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Cranage Show 2022

I liked Simon Hamnett's Isobraics / Naim / Avondale room for scale and finesse across the range.

2022-06-20_03-41-56

GPoint were making some nice noises with the French pannel speakers when i was in there.

Several other rooms were sounding good but a little difficult to access on Saturday. Some others not so great and some audiofoolery to be found as well. I didn't realise that cable risers were still a thing

I too liked Simon Hamnett's 'Isobariks / Naim / Avondale' room for the sheer power and scale. Les's turntable was playing at the time and sounding very fine. Did anybody there see what cartridge he was using per chance?
 
Rooms I really liked:
On the first floor, Pascal room - Auralic G2.1 and ATC SCM40a, a very minimalist system, brilliant! I went in there twice, first time had an electronic dance type track on, I thought it was superb, just when you thought it was at the limit (it was very LOUD!) regarding bass drive, it kicked on again, very impressive. The second time I went, again it was very loud, in fact too loud for me, it exposed the recording somewhat, I’m nigh on certain had the volume been lower then this wouldn’t have been the case and would have sounded much better, it sounded really good at the higher volume but slightly grated on me.

On the ground floor, the Appleton room - G-Point Audio, very large Diptyque planar speakers, up there with the best I heard all day, again, volume really quite high, but didn’t set off any kind of harshness in my hearing, a very clear resolved sound. Were no doubt helped along very nicely by the extremely substantial supporting amps/dac etc.

Room 211 - Origin Live, vastly expensive turntable, £25k, fed into some lovely Falcon LS3/5a’s, don’t know what vintage, another room playing quite loud, but it hung together very well, I really liked how the system stayed clean and clear, without shouting, not heard LS3/5a’s for a very long time, a show at Heathrow around 1988(?) and must say I was well impressed 34 years later.

Room 219 - Longdog Audio, playing UB40’s first album, a very enjoyable sound, it did bass, midrange and treble with equal vigour, would have been very happy with system at home, including the invisible speakers!!

Room 242 - SJS Electroacoustics, a dream price system, but backed up the cost with a top notch sound, I’m not a fan of classical/violin music, not got the foggiest what was being played, I suspect fairly modern? But it was brilliant, what a sound.

Room 246 - Strictly Stereo, Dutch and Dutch 8C’s, with an Innuos mini server I seem to recall. I’ve read and listened to so much about these speakers I was really looking forward to listening to them, they didn’t disappoint, they really were a speaker/system that had me thinking ‘let’s just listen to one more track, then another, then another. Admittedly they dissected songs*, but made stuff sound really live and robust, plenty of power and guts to proceedings! (*they ripped apart a Duran Duran song to great effect, everything good and bad on display).

Lower ground floor.
Wren - KEF loudspeakers, the new LS60 and Blade Two Meta’s, both mightily impressive. Quite surreal how something so compact (the LS60) with a tiny 4” midrange driver can sound big and powerful in a large room. I think for the money these appear something of a bargain, literally, just add a phone, a streaming service and you’re going.

A great show overall, really enjoyed it.

Oh, an added bonus was seeing some old Wam crew, nice, really good to see you!
 
Room 246 - Strictly Stereo, Dutch and Dutch 8C’s, with an Innuos mini server I seem to recall. I’ve read and listened to so much about these speakers I was really looking forward to listening to them, they didn’t disappoint, they really were a speaker/system that had me thinking ‘let’s just listen to one more track, then another, then another. Admittedly they dissected songs*, but made stuff sound really live and robust, plenty of power and guts to proceedings! (*they ripped apart a Duran Duran song to great effect, everything good and bad on display).

Thank you very much. I'm really glad that you enjoyed the system.
 
Rooms I really liked:
On the first floor, Pascal room - Auralic G2.1 and ATC SCM40a, a very minimalist system, brilliant! I went in there twice, first time had an electronic dance type track on, I thought it was superb, just when you thought it was at the limit (it was very LOUD!) regarding bass drive, it kicked on again, very impressive. The second time I went, again it was very loud, in fact too loud for me, it exposed the recording somewhat, I’m nigh on certain had the volume been lower then this wouldn’t have been the case and would have sounded much better, it sounded really good at the higher volume but slightly grated on me.

On the ground floor, the Appleton room - G-Point Audio, very large Diptyque planar speakers, up there with the best I heard all day, again, volume really quite high, but didn’t set off any kind of harshness in my hearing, a very clear resolved sound. Were no doubt helped along very nicely by the extremely substantial supporting amps/dac etc.

