"What a refreshingly honest blog about listening to music through hi-fi. So happy to see views based upon the enjoyment of music rather than so-called sound 'quality'." - Peter Comeau, Director of Acoustic Design at Mission / Wharfedale

Friday 13 October 2017

At Last - YELLO Live Blu-Ray and CD

Some great news here from the Yello camp - there will be a video disk and CD from the Berlin concerts last year.

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This was filmed at the Kraftwerk gigs in October 2016, as reported by Audiophile Musings HERE

3rd November 2017 can't come quickly enough.

Monday 2 October 2017

INDULGENCE SHOW LONDON 2017 - SOUND OF THE SHOW - ARCAM AND KEF Q SERIES

KEF Q SERIES / ARCAM ATMOS


The picture above isn't so helpful really!  But this was a full ATMOS home system in a darkened room, so photography with a phone wasn't very easy.  You can see though (if you're up on your German electronic/techno stuff) that the disk playing was the Kraftwerk live blue-ray from a recent tour.  The system here was based on the Arcam "G Series Amplification" AVR860 - a reasonably recent new product.  I heard it at the Chester show in March and was underwhelmed.  But that must've been down to the B&W 800 series speakers, system set up or a bit of both.  Because here, with the recently introduced KEF Q Series it put in a superb performance.  The Q's are not really very expensive by today's standards but here they were musical, taught, full of non-abrasive top end detail and great fun to listen to.  But the biggest attribute of this system / the way it was set up was the completely integrated sound across all the speakers.
Front we had some large floorstanders (£1450) and the centre speaker (£650). Sides and rears were smaller floor standers (£1150), I can't remember if there was a centre rear speaker or not and 2 (£600) subwoofers sat along the side walls between the side and front speakers.  £400 Atmos speakers firing upwards to bounce overhead effects off the ceiling.  Steering across this lot was stunningly seamless, far better than that achieved by the expensive Reference system elsewhere in the show.  We really thought we were going to find a whole rack of top end Arcam processing and separate power amps powering the system - but no, just a single receiver backed up by a small 4 channel power amp for the extra atmos channels.
Superb, resulting in a first for an AV system:

FULL SHOW REPORT HERE

Sunday 1 October 2017

INDULGENCE SHOW LONDON 2017 - HIGHLY COMMENDED - AVM and PMC

AVM and PMC



PMC were, as last year, playing various products to a timetable, published outside their room.  A great idea to get through several products in the day.  Unfortunately I was on a tight schedule this year, so only managed to make one visit, missing out on the opportunity to hear the new PMC cor integrated amp.
So when we hit this room the rather beautifully built (but £12k!) AVM all in one machine was playing into a set of FACT8 floorstanders - probably a good financial match for the source unit. Its a big room this, and I thought the FACTs might struggle a little.  But no, they acquitted themselves very well indeed.  This is not the first time I've heard the 8s, but it is the first time with the AVM electronics, and it was a good pairing, rather like the AVM and Twenty5.26 heard at Munich.  The FACTs still tending towards a dry and reserved kind of performance, but no doubting their ability to play a tune and make the best of the details being provided by the electronics.

A nice match.


FULL SHOW REPORT HERE