionec's (very) distinctive Evo Line speakers plus a full rig out of various accessories, supports and so on. They're playing some Genesis so I'm in there and onto a seat in no time. It's a great start as the audio is of the high quality variety. So it should, like a few of the systems on show this weekend, you're not going to be getting much change out of £75,000-plus but the great thing about this show is you get something for everyone, whether that be high, mid, or regular Mr and Mrs John Q Average money. The sound is effortless, languid and easy to listen to. If it wasn't for the other 20 or so folk in the room, I'd happily spend the morning in here. Alas, I don't want to take up too much room (small, I am not) or dwell for too long and move on. I'll come back though.
Outwith the G Point Audio room, it leads back onto the Melco / Chord display which is a mix of players, networking hardware and good old fashioned cables that Chord will happily put together for you (and one of their guys was on the Sunday!). Not quite my thing, I've a few Chord cables to my name (pre- X-Aray Shawlines and Clearways and former Chord Chorus owner too a few years back), Thereafter, you wander down the corridor, through the aforesaid Richer/Russ/Qobuz muggers alley and the doors open.
I like the Doug Brady rooms - this year, they're bringing Quad aplenty with the 33 pre- and 303 power amps, the new Quad electrostatics and Burmeister gear, Arcam, Rotel and some lovely Luxman. Monitor Audio, KEF, Kii and Rega gear to name a few. The presentation as well as the audio is to the kind of standard you'd expect from a dealer that been around either as Doug, or W.A. Brady for several decades now. Highly recommended.
I made a quick pitstop into the Acoustic Energy room, where they were demoing their AE1 40th Anniversary Edition passives. I didn't quite get to grips with them on this visit, but as the Beatles (and indeed, Phil Collins) once sang, tomorrow never knows, so more of that later. I did however have a good chat with one of their guys outside
Coherent Audio have the large room more or less opposite Chasing the Dragon on the Ground Floor, and they're another that bring the big guns out - this year they've Tad Labs GE-1 speakers out there and the rest of the gear I don't recognise but if I'm truly honest, they let rip with Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes. They could've had an all-Amstrad setup, I wouldn't have given a damn, it was that all-enveloping audio that just makes the heart sing. If you weren't there in 1984 and don't quite get it....sorry. Not sorry.
The Cambridge room was visually appealing, a stark white screen background and the Cambridge logo lit up in stark relief with a relatively minimalist setup. I'm a bit of a Cambridge fanboy having their 752BD universal player (11 years old at that and still going strong!), the more recent Alva ST turntable and the 200M DAC with the excellent Melomania in-ear monitors bringing up the (r)ear.
Alas, they had none of that, opting for their newer streaming capabilities and some own brand floorstanders that - on the Saturday - didn't quite cut it. I didn't get the model numbers, Cambridge these days opting for minimalist gear which looks great and is an absolute PITA to try and work out what's on display. The - what looked like - the EVO 100 all-rounder was doing its thing on the Sunday and sounding pretty damn fine. I wasn't quite convinced by the (own brand) speakers on Saturday morning, but floorstanders in a confined hotel room never made for happy bedfellows. Way too bassy.
(Amphion speakers and Auden Distribution, following on from the above, we'll get to you later....)
The Fanthorpes room was next, and for those of you in the dark, they're a respected dealer in Hull. I hear they're shut on weekends these days, but weekdays are good. Check their website for details if you're planning a trip. This year, they brought PMC speakers and Bryston kit. Great room, The PMCs were effortless, with a bigger sound than their dimensions suggested. The kind of sound you could engage with for hours, which, to my ears, if nothing else, is a good sign.
After Fanthorpes, I wandered up to the Auden Distribution main room (they had a smaller one with Amphion speakers further up the building), and this one featured Hegel amps and source gear with the aforementioned Eggleston Works speakers and, when I arrived, belting out AC/DC. My notes are as per above, but, to take this puppy home, you'd have been on the wrong side of a good £30,000-odd and wind up the Scotch my good man, if only to numb the pain!
The Neat Acoustics room was next, and I've said enough about the Iota 2 to wax lyrical about it till next year's show.
Yeah, alright, for a fiver off £1100, they're an absolute steal. Factor in an amp, be that integrated or pre/power though and you're branching into Kii territory...
And yes, the Kii Three actives have a view on this, not least as I ventured on their room on Saturday and was deeply impressed by their speakers. Wonderfully deep, lucid in the midrange with a nice high range without being shrill. I'd go so far to say a bargain, but at over £3,000 you might need to check your balance first. I'd normally say whether that's a pair or per speaker, but I didn't fully quite catch the rep's chat - the real stand-up from this is that you can get stereo from one speaker and I assume that's from the driver arrangement in the Threes. The brass tacks bit means you might be shelling out over £6,000 to get a pair of them, and let's not get on to the Kii Sevens (and they're a treat on the eye)!
The rest of Saturday was a mix of record fair, coffee, record fair, coffee - a quick pitstop into several rooms, not least the Audio Note one - and more record fair. But the summer temperatures of over 33 degrees Centigrade meant lingering and listening weren't high on the cards.
And the rest, I'll follow up on tomorrow!
Edit: Oh, PS, forgot to mention, and the guy from the other Auden Distribution that didn't quite like my take on the new Hegel DAC...
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