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Bristol Show 2024

chiily said:
Orange valve testers are back...£850!

PXL_20240223_122836165 by Garf Arf, on Flickr

And testing a EF86 near you...
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Still no rectifiers by the looks of it. Surprising given all the better guitar amps have valve rectification. I assume they view them as binary; perfect vs. amp just exploded.

PS Loving the “wood effect” P3, looks great and as a Lockwood owner I welcome the return of Formica!
 
Went along yesterday. Took a much earlier train home than had planned.

Audiolab / Wharfdale room absolute bedlam; some smallish standmounts being played way too loud but somehow largely drowned-out by chatter - true of a number of rooms but this was by some way the worst example.

Rega Ayas a disappointment. A pity as I liked the concept.

I liked the Telegrapher actives in room 424 and the Harbeth actives were probably the highlight of the show but I literally went slack-jawed at the price.

A number of the usual exhibitors missing this year and I have heard rumours that others won’t be doing the show next year. In previous years it’s been one of the events i look forward to through the dark days of winter but I don’t think I’ll bother next year.
 
Oh dear.

I brimmed the tank and blew up the tyres yesterday evening thinking I might do an early start this morning and travel up, but so little positive comment put me off.

There's still tomorrow potentially, but I'm not really up for a two hour visit connected with six hours of driving!
 
terrycym said:
A rear view of the Rega preamp & power amp would by very appreciated
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No pics so far but from what hifi:

We only have a few details at the moment: the Solis power amp boasts 165W per channel, whereas the Mercury has a variety of analogue and digital inputs, including USB type B. There's also a bespoke Rega DAC housed within the Mercury.

It's not finalised yet, but we're told the Mercury and Solis are priced at roughly £6000 per product, totalling a pretty substantial £12,000 total for the pre-power combo.
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Mullardman said:
Sounds I liked today.
-Rogers with the AB3a
-Tannoy Sterling with Western Electric (300B?) amps
-Fyne 'Vintage 10'
-Exposure room with simple music. Would have liked to hear something a bit more challenging.
-Rega P6 etc as previously mentioned. I still find -'all Rega' systems a touch too 'bouncy' and forward for my taste but less so than I used to. Very honest Co. though.

Had some nice chats with numerous folks.
Back again tomorrow.
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fab , glad you liked the tannoys . when you get a chance pin down the reps on manufacturing ... cranage guy said made in Hamilton
 
we're told the Mercury and Solis are priced at roughly £6000 per product
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Interesting, maybe if the lotto comes in,
I'm surprised Mercury comes with DAC on board.
Around the same price as Naim 222/250 but with streaming.

Would guess 332/250 or maybe 332/350 would be more a compare, maybe not.
I'd no longer buy new Naim but Rega isn't out of the Q.
Maybe some s/h Osiris bargains to come.

Would love to hear Naia with this new pre/power into their upcoming RS10 successor.
 
We were there today and it was my first visit in well over 20yrs. I thought it was well worth the visit.
I'm planning on changing my speakers so that's where my interests were. I liked the Neats, Proacs and Kudos Titans with their new active crossover (they interested me the most as a potential buyer) but I think the Fyne Audio speakers were the best ones I heard (to my ears anyway).
 
chiily said:
It does look fabulous in the flesh. Shame the arm board on my LP12 is a SME fit.
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Roger does a whole host of armboard adaptors, Linn, Rega, SME, Döhmann, Well Tempered. The Michael Fremer review will soon be released.
 
Just got back. We were mostly paying attention to speakers as my friend is in the market. Once again, PMC were the standout for me (Active Twenty5 23i). The Fyne Audio (non-vintage, can't remember the model) room also sounded great. I was also impressed with Kudos, Wilson Benesch, ATC, Neat, and the Sonus Fabers in the Innuos room. We both agreed the Rogers room was horrendous leading us to skip all other BBC-like rooms.

Maybe because I'm not an old, grizzled veteran, but I enjoyed it as a day out. I'm not in the market for anything at the moment but I still liked the opportunity to hear different setups and to chat with some vendors. You'd have to be pretty jaded with the hi-fi hobby as a whole to give a negative review of the show, I think. Just let go and have fun with it.
 
antinchip said:
Ticket now purchased for Saturday. Looking forward in particular to visiting the Supatrac room, meeting Richard and hearing a Blackbird. Also interested to see/hear the RFC speakers, Paul Coupe did some refurbishment of my Tannoy Mansfields a few years back.

