Been to the Bristol Hi-fi Show 2011 yesterday. Its such a nice show where flagship models of most brands were displayed for demonstration. There were CD players costing some 6k GBP for the Rega ISIS to Naim CD555 with 555PS power supply costing 17k and stereo rigs costing 20K
Good to see the man behind Marantz and on whose name KI perl series is named after Ken Ishiwata at their stall.
Also the designer of Audiolab 8200 series digital products John Westlake at the Audiolab stall.
Of course they were the heroes for our Hi-fi hobbyists
hyeah:
I managed to take very few pics and here is the link for them
Bristol Hi-fi Show 2011
A short review of my impressions of the equipment displayed over there
The best of all the hi-end rigs were the Naim with their Naim Ovator-600 speakers whith their other flagship equipment. They were placed in dim light to give a feel of their massive 3D sound stage even to the noobs.
The other speakers which caught my attention were the
Neat Acoustics Ultimatum XLS Bookshelf speakers and the PMC's driven Fact series speakers driven by Brystons.
In the low-end I liked the
Acoustic Energy Compact-1 speakers (4" woofer, 1" silk dome tweeter, 88dB sensitivity, 100W power handling). It is hooked to Naim UNITIQUTE audio player. Irrespective of its size it sounded big like a floor stander. I had even asked them whether they have a sub connected to it. I was told its cabinet is strong heavily braced with a good woofer and hence its putting out the bass like a big speaker and its priced at 150 (about 10k INR) and this model is hitting the stores in 4-5 weeks in UK/EQ. Later Compact-3 floor stander, Compact-Centre and Compact-sub.
Here is the pic of the speakers. This speaker should be seriously considered with most entry level amps till about 20k -25k INR. I haven't heard CA S30 but this AE-Compact 1 may be better than that.
Among the DAC's/CD Players displayed there the Audiolab 8200DQ Preamp with DAC looked more future proof with its analog and digital connectivity . Or the Audiolab 8200CDQ CD Player with Pre Amp connected directly to power amp is the best for those having more digital sources providing the shortest signal path between the source and speakers.
The
Furutechs Alpha Design Labs GT40 DAC With Phonstage loked great. It sounded like A headphone amp/ a phono pre amp/ an USB DAC/ ADC all in one package. The features say rip your vinyl to Hard Drive. I was thinking it acts as a ADC too.
Also for speakers looks like the days of describing their sound signature as bright sounding or warm sounding are gone. The PMC fact series have adjustable woofer and tweeters. There are two 3 way switches for bass and treble behind near the binding posts. One position keeps the frequencies flat the other increases the frequencies by say 2dB and the other position decreases by few dB to make it more suitable to adopt it to the listening environment.
The
XTZ speakers have an adjustable tweeter in a similar way.
