Audio Deluxe show march 23/24th

[John Phillips]

I thought most of the big rooms at the show were good (but not all). To me none of them created value that accorded with their price. But I do have some "take-aways".

As per my earlier post, "buy more well-played and well-recorded music", from the Chasing the Dragon demo.

Another was to wonder how the Perlisten AV setup in the Karma AV room, which did a really great job on some movie soundtracks, would handle close-miked piano. Would it re-create that visceral impact I feel when sitting a few rows from the front of a concert hall listening to a piano recital? The thought tempts me to consider "moving more air" at home either via bigger loudspeakers than I have or a subwoofer (or two).

The final take-away was when I got home. Aah! Apart from the temptations above, the visit did not persuade me away from my view that the best system in the world is the one I already have.

 

[hifinutt]

heard some perlisten standmounts a while back with just music . rather impressive really , smooth and i can imagine its worth a listen of the floorstanders

 

[krenzler]

Best I ever heard at a show were Bayz Audio Counterpoint. They managed the trick of both huge dynamics with subterranean bass but also very precise imaging with "filigree" detail. Small things within the soundstage still sounded suitably small. This was in a pretty small and crowded room even.

 

[Graham67]

As per my earlier post, "buy more well-played and well-recorded music", from the Chasing the Dragon demo.

John you are absolutely right that the quality of the performance and recording makes a substantial difference to the replay quality. This was evidenced in the interesting half speed master session in the Vertere room.

However buying music for the recording quality is a super slippery slope as you may end up listening primarily to artists such as Diana Krall and Snorah Jones. I disappeared down this rabbit hole over 20 years ago when I had a system that only sounded good with a small number of my CDs. I ended up losing the joy of the pop and rock music that I really love which made me realise I was on the wrong track.

This led to a sale of my complete system and starting again with vinyl with the aim of getting the best out of the majority of recordings. Good recordings now sound sensational but I can still enjoy listening to the poorer ones.

 

[Phyztech]

Also, a serious number of boxes thrown into power management and some very expensive power cables too!! Damn.

Power supply is a key to the good sounding system at any price point. There’s no point to worry if audiophile cannot afford 100k+ boxes, all the small steps in the power supply chain are perfectly audible at normal budgets.

 

[John Phillips]

John you are absolutely right that the quality of the performance and recording makes a substantial difference to the replay quality. This was evidenced in the interesting half speed master session in the Vertere room.

However buying music for the recording quality is a super slippery slope as you may end up listening primarily to artists such as Diana Krall and Snorah Jones. I disappeared down this rabbit hole over 20 years ago when I had a system that only sounded good with a small number of my CDs. I ended up losing the joy of the pop and rock music that I really love which made me realise I was on the wrong track.

This led to a sale of my complete system and starting again with vinyl with the aim of getting the best out of the majority of recordings. Good recordings now sound sensational but I can still enjoy listening to the poorer ones.

I completely agree with your point. When you get a great performance combined with a great recording it's magic, but the great performance does have to come first.

I have loudspeakers that some people have criticized for revealing too much about less than perfect recordings. However I have never heard a recording that I couldn't listen to. I can hear issues in, for example, great opera performances from the 1950s and 1960s, but for me the performance causes the issues to fade into insignificance. If for someone else the sound comes first then that's OK, but that's just not how it works for me.

 

[sq225917]

Everything sounded the same, nothing was focused and intimate, one trick pony.

 

[sq225917]

Slapping on a fancy psu makes a difference if the circuit has crappy psrr, valve amps form an orderly queue....

 

[Woodface]

This is the fundamental problem, you really need a system on a home demo to explore its capabilities. I listen to a wide range of music so need a system that can deliver across the board.

