Swiftly on the heels of the UK Hifi Show Live at Ascot, the season continues with the UK Audio Show at Staverton Estate just outside Daventry in the UK.
I last reported on this annual event in 2022 when the show was so big it took 2 reports to cover everything:
2022 Report Part 1
2022 Report Part 2
That show clearly benefitted from being the first major show to run in the "come back" from Covid and it really had no competition to deal with that year. So in comparison this year's show was a smaller but still worthwhile visit - possible to cover within either one of the two days over the weekend of 5/6 October 2024.
Parking was down the road in a field and it was a good thing it wasn't wet as it could've been a very muddy situation. A mini bus ran every 10 minutes or so to ferry visitors on the 2-3 minute journey to the hotel venue. This arrangement was probably much appreciated by the regular visitors to the hotel and the golfers playing on the estate course. A further organisational improvement over 2022 was the use of a secondary entrance for access to the show, the hotel reception area being freed up for normal business. A 6 page glossy A4 leaflet listed all the exhibitors and offered a rudimentary plan of each of the 2 floors of exhibition rooms. These were spread across a variety of sizes of meeting and syndicate rooms. No bedrooms were used in 2024. It seemed that footfall might have been down on previous years, this making it easy to get into the rooms and move around the building. A nice feature of the show is a series of presentations scheduled throughout the day, time constraints meant that we didn't make any of the sessions this year.
Refreshments were available to purchase on the first floor landing area and in the restaurant. Free vend tea and coffee was made available, which was much appreciated. So, on with the pictures and notes...
DRIVING SOUNDS MAGAZINE
Usually, when car audio is included in this kind of show it feels a bit "left out", often in the car park and just as often in the cold and wet. So it was refeshing to see the UK Audio Show providing enough indoor space for a car audio demo featuring 4x cars in total. The quality of the install workmanship in the 2x Porsches was very high and in keeping with the materials used in their interiors. The Tesla 3 had an install that used all the original speaker locations and added a sub and amp in the boot floor. The BMW sampled was enjoyable enough, but I don't really have any higher end car audio references with which to make a comparison. A nice display from
Driving Sounds Magazine.
HENLEY AUDIO (Larger Room)
In the larger of their 2x dem rooms,
Henley were playing a
Rose streamer or
E.A.T. turntable into a Rose amp and
Piega speakers (a brand new to me) which are £15k aluminium enclosures. With the turntable it all sounded somewhat compressed and uninspiring. Switching to the streamer made no significant difference.
Thankfully there was at least lots of static kit in the room to spend some time browsing:
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| Bright and cheery Pro-Ject entry level system. Unfortunately not playing. |
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| The Wiim Amp is a streamer and integrated amp in one £319 compact but beautifully finished box |
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| Wiim Ultra is a streamer and pre-amp - see the notes on the Leicester Hifi room about Wiim's impressive VFM |
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| Rose streamer has an impressive front panel display. It's a touch panel, which is awkward to use at anything other than eye level. Why not save the funds as most will be using a phone or tablet anyway? |
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| Beautifully presented EAT valve phono stage |
ALPHASON AUDIO
Promoting the recently re-lauched (and iconic)
Alphason tonearm the team used Alphason components "from back in the day" to present a lively and enjoyable sound.
LEICESTER HIFI
I understand
Leicester Hifi has been involved in low volume speaker production for some time. This was my first encounter with such a product. If you've read any other of my show reports you'll know I'm absolutely not a fan of the LS3/5a speakers, their clones, their recreations or a number of speakers "inspired" by them. Beyond great vocal clarity I find them thin, pushy and get tired of listening to them very quickly.
But wait - I had a chat with the designer of the diminutive LH1 speaker shown here and, when offering my thoughts on their performance, expressed my surprise at how an LS3/5a derivative sounded so different. I was firmly advised that the only similarity with that classic design is in size and looks. The drivers, crossovers and internal damping arrangements share nothing with LS3/5a and as such are a different solution. And boy does it show in their performance. This is a design that challenges expectations and perceptions. It's fast, tuneful, provides a surprising amount of weight and impresses with its smoothness (note, smoothness in this sense is not about smoothing the edges off or being laid back, it just doesn't exhibit any nasty edges). Imaging is first class. Even playing our choice of Deadmau5's Avarita it did a great job on such a bass heavy track.
Also worthy of note here is that this enjoyable result was being fed by nothing more exotic than a Wiim Pro-plus streamer - a mere £219 (its hiding behind the yellow board on the bottom of the rack). CS710 Pre-amp (£4k) and 620E-III stereo power amp (£2k?) are from Crimson Audio, cables from Audioquest.