Room 211 - Origin Live, vastly expensive turntable, £25k, fed into some lovely Falcon LS3/5a’s, don’t know what vintage, another room playing quite loud, but it hung together very well, I really liked how the system stayed clean and clear, without shouting, not heard LS3/5a’s for a very long time, a show at Heathrow around 1988(?) and must say I was well impressed 34 years later.

Room 219 - Longdog Audio, playing UB40’s first album, a very enjoyable sound, it did bass, midrange and treble with equal vigour, would have been very happy with system at home, including the invisible speakers!!

Room 242 - SJS Electroacoustics, a dream price system, but backed up the cost with a top notch sound, I’m not a fan of classical/violin music, not got the foggiest what was being played, I suspect fairly modern? But it was brilliant, what a sound.

Room 246 - Strictly Stereo, Dutch and Dutch 8C’s, with an Innuos mini server I seem to recall. I’ve read and listened to so much about these speakers I was really looking forward to listening to them, they didn’t disappoint, they really were a speaker/system that had me thinking ‘let’s just listen to one more track, then another, then another. Admittedly they dissected songs*, but made stuff sound really live and robust, plenty of power and guts to proceedings! (*they ripped apart a Duran Duran song to great effect, everything good and bad on display).

Lower ground floor.
Wren - KEF loudspeakers, the new LS60 and Blade Two Meta’s, both mightily impressive. Quite surreal how something so compact (the LS60) with a tiny 4” midrange driver can sound big and powerful in a large room. I think for the money these appear something of a bargain, literally, just add a phone, a streaming service and you’re going.

A great show overall, really enjoyed it.

Oh, an added bonus was seeing some old Wam crew, nice, really good to see you!
The UB40 was mine, one of my faves. :)
 
I too liked Simon Hamnett's 'Isobariks / Naim / Avondale' room for the sheer power and scale. Les's turntable was playing at the time and sounding very fine. Did anybody there see what cartridge he was using per chance?

It had a Lyra Clavis cart fitted - quite an old model, with a good few hours on it, but it certainly didn't embarrass itself I thought! The "Les special" setup was compared to a £25k top-flight LP12 with all the latest upgrades, and Les's crushed the competition as usual. A good 25-30% better across the board than what the LP12 could manage.
 
Yes, that room was extremely good too, and I didn't manage to catch the panel speakers....maybe they were even better!
The Audio Nec speakers I noticed had used the principles of the Lineum tweeter to make a unique midrange driver, which I rated very highly.

On the Saturday, they were playing the Audionecs through the monobloc Rivieras with a matching pre, and the Diptych Panels through the Riviera Levante integrated running in either class A or class AB. I only heard the panels in class A and they sounded amazing. But on the Sunday, they changed it around and drove the panels through the pre/monobloc amps. They also moved the panels much further apart. The result was spectacular, the panels really benefitting from the considerable extra grunt that the beefier pre/monos offered over the integrated.
 
Was at my youngest Granddaughter's first birthday party yesterday and recovering today, but my old mate Ian sent me a pic of himself with Doug Brady. He dealt with Doug from the 70s, but I've only been a customer of Brady's since 1991 ish. Doug's turntable cake looks almost as good as the one I got for my 70th.
Ian also sent a pic with our other old mate Dean Brisset.
I'm quite pee'd off to have missed it now.
Maybe next year....:(
Hi Colin,

I hope you are well. It would have been good to see you.

It was good to see and speak to Ian as well.

Hopefully next year we can meet up.
 
Well a bit late to the party but will add my view in to the mix . I went on the Saturday and while it was well attended there was little in the way of crowding and tested on the Monday as negative so no drama .

Overall I was less impressed with the standard in many of the rooms . First problem is a personal one , I now find myself unable to listen to Vinyl for more than two minutes before the issues I have with it surface and then i am listening to the medium and not the music . So I just walked away from any room that was only playing Vinyl . Second was the normal Show issue of poor internet connection and many of the rooms not being prepared and unable to stream music so very limited choice. Third was the stupid plinky plonky music many seemed to be using which was so uninteresting that I could not even be bothered to ask what it was . These were tunes and artists I have never heard of except at other HiFi shows and the music was very low on dynamics or pace and seemed chosen just to make life easier for the system playing . Okay rant over .