 

[YNWOAN]

I attended the show with a couple of friends (hey Si and Dave ). Small but beautifully formed would be my assessment - free coffee and wine, pretty girls to guide your way, all shows should be like this (yes Chester group I’m looking at you). Anyway, the three of us listened to all the gear there and concluded we had two favourites - the first was the Chasing The Dragon room which used a full Brinkmann system with Sonus Faber speakers. This really showed off the superb classical recordings to their best and was extremely cohesive. The second was the Blackwood room and this used fully active speakers and DSP room correction (none of this was immediately obvious as the, class D, amps are in the speakers). This system also had great coherence and, thanks to the DSP correction, a distinct lack of ’room boom’ - other rooms that avoided this issue did it by having very lean bass and/or very little of it.

 

[Salamander]

@YNWOAN Did you attend on Saturday, in the Blackwood room the smaller pyramid shaped speakers were on dem apparently, and they had the amps inside the speakers. We went on Sunday and heard the larger, 95% there prototypes which had a separate case with 8 amps inside. We also thought they sounded very good. Would have loved to hear the other speakers since we preferred the looks and price, but the prototype cabinets will be altered according to the designer.

 

[YNWOAN]

@YNWOAN Did you attend on Saturday, in the Blackwood room the smaller pyramid shaped speakers were on dem apparently, and they had the amps inside the speakers. We went on Sunday and heard the larger, 95% there prototypes which had a separate case with 8 amps inside. We also thought they sounded very good. Would have loved to hear the other speakers since we preferred the looks and price, but the prototype cabinets will be altered according to the designer.

Hi, I (we) attended on Sunday but I did get to hear both the speakers you mention. Most of my audition was using the smaller pyramid like speakers but I did get to listen to the large Marten like speakers with the expensive Accuton drivers. The pyramid shaped speakers were excellent and not unlike their larger, much more expensive, brothers.

 

[YNWOAN]

Oh, and of course I attended one* of the Absolute Sounds demonstrations. This involved Magico speakers Dartzeel amps and Döhmann turntable. The sound was characterised by a very clear room mode and bass ‘bloom’. The second half of the demo was presented by Mark Döhmann** who amazed us all by stating the Dartzeel monoblocks produce 4,000.00 watts into 4 Ohms. We were so astonished by this statement that we asked for clarification and he confirmed this was the case. Of course this is utter nonsense and the manufacturer quotes:
465 watts RMS (550 watts peak) @ 8 ohms
625 watts RMS (700 watts peak) @ 4 ohms
222 watts RMS (300 watts peak) @ 2 ohms.

* I did have tickets to both of their demonstrations but after an hour I was sufficiently ‘demonstrated to’ and so did not attend the second.
** I was tempted to ask Mr Döhmann how much of his turntables he personally designed as he appears to be more of a project manager as all the key parts are designed by other people.

 

[Hound]

Mr Dohmann and his turntable.

Well he started by saying it was the best turntable ever made, and you can buy.
Then said about the way it floats and how having the music loud, did effect the turntable in any way due to this floating system.
He then played a song, and it sounded nice, then he turned the volume up and it collapsed. The complete opposite to what he said would happen.

But all of there rooms didn't sound great really.
Plus the clown that owns absolutely, well if you stream then you are a child, so he says. As it will never sound great. He obviously didn't visit the Boyer room then, as this destroyed all his rooms very easily for sound quality, and all of it streamed.

 

[Woodface]

Oh, and of course I attended one* of the Absolute Sounds demonstrations. This involved Magico speakers Dartzeel amps and Döhmann turntable. The sound was characterised by a very clear room mode and bass ‘bloom’. The second half of the demo was presented by Mark Döhmann** who amazed us all by stating the Dartzeel monoblocks produce 4,000.00 watts into 4 Ohms. We were so astonished by this statement that we asked for clarification and he confirmed this was the case. Of course this is utter nonsense and the manufacturer quotes:
465 watts RMS (550 watts peak) @ 8 ohms
625 watts RMS (700 watts peak) @ 4 ohms
222 watts RMS (300 watts peak) @ 2 ohms.