Impressed - if you're limited on space or you want to hear what an LS3/5a size product can achieve (and for £1500 about half the price of the current clone products), seek out these little boxes for a listen. A worthy double award winner.
HENLEY AUDIO (Smaller Room)
A
Wiim streamer was playing into the (recently revived) classic
Musical Fidelity A1 class A integrated amp. Another pair of Aluminium bodied Piega speakers finished off the system and, like in the larger room, sounded uninspiring but added a lack of bass into the mix.
CHORD CABLES
Chord were running full loom upgrade demos. We didn't sit in on any demos but arrived into the room just as a cycle of upgrades had completed. At this point a full end to end Music cable loom was stringing together the (massive) Musical Fidelity NuVista Phono Stage, Chord Electronics amp and Kerr Acoustics speakers. An E.A.T. turntable acted as the source. An enjoyable system nicely coping with the largish room, with the Kerr's delivering a well balanced sound from the rest of the system feeding them.
ART LOUDSPEAKERS
A full stack of
Bricasti electronics fed the
ART Impression Diamond Reference speakers. Listening to several tracks to make sure this wasn't just about the recordings, this system excelled on details but had a hard quality to the overall sound - it was impossible for me to get past that and into the music. It will suit some who seek detail over emotion. At an estimated £100k, I'd hope for more.
GOLDENEAR
Just across the corridor from ART,
Goldenear brought a system based around
Heed electronics, Audioquest cables and their BRX standmounts that feature AMT tweeters and twin sidemounted passive radiators for the bass loading. A system that comes in at under £5k was by far a more musical experience than across the corridor. Not the same level of detail, but engaging - you wanted to listen and listen to more, as opposed to wanting to leave the room. Goldenear demonstrated the system with and without the subwoofer. This added bass (as you might expect) and cleaned up female vocals (which you might not expect) but also made the timing of the music more sluggish. I preferred the system without, but more experimentation or a different room (this was a small room) may have given a different result.
ACCESSORIES IN THE GROUND FLOOR CORRIDOR
A number of accessory vendors (such as cables, equipment racks etc.) were showing in the ground floor corridor area.
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| These brightly coloured cables from Black Rhodium caught the eye |
PSI AUDIO AVAA
PSI Audio used their Heritage 3 active loudspeakers to demonstrate their
AVAA product in one of the larger demo rooms.
What is AVAA? Well, in the picture above its the 1 metre or so high black cylinder sat in front of the wall behind the speakers. There were 8 AVAAs in the demo room - one in each corner and one at the mid-point of each of the 4x walls. Simply put, AVAA is an active bass trap - it uses a microphone to monitor the sound around it then puts out its own sound to counteract any bass boom in that part of the room - using the opposite phase. Think of it as noise cancelling for too much energy in the sub 100Hz region.
Does it work? Yes. The first demo was the demonstrator jumping and landing on the floor - with the AVAA switched off, then again with them on and the reduction in the boom in the room was very obvious. Some bass heavy music was then played with and without the devices - the difference is clear and on this first and brief demo, improved intelligibility of bass lines noticeably. They're £3k each - a minimum of 2x is recommended (corners of the room behind the speakers) - the precise number of devices and their locations is room dependent.
SUPER NATURAL AUDIO / CLIP
Super Natural were playing the distinctive
Curvi single BMR driver horn loaded speakers with a Clip Audio turntable at the front end providing the signal to SNA valve based electronics. The room was a little busy and we could only listen whilst standing up, so not a fair test - but what we heard was enough to remind me that I really should listen to Kate Bush's earlier works far more often.
ALCHRIS AUDIO
Its always refreshing to go into an unpretentious, uncluttered demo room. At NWAS this year
Alchris brought along multiple speaker models that packed out their room as they strived to touch all bases. But at UK Audio Show for 2024 they brought their most compact models. Alchris design and build all their products in the UK, selling direct to customers.
Booki is a tiny 2-way with a rear passive radiator. But its punches way above its weight and size. Its fast, fun and drives music along with enthusiasm. It produces bass, but of course its not extremely deep, but what it doesn't do is try to compensate for this with an over eager top end - its a well balanced solution and worked well in this room. At £779 its a great solution for smaller spaces.
Stepping up to the transmission line loaded and ribbon tweeter equipped
TX1 standmount gave a fuller sound that provided more warmth and detail, but retained that sense of fun and pace of the tiny Booki. At £1250 it offers very good value.
