Bristol Hifi Show

I met up with Mark (YNWAN) and Radford Revival's Will Moores today to explore Bristol Hifi Show and here's a few note's I patched together from the visit.  Mark took photos of every room and may post these later if he gets time.  This is far from an exhaustive show report, just a few thoughts from the day:


Great meeting up again Mark...great day, great company and lots to see. Look forward to seeing your pictures. Stand-outs for me included:

• Falcon Acoustics new 1/4 wave stand mount kit speaker which sounded very good and at the price was a bargain;
  
  
  

• Klipsch Heresy....I wasn't expecting to like these as they'd always been described as brash...they were in fact refined, well tuned and excellent sounding. Loved the retro looks (marmite I know) too;
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• The aptly named "Curvi Audio" room contained a pair of their curvy Curvis...naturally. This year however the difference from previous incarnations was the use of a full range BMR without any need of a partnering tweeter (no blu-tak in sight on this pair which was used to attach a tweeter for some photos previously!). These are low sensivity (as with all BMRs) 1/4 wave bass loaded CNC machined cabinets with a single BMR mounted front top. They sounded excellent and had good off axis response too. I didn't get to ask the cost but was told later they weren't cheap. Bearing in mind it's a crossoverless single driver design, perhaps there was a little too much optimism on that part but they were reasonably well made and sounded good.
  
  
• ATCs, despite low efficiency and some monster amplification needed, they sounded excellent. The little stand mount ATC 11 was truly exceptional for the size, quite simply unbelievable bass response and clean, tidy tuning and they were the proverbial pint-sized speakers delivering quart sized sounds! I left with new respect for the current ATC offerings from the guys from Stroud.
  
  
• Rega...lots of great entry level and mid range decks as well as their new flagship. The one I heard (I couldn't make out which it was) sounded great
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• The focal Kanta Nr2's (£6,995/pair) were also one of the show's surprises and were easily one of the best sounding rooms for me, along with the Klipsch, ATC and Falcon Acoustics rooms. I didn't, however, take much store of the isolation guys (sorry...forgot who they represented) making silly claims about some of their products. Their speaker elevation isolation platforms thingys changed the sound slightly but they would do anyway raising them up off the floor. I didn't have the heart to explain why (slight loss of bass and bass reinforcement mistaken for "tauter bass").

Lots of usual show stuff...mediocre sounding expensive stuff and not so expensive stuff. Close inspection of a few brands led to a little disappointment as things were literally just a veneer hiding very cheap construction but sporting very long price tags. I'm afraid Fyne was one of those for me although I do like the F10 sound, corners were cut where I hadn't really expected them to be.

Part of my reason for going was it's the one time every year I and a number of hifi industry colleagues and friends get together for a chinwag.  Many of them were here this year, including Nick Lucas, Graham Tricker, Jerry Bloomfield and a few others. Managed a brief few polite words with Noel Keywood and caught up with Jason Kennedy after a 7 year gap from last speaking with him....where does time go!?

Major disappointment of the show for me was Lockwood's room. I really didn't want it to be, but sadly for me, they didn't do too many favours for their hard work.  Lots of posters explaining proud heritage but they had easily the worst sounding room of the show for me. How they quite managed to get those drive units to sound so dead and two dimensional I suspect may have been a function of the cab and crossovers used and I strongly suspect the lack of any bass might point towards woofers being wired in the wrong polarity? I don't know that to be the case but that's exactly how they sounded to my ears.


Altogether the best Bristol show for me for some years.  Lots of footfall, a few new and exciting products, some great showing by some UK household names in hifi which was great to see.  The only really critical comment was come on guys....the music....just, well...."NO!".  the same inane boom-boom rubbish from many of the rooms, which was hardly any way to showcase such talent.  Why do they do this? Yes, we even had Dire Straights and Hugh Masekela blaring out from some rooms, but in fairness they were some of the better choices of music and that says something about the rubbish being played! 


All in all though a very enjoyable show and hopefully we have Mark's photos to look forward to seeing.



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