Some thoughts on Heathrow

Pete (Zanash) yesterday popped down to have a listen to my system and also show me his valve amp, Quad CDP (for comparison) and a new DAC he's been playing with. In addition, we got to try out some of his cables against what I'm using now.
Lets just say that the cables were a whole lot closer than they should be bearing in mind the cost discrepancy.

Today we spent the day at Heathrow, and thought it would be worth pooling some of the highlights of the show. Here's a few:

- Worst of the show. Got to be the JVC car 6*9s mounted in the best speakers in the world (apparently). Really did sound like a car stereo. Just not that pleasant.

- Best of the show:
(mine) was the Noteworthy audio room, who were running a Platine deck, Audio amps and a pair of Proac D30s (I think). Even at low volume, sounded simply awesome. Reminded me of the VPI/BP/LV combo that I've previously heard. Just luscious.
(Zanash) in equal rating were the Audio note setup, which was very lucid and did a great job of drawing us in to the music. Also was the Horn audio showing, using a pair of Lowther copies. Awesome dynamics from just 6 watts. Personally (Suk) I though that they were a little frazzled in the treble area and lacking in low bass, but that could well have been the electronics.

- Surprise of the show for both of us was the McIntosh room. I've always had the impression that they were going to be far worse than the press makes out. Quite the contrary. The scale and wow factor were probably the best of the show. If only they'd take out the over the top facias to save the distraction would be a good move.

- Odd moment of the show. In the Phonosophie room was a very enthusiastic German chap actually succeeding in demonstrating that spraying some whale pee on a disk and cleaning it really could make it sound better (I kid you not). He somehow also successfully dem'd that turning the light on some little box on the floor reduced glare from the system. I have no idea how it worked, and wouldn't cough up the dosh for it, but it certainly seemed to do the trick.
- Odd moment part two was in the dynavector room where a very nice chap was trying to explain how adding an additional pair of speakers to create "ambience" was a good move. Personally I thought that the idea was treading on the toes of Yamaha engineers and that it would be much cheaper to add an E800 or similar. Can't say I was even slightly convinced.


Others:
- Naim room. Zanash thought it sounded pretty good, despite not likeing Naim at all. Personally I was underwhelmed, but that's mainly because of the cost of it (huge).
- Consonance. Had a really good listen to some of their kit, particularly their "teardrop" CDP. VERY weird looking, costing £2k, rather laid back in approach, but was wonderful to listen to. Very relaxed. I WILL be looking at a dem of one of these in the near future. I think that it would match very well with my existing system and should be on the dem list for any NOS dac owner thinking of a serious upgrade.
Had a listen to the Consonance valve amps in at least one room, rather unwhelming for me, just didn't cut it.
- Esoteric X-01. Had to listen to this after the comments by WM recently. Awesome levels of detail that everything else on the day missed, though I'm not sure about the value for money at £9k. I think that it would be possible to get quite close for substantially less money.
- Metronome/DAC 64 combo. Rather forward (in my opinion) and a bit dry. Zanash thought that the top end was quite soft. Didn't do it for me at all.
- Seventh Veil. Great to see Steve again. Massively improved system against the last time we heard his speakers. Running a full set of EAR CDPs and amps, did just about everything extremely well. IMO lacking a little in "thwack", but as good at putting musicians "in the room" as anything else there.
- Tannoys. Neither of us were impressed in here with their big horns.
- Revolver. These chaps were showing off some Totem style very thin three way floorstanders that unlike the Totems actually did a good job of hitting most of the bits of a full range speaker. VERY impressive, despite running from a fairly naff AV amp and DVD player. Would have been interesting to hear them with the Soneteer amp and CDP that was also stuck in their rack.
- DCS/audiophysics room. Great mid range, but completely hated the dem track I used during most of the day. Seemingly no control in the bass worth speaking off, all over the shop. Couldn't take more than 15 seconds at a time. Would have liked to have heard the front end with a different pair of speakers.

Overall:
Good show, IMO MUCH more fun than any of the Bristol shows I've been to. Not that many people, no AV kit worth speaking of and some great chaps to talk to.
Surprising amount of Audio note and Horn speakers, both being a good thing I guess.

 

Photos:

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/valvebottleneck/album?.dir=101c

 

In terms of over-the-top glitzy front panels that Mcintosh setup has nothing on what they had at CES:

 

Fantastic! I want it. Dont care what it sounds like!

 

Yeah, sounded pretty dreadful.

 

Thanks for the report Mr. Sukebe, just sorry I was not well enough to make it down to meet up with you guys today.

Glad my old friends at Noteworthy are still putting on a good show.

 

Interesting report Michael,

For me, little stood out, with the possible exception of Thorsten's shirt.

