Bristol Hifi Show 2020 - Best Cinema System - KEF (with Arcam)

KEF focussed on home cinema in this room - it was dark so I don't have pictures of the speaker set up, just the rack of Arcam electronics.
The room was showcasing the latest R series speakers in a Dolby Atmos configuration.  The main speakers were the floorstanding R5 supplemented by a centre, 2x subs and 4x Atmos height speakers.  A couple of demo tracks were played from a demo disc.  The sound was extremely well controlled in every sense of the word - deep, powerful bass from a music perspective, substantial and controlled thuds where appropriate to the content and the steering was superbly smooth and seamless around the room.  Its a system that does all this without any sense of harshness nor compression that's often an issue - and they didn't play it "loud to impress" but loud enough to be very enjoyable. Deeply impressive stuff, which is should be at a total of £35k. Great demo.

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

Acoustica Chester - Hifi Show 12/13 April 2014

Went to this show last year, there's a report here.

Not sure if I'll make it this year, due to other plans, but here are the details:

Dates: 12 & 13 April 2014
Venue: Doubletree by Hilton Chester
Exhibitors so far confirmed:

• Arcam
• Audiovector Loudspeakers
• Bowers & Wilkins Loudspeakers
• Chord Cables
• Classe Electronics
• Dynaudio Loudspeakers
• Focal JM Lab Loudspeakers
• Kudos Loudspeakers
• Lyra Cartridges
• Music on Vinyl specialist record dealer
• Naim Audio
• Rega Research
• Stax Headphones

Bristol Show 2014 - Arcam and Q Acoustics

Arcam disc spinner and AV receiver into Concept 20 then Concept 40.  Good range  of tunes played, but annoyingly most of them changed to the next track about halfway through. The 20s are very good for 350 - sharp, controlled, tuneful. Theyre quite expensive when you add the stands. 

The 40s (which are the floorstanders) add weight but not as much as you might hope. Both image very well. If someone said the Concept 40 was 600 to 700 pounds I'd be impressed.  But at 1k theyre not the knock out I would hope for. They genuinely did have a rubbish room though, with a semi-domed ceiling. Not helped by the Q staff nattering and giggling with some mates at the back of the room. Why can't these people step out into the corridor? !?

Chester Hifi Show March 2013 Review

Must be show season, with Scalford on 3rd March, Manchester coming up on 23 / 24 March and last weekend's Chester show put on by Acoustica and held at the Doubletree Hotel on the outskirts of the City.  A bijou show this one - just 6 systems on show, and a couple of iPod docs from B&W too.

Here's a summary of what we heard:

Naim electronics / Guru speakers sounding very good in the top of the stairwell - not exactly the ideal place to put a system, so quite challenging. Perferred the standard Gurus to the new Juniors - the Juniors sounding very good with some music but going hard and unforgiving on other music.  The standard Gurus are quite remarkable for such small boxes - going very deep and filling the room without any signs of strain.

Rega RP6 / Classe / B&W 805s (the RP8 they were hoping to demo had failed in the morning). We were in this room when they played Dark Side Of The Moon and it was rubbish.
The disc that is, should've been binned - sounded like the dog had eaten its dinner off that disc, why on earth anyone would use that to demo anything is beyond me. We waited a good 15 minutes into the first side to see if it cleared up but it didn't. Demoing at its worst. Unfortunate for the system, but we didn't bother going back for more.

Naim electronics (2 x NAP300 bi-amping, HDX and DAC as a streamer, not sure about all the power supplies nor the pre-amp) into the £145k AudioVector R11s. On first entering the room this system sounded mighty impressive - oodles of detail, rock solid imaging etc. But after about 20 minutes I realised I hadn't been toe-tapping at all, bass was so tightly controlled it was somewhat lacking and the sheer height of those things make them completely impractical for 99% of homes. But it was the lack of involvement in the music that struck me. They played a live version of Smoke on the Water that had 2 people leave the room and the rest of us begging them to stop playing it. I've never felt the need to ask someone to stop playing something at a hifi show before.