Staff around the place were excellent friendly and helpful right up to the end. best music for me was in the Moor Amplifiers room because of the internet issue the designer only had about 2 1/2 hours of his own choices on a Thumbdrive and it was great bit of Dire Straights , Bob Marley , Iand Dury , XTC , REM ,London Grammar all things I recognised and knew and I spent a fair time just listening did not even complain when i started singing along which is very tolerant . Best sound of the show for me was a no brainer Auralic room were they had one of their streamers / network players and a pair of ATC 40 Actives nothing else . Sound excellent and total cost was about 12.5 K which is still lots but at least it impressed . It was funny when people cam in and sat down lots went up the speakers and then looked behind the back drop as if looking for all the other gear (Amplifier / Pre etc) in case it was hiding there . At one stage they played Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath not perhaps the greatest recording but it had air and power and had a few myself included nodding along at the power bits . I went back to this room a couple of times and sat and heard 5/6 tracks each time and the power and control was impressive .

In the Kii room they had quite a choice and played John Martyn - Glory Box off Church with One Bell album (yes the Portishead song) and I was in the back row and he wanted to move forward to the front as he said it stopped the reflection from the back wall . Given that these are fully digital speakers with DSP and with added bass units are a line array they should be nt be so precise about were you have to sit and in many cases due to room restrictions many of us have to sit close to a back wall my DSP (thousands cheaper than this set up ) copes with that but not the Kii's . So the sound was okay but nothing special and in my view a little overblown in the bass . Would have been nice to hear the Kii without the bass addition but it would seem that was not possible .
 
I too liked Simon Hamnett's 'Isobariks / Naim / Avondale' room for the sheer power and scale. Les's turntable was playing at the time and sounding very fine. Did anybody there see what cartridge he was using per chance?
It was an old Lyra, I returned the TT back to its maker and had a big dose of seller regret. It really did sound better than the other Linn in the room (Radical, Kahn, Keel, Aro)
 
Here are my impressions of the rooms I visited on Sunday PM. Started from the top and sadly only got about half way round!

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Ophidian audio. A brand new to me. They were keen to get people in the room and proudly point out the magazine reviews. Sounded fine. Decent start to my show experience! Apparently these speakers are the newly launched Voodoo (£14K).



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Alchris audio. Another new one. More nice sounds. I later looked them up — it's the re-incarnation of Kralk Audio. It turns out the new AR-66 speakers are inspired by the Ditton 66 and are their flagship model at around £5K, which seems comparatively reasonable by other brands' standards. Wouldn't mind another listen — their workshop is quite close to me.



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Kudos. With TOPL Innuos Statement server, latest top Accuphase AB integrated and Audioquest power conditioner. It sounded fine but couldn't help wondering about the total system price.



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Computer Audio Design. Decent sounding room, enjoyed walking around to try to hear the mbl omni thing! Didn't realise CAD made amps.



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Auralic/ATC. I'm a fan of ATC (owned 19's, demoed 40's and 50's). Still not 100% convinced by 40's vs 19's/50's, but they do seem the most popular (size/price?) and it was a lot of fun hearing them belt out some electronica with the bass unit moving like crazy! After this I skipped the Falcon room as I was all hyped up and the quiet classical music no longer matched my mood...sorry chaps!



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Fanthorpes. This room sounded a little bit in a class above the others I'd heard so far. But then I did a guesstimate of the system cost and figured there wouldn't be too much change from £100K, so I suppose that made sense.



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Chord Company. Was treated to a demo of a progressive "upgrade" of mains blocks and mains leads. One chap clearly heard and enthused about all the extra refinements, another preferred the cheaper block as it was "less smoothed over". I don't know what I heard — I was not really in the mood for listening to differences in mains leads on a "mid-fi" system!



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Acoustica (B&W / Naim). Wow, you could really hear those tweeters! I was not mad on the music playing, so didn't linger long enough to decide what I really thought about it.



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A welcome break in the garden. These looked and sounded like a posh JBL bluetooth speaker. Nice.



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Padood (Nagra, Plinius, YG Acoustics and other high end brands). Big room, big, natural sound from small speakers. Impressive. I felt a bit of an idiot having to ask what the speakers were, so didn't ask what they cost. Big money, obviously.



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Chasing the dragon. Active ATC 150's in a very big room playing very loud, with some serious looking electronics. This was my first time to hear BIG ATC's and I wanted myself to be more impressed than I actually was.



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Doug Brady (system 2). I was relieved to at last find a room playing a track I know quite well, Radiohead's "Everything in its right place". Sounded very good.



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Coherent systems. Nice TAD speakers and a super tweaked digital front end with lots of grounding stuff going on. Familiar rock favourites like Floyd and the Doors sounding very good indeed, clean but not clinical.
 