Later

 

For me, the mbl setup sounded suitably impressive, and I agree that the McIntosh room was very good.
I was very impressed with the Lovington horns, which reminded me immediately of the Impulse H2's I once owned, but with tighter bass.
Also on the horn front, the Avantgardes were sounding particularly sweet.
The Lyngdorf demo convinced me that their room correction systems really work.... it's just that I didn't like the quality of sound at the end. Tonally accurate, but emotionally dead for me
The True colours demo also convinced, with noticeabe differences on their differing power cords, but I really don't want to start up that old debate again!
The Dynavector demo was just plain weird. There was no doubt that the sound improved with the ambient switched in, but it also increased in volume by c 4db, and it sounded truly, and appallingly flat without. As has been said before, Aa very nice man, and his equally nice wife were conducting the demo

The Vivid speakers initially impressed, but to my ears had a very hard top end which grated after a while.

Resolution speakers were not as bad as I had been led to believe, but remained pretty unlistenable. Also the standard of finish is about as good as I could mange in a shed (and I'm no DIY king)

Seventh Veil were nearly but not quite there for me. No sign of the Nonsuch, but the standard speakers had excellent coherence, but were let down by some congestion at the top.

The Proacs in the Noteworthy room sounded pretty good, but wouldn't tempt me to give up my LV IBX's

Too many other rooms seemed to have a harsh top end, or a flat lifeless presentation (Arcam/PMC) for me, but then I am obsessed by sweetness in the treble

Good fun though, and almost every room had something of interest

 

Hi Peter

I didn't think much of the Lovington horns myself, found them coloured and bass light.. although they did some things well IMO.

But I was wondering, did you go to the Asparta room?

The guy behind it was the/one of the designers from Impulse.

He was showing a prototype of his new horn speakers - which combined a compression horn and a 12" woofer. It was the best sounding high efficiency speaker of the day I thought.

I hope the price of these speakers when they are launched are not stratospheric, it would be nice to see a quality horn design being offered to the public that isn't silly money. I suspect this won't be the case though, as he has 4-5 models in his range and this will probably be the top model.

 

, not sure what you were thinking there T, but thanks for the early intro to your new ventures.

For me the highlight was Aspara(?) room. They played a couple of tracks requested by my daughter (something by the Gorillas(!) and one of the tracks from The Gladiator soundtrack) and I thought they were very good indeed. I think I'm turning into a horn lover.

The low point was possibly being in the room with the best loudspeakers in the world where my daughter almost threw up (literally, because she wasn't feeling well). Tannoy Glenair was also a huge disappointment for me. The 15" DC drivers raised my hopes but just didn't deliver. I don't think they were setup correctly but in such a large room they should have sounded a lot better. This coming from a Tannoy fan .

The McIntosh room impressed with the first track they played but with another they sounded a bit harsh.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the day, I like this show better than the other bigger ones and as always it was good to meet some of regular ZG mob and kmac for the first time.

 

I thought that was after seeing Thorsten's shirt!

 

I was quite impressed with the Townsend room.

As I am interested in getting a valve amp, I checked out a few of them - the Consonance amps were okay didn't really impress (monoblocs) and when I requested they audition the integrated it was worse - just dull sounding and not what I'd expect from valves.

Audiocraft had a couple of Rouge Audio amps that I quite liked the sound of.

Also liked the Audi Note amps with the Proac speakers (Noteworthy?)

Good to meet a few ZGs such as Thorsten, Simon, Kevin, Dev.

All in all I enjoyed the show and listened to some good music.

 

I thought there was a lot of good stuff .....but some of the rooms were let down where they had a good cdp but poor amplification etc..

As Mr S wrote a combined post I'll not add much more except to say I could live with the conconance droplet cdp and the sybil[?] mono blocks and the lowther based horns of HornAudio.

 

Oh yes did anyone do the demo from phonosophie ?

Well strange !
and that from someone who often dowses hifi !

But the sound did change by a remarkable ammount ??????

 

IS that Brian Taylor? Wish I'd known, I'd have gone to the show. I've been getting rumours via email that someone ex-Impulse is Up To Something...

felix (impulse fanboy)

 

Brian Taylor - wow is he still around?

If it was him I'd have dropped everything and gone to the show.

Rob (another Impulse fanboy)

 

The best part of the show for me was when I was in the Amadeus Audio room and we heard some classical music coming from the room next to us. Glyn (the exhibitor) genuinely thought it was his phone going off Says a lot for the quality of that Hi-Fi!

 

Yes, I believe it was Brian Taylor. The speakers were prototypes and were sounding pretty good. They were 2 way with a 12" horn loaded bass driver with a 4" titanium dome compression driver for mid and treble. Looked nice too.

 

How was the sound in the Ypsilon room ?



http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/valvebottleneck/detail?.dir=101c&.dnm=543b.jpg&.src=ph

 

Rather unmemorable, but it is hard to tell when all they played was plinky jazz.