Back to that uncluttered comment. Both of these speakers were demonstrated with the
Cambridge Audio EVO 75 which is a £1500 all-in-one streamer and amplifier. It did a couple of things here today - it provided a real life solution at a sensible price that would work in many homes and it provided a quality and enjoyable signal to show off the performance of the Alchris products.
TURNTABLE HAVEN
Turntable Haven take idler drive classics from the likes of Goldring, Garrard and Lenco, refurbish everything as required (e.g. bearings replaced, idler drives replaced etc) and then house them into newly created plinths machined from solid bocks of ply. Here examples played through a Music First Audio passive pre-amp and Magnum power amp into
NSMT loudspeakers - where the upper driver is in a sealed enclosure but the lower driver is ported, and unusual approach. Sounded good.
REEL RESILIENCE
For me this room was more of a curiosity then anything else. The sound from the Studer deck on the right was extensive and unforced with a remarkable sense of stability.
EJ JORDAN LOUDSPEAKERS
EJ Jordan used Audio Detail electronics to demonstrate the above floorstanding speaker that features 2 of their "wide band" drive units. I can't find anything on their website about this model, so assume it is a new product. Its a box a little over 1m tall and only 15cm or so deep. The system was playing some uncomplicated jazz music which was sweet enough, but probably chosen to bring out the best in the speakers without challenging them. Being late in the day for us, we didn't bother interrupting the room hosts' conversation to ask for something different...
Update following feedback from EJ Jordan on 9 October 2024: these are the Kingsway speaker and will feature on their website shortly. They are a dipole design and have 2 further drive units on the rear panel. Thanks for the info Colin.
AUDIO NOTE ROOM 1
Audio Note's TT Three and CD 5.1x fed the MKP integrated amplifier which powered the AN-K SPx SE speakers located in AN's traditional location - the corners of the room. This was AN's more "conventional" offering at the show. Whilst I normally stuggle with AN systems at shows, this one was at least listenable. The finest grade of audiophile business cards had been deployed to level the turntable.
AUDIO NOTE ROOM 3
In Audio Note's second room a very compact system was set up demonstrating the AX-1 loudspeakers. We engaged Peter from AN in a conversation about how well they sell versus AN's more traditional product categories and ended up being educated about dealer stratification, EU vs UK university experiences, the broken state of the UK and various points in-between. Whilst this was fascinating and could've continued all day, we still don't know how the speakers sound :)
Meanwhile, in the 3rd AN room, the fascinating field coil AN-E Ltd speakers were being demonstrated. Details on what field coil is about on the AN website
here. They're £50k a pair and in their 12 months to date have sold over 100 pairs. Their finish looked stunning in the warm light from the floor feature lighting. The 4 CD transport, 4.1x balanced DAC, an M series Pre-amp and
Ongaku Kensei delivered on the promise of the AN-E Ltd- the sound being fast, controlled, well timed and detailed. I can't say the AN sound suits me, but it was good to hear a system that I wanted to listen to, rather than leave the room - in my books a major step forward for the brand. At a price of course.
FOCAL/NAIM
When you walk into a room branded
Focal / Naim and there's no familiar Naim boxes in the room, you begin to wonder if the Focal take over has gone the final step. On further examination that's probably a step too far of a conclusion to reach, at least not yet.
Here Focal were demonstrating their new Diva Utopia speakers. One speaker contains a streamer and feeds a digital signal both internally and wirelessly to the other speaker. The speakers are analogue active with power amps dedicated to each drive unit. All of these electronic elements are "200ish" level Naim components - hence the joint branding of the room. The speakers are outwardly branded as Focal but have small Naim logos on the back panel. They're said to be similar in performance to Sopra No2.
Featuring an evolved design language these Divas are wrapped in semi-detached compressed fibre (felt) material jackets - grey only at the moment but they are detachable so I imagine alternative colours may follow later. It seems there are no acoustic properties assigned to these panels. The signature Focal inverted metal dome tweeter and grey cone mid feature on the front panel and 2x opposed bass drivers are mounted on each side.
How do they sound? Well, lots of details and a bright sound - not as bad as the usual Focal offerings, but still edgy enough to be tiring to listen to. An interesting new development for this pairing, but still short of the mark for me.
RUSSELL K
Russell K gave a really good presentation in the presentation suite last time I visited. By moving a pair of his speakers around in the room he very ably and simply demonstrated how different a pair of speakers can sound just through their position, thereby educating the audience into experimenting with position to get the best result.