Cheers
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Those are two designs I’m surprisingly experienced with, and I can tell you that both are remarkable!
 
hifinutt said:
how much are the nelson then ?
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This is from the AV forum website......

Elsewhere, the Harbeth NLE was also showing the benefits of putting the crossover outside the speaker. The three way design uses a DSP based system that allows for pretty much free choice in amps and can tie different models together; an ability being eloquently demonstrated by the use of a Class D amp for the bass drivers and Quad valve amps for the midrange and tweeters. At over £40,000 for speakers, DSP and class D amps, this is far from cheap… but it sounded extraordinarily good.
 
I have just come back from the show. Really enjoyed the Special Edition ATC SCM50 (active) alot more refined than the original ATC SCM50, heard Danse Macabre by Sains Saens absolutely sumptous in rich midrange. The speakers may look like engineers version of a prototype fridge but they seem to weave this musical spell nice if one can afford £37,000.00.. The system which impressed me most (for quality and price) was the Atoll SDA300 (streamer, DAC & Amplifier) driving the new Neat Classic Mystique Floor standers. The speakers are quite slim and reach ones chest/neck height when sitting down to face them. So they will fit in most English sitting rooms. The good news is they have a marvelous dispersion so when listening to them one is greeted with a large soundstage with palable depth. The sound just fills the room and for the first time after hearing about them for decades I just realised why the speakers are called 'Neat'...! I came over to inspect the amp, just on the looks and build this was one solid robust looking component (which can deliver 150 watts into 8ohms; maybe candidate for entry ATC speakers?)

My last room was a revelation which contained Polish speakers called Diora. They had two models on the go powered by 160 kilos of Gryphon amps (around £200,000.00) One of the model called lada had a gothic shaped speakers which optimises sound dispersion which were fixed on vibration-isolating footers integrated on its base. So instead of the conventional rigid cabinet constructed the top to bottom the gothic looking speakers were on sturdy bendy supports and if you pushed the speaker to one side it will sway a little before coming back to the original position. I was not too sure when I saw this demonstration but when the music came on wow this was entrying another level... I heard Black Sabbath's NIB and Wagner's Siefreid Funeral. It was like a live concert but without the distortion. I had to ask how on earth did they manage to place the two monolith Gryphon power amps, apparently all moved with sliding panels.

Last but not least I really enjoyed the Chord room simply because their amp and streamer/Dac was played via ATC SCM40 speakers which in my humble opinion is one of the most effective speakers even for their new price (bass and midrange...!)😊
 
I was there on Friday. Overall the standard of demonstrations was quite a bit higher than other shows I’ve been to recently. There were very few really bad dems and there was a pleasing derth of plinky plonky jazz and lots of interesting music.

High Spots
Kerr Audio - they had some fairly small stand-mount speakers that genuinely sounded much bigger than they were and were really good.
Anthos Audio - these were some very odd looking horn speakers. They sounded very good, especially with string quartets and some naturally recorded jazz. Shame the asking price is £100k.
Lingdorf - very pleasant and much more domestically acceptable than most.
Pretty much any of the Tannoy derivatives - Tannoy themselves, Fyne Audio and Lockwood all sounded good.
Audio Note - their smaller system was very musical an in the bigger system they finally seem to have got the field coil speakers sorted for shows. Appaently they take a very long time to run in.
Dynaudio - some very tall speakers doing a very good job with Stevie Ray Vaughn

Low Spots
Not too many, mostly a matter of taste, with one glaring exception
Linn - a system they claimed cost around a quarter of a million but which didn't come close to justifying that.
 
I went yesterday, arrived just before 11am and it wasnt too busy.

Rooms that stood out:
- audionote
-proac / sugden/ aurelic
-kerr acoustics
-kudos
-pearl acoustics (i thought this sounded pretty speacial)
-neat
-harbeth

I thought the new Rega speakers sounded ok for the money. Also had a quick listen to some meze headphones with a chord mojo 2 and thought it sounded great.

I stayed around 3 hours, wouldve stayed longer but had to meet the wife. I'd probably go again.
 
kristoffer said:
That Supatrac arm look cool as hell. I wonder if it is superior to the best Rega arm…
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I think it looks strange.
But as I buy equipment with my ears, if it sounded as good as people say, the looks would not put me off one bit.
I have a “wife free” listening room, so can do what I like in there.
 
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