Naim electronics (NDS streamer and lots of NAP300s) driving the new to maket £30k Ovator 800 speakers in active mode. In a converted barn. Magnificent room, completely unsuitable for listening to a home hifi.  Why? What are the dealers and manufacturers trying to achieve by putting a system in such an unsuitable environment?  Are they trying to put people off buying their stuff? Pretty much everything pop / rock sounded congested and cardboardy (anyone who has head the smaller Ovators will probably recognise that description). Sounded good with some very simple choral music, but went all congested (compressed even?) when the whole choir and organ ensemble joined in together.

Naim electronics (NDS, 252, not sure on the amps) into Kudos Super 20 floorstanders (£4,250). At last some musicality. Really superb. Saved £141k on speakers there then, in comparison to the AudioVectors! This really was the stand out system for all 4 of us. Beautiful sounds here - no nastiness, no real compromises, but also worth noting that this was probably the most realistically "domestic" room in the whole show - and the type of room the show needs to concentrate on. They also played some vinyl on a DPS turntable with Naim Aro and Dynavector XV II which was a pleasure - great dynamics and no background noise at all.

Arcam DVD player and Arcam top end AVR receiver, B&W 5.1 system - played Toto's Africa from a recent concert on Blu-ray. A band clearly enjoying what they were doing and a very immersive experience - wanted to applaud at the end. One of our group thought it sounded poor, but I thought it sounded like a real concert PA system, so you can make your own mind up on that one!  Watching the remastered Star Wars on Blu-ray was good too, but a touch of harshness now and then.  As usual, it might be better to demo these systems at a slightly lower volume - high enough to show off the dynamics, but not so loud as to strain the system.

Sorry about the vagueness regarding kit, but these "professionals" need to learn from the enthusiasts at the Hifi Wigwam Show at Scalford - they give you lots of information about the kit in use and many provide playlists too. Yesterday at the Doubletree there were no kit lists in evidence and no playlists to choose music from.  It would be a very small amount of effort to put a kit list on the door or wall and to print a few music lists out - make an effort please professionals - you are trying to sell product here, this kind of detail should be a given, not seen as a nuisance.

There were some live musicians in the bar too - mainly just jamming, but clearly talented and good to listen too when we took a 15 minute break from the systems.

Meanwhile, In The World of Multi-Channel

I run a pre-pro in my system (a combined pre-amplifier and surround processor that needs to be connected to multiple power amps rather than having built-in power amps) as I like the idea of one decent quality system rather than splitting funds between AV and music systems (although if I had a big enough house and I'd won the lottery, that's exactly what I'd do).

Unfortunately, there's a restricted choice of such products out in the market.  I've used a Meridian Pro-Logic pre-pro for about 11 years and have recently moved to a Linn AV5103.  However, Linn are out of that market and Meridian are only producing products in the stratosphere.

So that leaves Rotel (good value), Arcam (apparently a great product, but not exactly budget) and other esoterics such as Parasound.  Now Bryston has a new product called the SP-3, launching at the Bristol Show later this month.  It won't be a bargain, but its good to see some more choice.  I look forward to trying to find a review!

Slew Of New Cyrus Products and Price Cuts

Cyrus have launched some (what they call) budget products to move themselves back down into a market they've gradually vacated over the past 3 years or so.  They think that under £800 per component is the budget market...

So we're probably off into alphabet soup product naming again.  From what I can gather from the pretty good sources I've checked on, these seem to be the highlights:

CD Transport reduced in price to £600
New 6a Integrated Amp 40 wpc £800
New 8a Integrated Amp 70 wpc £1200
New 6 DAC  which is the 6a integrated but with a DAC £700
New 8 DAC which is the 8a integrated but with a DAC £1200
New Qx DAC with 192kHz upsampling DAC £1400
Some new integrated CD players too
PSX-R power supply down to £500 (hurrah!)

Most interesting for me would be the Qx DAC, but initial information indicates that its special because it upsamples to 192kHz.  Unfortuately the old DAC X+ did that too, so I'm hoping the QX isn't just a re-badging exercise as that box is a bit long in the tooth now and it would be better to see Cyrus pushing hard against the likes of Naim's DAC and the new ARCAM FMJ33 DAC.

Looks like we'll have to wait until the Bristol show for the full details.