UK Audio Show Deluxe 2025 - Highly Commended Award for Kuzma / SJS Arcadia / Living Voice as presented by Definitive Audio

Vinyl, valves, wood.  A very traditional combination of components, yet at the same time thoroughly modern designs and performance.  Thankfully there was a good range and variety of music on offer in this room, so that was good as it gives a chance to have a proper listen.  The Living Voice R80 again performed well in this room and this system combination, despite being right on the edge of being too big for the room.  It seems the Kuzma - SJS Arcadia synergy is delivered well in this speaker - by far the most musical and coherent speaker I've heard from LV (yes, I've heard the Vox Olympians) - airy, punchy but controlled, imaging well and pushing the emotions in vocal performances.  Definitive Audio fed the system from the Audes DT-3600 power conditioner, making a break from their usual battery array, making the system far more domestically acceptable.  The room was busy on each visit - visitors finding it a good place to spend some time listening to music.

Audio Show Deluxe, Whittlebury Hall, March 2023 - Highly Commended - Definitive Audio

 

Living Voice brought along their 600Ah battery pack power supply

The new Living Voice R80 loudspeaker

Kuzma front end, SJS Arcadia amps

Grand Prix Monaco 2 TT with Kuzma arm

Living Voice brought along their new (4 years in development) R80 speakers to listen to.  They look like a much larger evolution of the R25 / OBX lineage and sit between those speakers and the Vox Olympians in the range.  Here they were fed analogue signals from Grand Prix Monaco 2 and Kuzma turntables into SJS Arcadia valve amplification. This is a stunning system having a nicely balanced mixed of attributes - dynamic, clear, confident, full of substance and intent but no signs of edginess nor an over-aggressive nature. For me this is LV's best speaker, clearly fed by a top quality signal and significantly outperforms the Vox Olympian in terms of musical enjoyment. This is another system that could potentially have taken a sound of the show award but on my second, third and fourth visits were playing simple unchallenging jazz twiddling. Come on exhibitors, have some conviction and play some music representative of what most people actually listen to.

Bristol Hifi Show 2020 - Turntable of the Show Award - Kuzma and Living Voice

 

The Stobi R turntable from Kuzma was playing through valve based electronics into Living Voice Auditorium speakers. For these ears, this was the best sounding turntable at the show, and possibly the best sounding valve electronics too.  The LV Auditoriums are a perennial favourite but they don't always seem to get the front end they deserve. But here today it all came together very well - it's one of those buttery smooth systems, but without the lack of dynamics that description normally implies. A very enjoyable system and one I could've listened to for a good while.

In the background can be seen Living Voice's Pure Music battery power supply - this converts AC mains to DC into the batteries and then re-generates the AC mains from those batteries, essentially an attempt to isolate the system from mains bound noise and instability.