This year Russell demonstrated the Red 150 SE floorstander (in a very well finished gloss white) in a room that looked too large for them. Fed by some expensive looking T+A electronics and a Melco server they did a great job. Lively but not shouty, bass not overly extended but very well controlled, nice imaging and good on the timing side.
Cable lifters in evidence.
MERIDIAN
Its over 10 years since
Meridian attended a UK hifi show - a bizarre choice I never quite understood. Perhaps they were doing OK without too much publicity, but it does seem like an odd policy. Maybe now the MQA cash cow has (thankfully) died a death, they need to go back to their roots and make money out of hifi products again?
When we entered the room, the flagship DSP8000 XE streaming active speakers were playing - they're the piano black behemoths in the picture above. They weigh in at 95kg each and the class D amps for the bass drivers are capable of just under 1kW. Class A-B amps drive the tweeters and the mids in the separated top cabinets.
Although this was a large demo room, Meridian had effectively split it into 2 smaller rooms, each with one open side, by putting a pair of speakers firing across each half of the room. So this might not have been the ideal set up for this large flagship speaker, but they certainly demonstrated huge power, scale, dynamics and detail. Everything hit home but there was a sense of complete ease about the presentation - how they balance such impact with such a sense of musicality is very impressive - they're not shouty, they're not harsh, they don't do detail at the expense of musical engagement, they just do the lot. The only reservation I have, and it may be that they just need more room to work in, is that the scale of things was unrealistic. Sure a big bass drum or a full orchestra should sound big, but when the vocals and the smaller instruments like violins sounded 3 or 4 times larger than the real thing, that let the side down a bit. Would like to hear them in a better situation. £80k the pair.
Then we moved over to the other half of the room to sit in front of the second tier offering - the DSP9, here presented in a very sophsticated mid-blue metallic. Any RAL colour is on offer, of course. At £65k a pair they're not exactly a bargain, but they are source, amps and speakers all in one, and its not hard to spend £65k on an amp alone of course...
At first listen these appeared to be a disappointment. But our room host was playing a bit of a trick on us as he'd actually started playing the little Ellipse all-in-one unit seen at the back between the large speakers. At which point it became very clear that this is a very impressive unit indeed. Worth a listen if you've got £1900 to spend on something for the kitchen / office / etc.
But back to the DSP9 - well, its pretty much as impressive as the bigger sibling. A touch less weight, but that really is only apparent in direct comparison - I'm pretty sure that if I'd arrived cold to these they'd still be taking the breath away. They do all the same stuff as the larger ones - that uncanny ability to drive, punch, excite, inform but also engage, avoiding any edginess, no harshness, everything presented beautifully - but with one major difference. Here the orchestra is huge, but the violin is a sensible size in the image. Maybe they're better suited to the room, but for me this was the better, more enjoyable speaker because that over sized effect wasn't there to distract. Truly an excellent product.
Welcome back to the shows Meridian, a great return.
Coppice Audio were another room using Audio Detail electronics to drive the speakers shown in the pictures. I don't know much about these and they're not featured on the CA website. It seems they might have been a one-off or very low volume run and the demo pair in the room were "for sale to make way for new projects". Whilst I think there was a lack of imaging from these speakers, they were certainly easy going and an enjoyable listen. Will be interesting to hear what comes next.
ULTRAFIDE by MC2
A new brand to me, Ultrafide have crossed over from professional audio into the World of home audio. They're a British brand. Here they were using an
EMMLabs Meitner streamer / DAC to demonstrate their U4PRE pre-amp and U500DC power amplifier combination. A pair of Spendor Classic 100 speakers completed the system. An LP12 was on hand from Linn dealer Ripcaster who will be selling Ultrafide and it was good to finally meet up with Jon Nelson from Ripcaster and have a chance to catch up on all things Linn in the corridor.
We listened to some Deadmau5 and Chris Jones to get an idea of what's on offer here. And, whilst this isn't the last word in detail nor slam, its a very easy going, relaxed sounding system. No fripperies or extremes of anything good nor bad. A solid, engaging listen that you could probably sit in front of for hours on end.
CADNAM
As time was running out, a quick dip into the
Cadnam room revealled a decent sound coming from the largest boxes in the room, but the time was spent discussing the materials the black and white speakers are made from - something similar to Corian which is used to a very striking effect in terms of the visuals - they look like they're hewn from solid. A tap on the box sides indicate they're pretty inert too. Worth further investigation the next time they pop up at a show.
SOLID SOUNDS / THE SPINNING ROOMAnother room for which time had run out. I have heard Paul's Hex 3 speakers at previous shows and they've made big strides forward in this iteration. More information on Solid Sounds and The Spinning Room here.