* I did have tickets to both of their demonstrations but after an hour I was sufficiently ‘demonstrated to’ and so did not attend the second.
** I was tempted to ask Mr Döhmann how much of his turntables he personally designed as he appears to be more of a project manager as all the key parts are designed by other people.

Wow that just sums up the quackery readily available at such events.

 

[terrycym]

I don't understand.
When I did Physics at school, I was taught Power = Volts x Current
Hence 240 x 13 = 3,120 and that assumes 100% efficiency which will not happen.
Maybe it's "instantaneous peak power" or some other kind of Dartzeel electrickery.

 

[sq225917]

Class a/b, circa 50% efficiency. Current depends on output devices and transformer ratings, they were packed with output devices so safe to assume the traffo was the limit. Also they don't double down as you decrease the impedance so defo safe to assume it's current limited as the output devices voltage limit is way below mains voltage.

He was just mistaken. But didn't do the math, or look it up.

 

[Peg legg]

Hear hear to the Boyer Room. The absolute pinnacle of audio reproduction. We often talk about hifi being personal preference, but I can't imagine anyone not sensing that this was as good (and enjoyable) as it gets. The sound from that system transcended subjective descriptions. It was simply accurate audio reproduction of the highest order, presented through a microscope.

People who say audio hasn't improved much over the past 70 years, need to hear that system.

But look away now cable cynics...it seems the best system on earth uses some very expensive cables (e.g the £25k Shunyata Omega speaker cables - which incidentally cost a grand more than the speakers they were plugged into!). In fact, I asked Mr Engström himself how much of that sound was down to the cables and in his words, "they make a big difference". Would love to have heard the difference that swapping in some Van Damn cables or something, would have made to the sound.

Also, a serious number of boxes thrown into power management and some very expensive power cables too!! Damn.

The one that will please many though, is that it also turns out that the best amps money can buy, use valves from front to back, including in the power supplies (as if we didn't already know )

Boyer Room aside though, it was a great show and hats off also to the Audio Group Denmark chaps who let us have a Saturday night disco on their £1.3m system.

The main Boyer system was well over half a million quid too... with the streamer nearly quarter of a million...

Streamer - £230k (Wadax Reference Server - £55k, Wadax Reference Power Supply - £42k, Wadax Reference DAC - £133k)
Pre amplifier - £50k (Engstrom Monica)
Power amplifiers - £142k (Engstrom Eric)
Speakers - £64k (Kroma Matilde)

...plus £££ for the massive fancy cables etc.

However, it was the best sound I've ever heard from a hifi... by quite a margin. They kindly played me a track I was very familiar with... Feelings from The Monty Alexander Trio (on Montreux Alexander - Live! At The Montreux Festival)... and having heard Monty Alexander last year at Ronnie Scott's, it was a very close second in terms of experiencing a live performance.

If Boyer ever run a room again, I'll be there... utterly incredible.

Oh, and Antonio Forcione was also astonishing... the sounds he creates from his guitar had to be seen to be believed. What an artist.

Good fun

I was in the room when they played that piece

 

[cporton]

I was in the room when they played that piece

And what did you think?

 

[GT]

Best I ever heard at a show were Bayz Audio Counterpoint. They managed the trick of both huge dynamics with subterranean bass but also very precise imaging with "filigree" detail. Small things within the soundstage still sounded suitably small. This was in a pretty small and crowded room even.

I have heard the Bayz speakers three times and nothing has changed my mind about them being dreadful. One of the most overrated speakers ever. The bass was so poor, what there was of it, and the integration and coherence of sound was dreadful. They produce a sound which is nothing like real music.

Pity you couldn't compare the Bayz to the Kroma Atelier Matilde loudspeakers in the Boyer Room at the Deluxe Show, now that would have been interesting as well as a revelation, as I believe the Bayz are about 4 times the price of the Matilde...