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Vertere. Nice sounding demo of the range of TTs (unfortunately missed the base model) and introduction to some of the Vertere label recordings. ATC 40's in service yet again.



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Icon Audio. Don't remember much about this room, think I was getting tired and only had a quick peep. Sorry!



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Audio Pinnacle (Gershman speakers, Gold Note amp, Voyd TT "not for sale!"). Probably the most enjoyable listen of the show for me, a great Muddy Waters track followed by a rare Amy Winehouse live recording. Both tracks new to me, but super involving with lots of texture and dynamics.



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Strictly Stereo (D&D 8c with Innuos Zenith and Phoenix switch). Quite a contrast to the previous room, a thinner sound. But once my ears adjusted it sounded pretty good too.



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SJS Electroacoustics. Very nice sounding system, interesting record collection and nice of them to provide a handy list of the components and their prices.



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Moor amps / Graham audio. Pretty good sound, but I'm getting spoiled now. Interesting to note the iFi DAC.



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Cyrus with Spendor D7.2. Apparently the Cyrus stuff is all new and improved inside the box. Not a bad sound at all, I think What HiFi 5* gear gets a bad rap from some quarters.



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Coppice audio. Really enjoyed my time in this room and the music. Refreshing to hear a system sounding good and yet have plenty of change from £10K! The designer told me all about the trials and tribulations of trying to make speakers from real woods rather than MDF. Various vintage lampizated CD players are available from eBay at relatively low cost, apparently.



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Audio Note. By this time I was getting used to loud rooms, Audio Note's was quieter and less flashy. That I appreciated but in context it was verging on being a bit boring. But that was probably just me.



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A decent sound for a not crazy amount of money. The source was iPad into Audioquest DAC dongle, the Golden Ear speakers feature an active bass unit. The Sugden ANV-50 was driving the mid/tweeters, I was happy to see an exhibitor using the same amp as I have ;-)



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Longdog audio. Another nice sounding vinyl based system.



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Origin Live. These Falcon LS3/5a sounded very good. Not sure what was under the black cover?

I also heard a couple of rooms I forgot to take photos of. Audio Dreams / Townshend / Kerr Acoustics — excellent — and Connected distribution who had PMC 25.26's sounding great with a serious dollop of power from Parasound amps (bridged into dual mono) which really seemed to help.

G-Point Audio's room was also sounding fantastic whenever I passed but never ended up lingering long there as it all looked so "beyond everything".

Finally I heard the Doug Brady system 1, Marten and Gryphon power amps sounding really good in a big space.


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Arrived home and played a few tracks on my own system for comparison...thankfully it was still listenable!

Very enjoyable day and a huge thanks to all involved in putting this event on. Hope to be back to hear some of those I missed!
 
Big thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts. We set off early Saturday afternoon for the show but got caught out by some problems on the approach to Thelwall viaduct on the M6. Initially I was not troubled by the delay as I know the area inside out however all my "clever" detours end up being in another long line of static traffic and after an hour or so of going nowhere we reluctantly head back home (normally its circa 35 mins door to door).

On a different and obviously subjective note, to my eyes there's some dreadful looking kit, for example those B&W speakers, so brash they offend my senses and in other rooms, amps so big they have grab handles at the front and huge brightly illuminated meter panels, ditto cables as thick as elephants trunks, is there some rule I am not aware of that states the more it costs the bigger the item has to be ? Honestly I don't care how good they sound, they wouldn't be coming past my front door :)
 
My takeaway from all of this is that Gershman really need to sort out UK distribution :) (if not done so already). That was one of the rooms that you just walked into and thought, yes, this sounds like I need to sit and pay attention for a while.

There are rooms that I missed somehow, and I thought I'd been thorough this year! Better luck next time.

Also, it's looking like I'll have to do some research into which body parts and organs fetch the most money. The children are past the age where I can sell them I think.
 
Lots of appreciation for ATC40s in the write ups & I understand why. I’ve had mine for a couple of years now & they never disappoint, even after all this time they still surprise & delight with a wide range of music.

The temptation is always to play loud but they still sound great at lower volumes.
 
My takeaway from all of this is that Gershman really need to sort out UK distribution :) (if not done so already). That was one of the rooms that you just walked into and thought, yes, this sounds like I need to sit and pay attention for a while.

Totally agree but they are a small company and I'm not sure the UK has a big enough market however I would love to see their products available here. I have a pair of their smaller Avant Gardes and in my many years of box swapping they remain one of my favourite speakers. Even though they are not currently in my system I can't bring myself to part with them.
 


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