Absolute Sounds took 3 rooms at the show. The larger 2 rooms were running 40 minute demos every hour or so. You needed to book a ticketed slot in advance - so there's a need to get over to the desk outside the rooms to book, pretty much as soon as you get to the show.
On to the first room we visited. Absolute Sounds boss Ricardo Franassovici spoke about some of his thoughts on music and the audio industry. Basically boiled down to 2 things: listen to systems for the music and the emotions the music brings and not for the quality of reproduction of the kit or the production quality of the recording. The second was never buy audiophile recordings as they feature music and artists you're not interested in. This blog has long championed the first of these, the second I disagree with - if you ONLY buy these recordings, he has a point, but if you buy these recordings in addition to normal recordings, maybe you even enjoy the artists they represent, then that's your choice. No one should tell you which music to buy and which music to enjoy, as long as its the music you enjoy and not the recording.
Anyway, he illustrated his view with about 10 tracks of differing recording quality from the 50s to the 80s. Normally I'm not a fan of Magico, but perhaps I just haven't heard them in the right system before. They're normally cold, technical, analytical and not, for me, likely to convey the musical emotion about which Ricardo was talking. The front end was dCS digital playing files from an Antipodes server, a familiar combination that I know can be musical when paired with the right kit. However, up until this point I'd only heard Magico with Audio Research, d'Agostino or McIntosh electronics. Here the electronics came from Robert Koda, a boutique brand from an island near Japan that produces very very small volumes of kit.
Well this was the first time for me to enjoy music presented through Magicos (in this case the S5) - so I can only imagine its down to the differences between those electronics brands. I learned afterwards that Koda worked for Kendo and wanted to recreate the Kondo sound with solid state electronics, and that pretty much defines what was on offer here. The "technical" presentation of Magico was gone - they were far more rounded, friendly and approachable. There was musical flow and no nasty edges pretending to be detail. It was easy to listen to the music rather than the kit. Even Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water at "realistic" volumes was full of punch, dynamic, powerful anger and hard hitting drums but delivered without any discomfort. Impressive.
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