Moor amps sprung a surprise at Bristol that might mean they have to reconsider their branding. The lovely looking Ascalon speakers in a very late prototype version. Respendent in their blue paintwork and being fed by Auralic and Moor's own Angel pre and power amps the Volt equipped speakers were flowing, musical, balanced, effortless and drew you in to the tunes. Very good indeed.
Welsh electronics wizards Leema put on a very dynamic attention grabbing performance with Elac's AMT equipped standmounts punching well above their weight. I listened to a good few tracks and went back for a revisit. The dynamics didn't seem to be at the expense of listener fatigue, but then again 20 minutes isn't a whole evening. Enjoyable and as they played "Blissed on Mushrooms" amongst other lesser heard and ecelectic track, they deserve the music award at Bristol 2023.
Time after time the smallest systems from Auden Distribution deliver the goods in spades - so tuneful, so much to enjoy, so little to complain about. Here they do it again using a Rega P8 with the baby Hegel 120 and the cute little Amphion Argons unassumingly making some quite expensive systems musically inadequate. Nice.
Mission's sister brand Wharfedale has been pursuing the retromod path for 3 or 4 years now with various 1970s re-boots. Now Mission has joined the fray and Peter Comeau has chosen a recreation of the original 1980s Mission 770 for the job. Visually very similar to the original, its structurally quite different - being based on a heavily constructed cabinet and a mineral filled polymer mid-bass rather than pure polymer. With the stands these are £3.5k speakers, so not longer in the modest cost / good VFM market that Mission has occupied for the past 20 years or so.
On the end of an all Audiolab 9000 system, this was a very enjoyable room - sitting for 3 or 4 tracks enjoying what it does. Clear mid-range and vocals were a strength of the originals and this is captured well again here, but is accompanied by far more sophisticated, controlled, rounded frequency extremes. The room was possibly too big and the speakers definitely too far apart which may have contributed to the feeling that a bit more bass drive / bite would be welcome.
So a great showing, and I'm in the "like" camp on the looks, but I can see why not everyone might agree.
Having heard some reasonable music from Lyngdorf components in the past, I think this is the first time I've heard a complete system from this brand. The electronics follow the usual Lyngdorf form - the TDAI-3400 is an integrated streamer / DAC / integrated amplifer in a smart, well constructed case. The Cue-100 speakers though, are a little different to the norm and therefore somewhat refreshing. The have a slightly curved front baffle and a deeply curved enclosure mounted on a wood pole tripod. The shape is pleasing in a slightly old skool kind of way and the finish is fantastic. A "sock" can be stretched over from the top down to hide the drivers. The tweeter is the increasing common AMT variety - Lyngdorf have paired this with the unusual 6.5" Purfi driver that has what looks like a creased / damaged surround. The rear of the enclosure has 2x passive bass radiators.
Well this system was great to listen to - very easy to listen to (but not in a slow, lazy way), everything was covered well and toe tapping was instinctive. Bass is deep for the size of the enclosures and the whole thing sounded effortless. £4k for the electronics and £10k for the speakers. I went back for 2 more listens just to make sure that it wasn't the music that was flattering this system, but no, all was well.
PMC had a good approach to letting showgoers know what's going on - a timetable posted just outside the room. Essentially, this year, they demonstrated a gradual progression up their mainstay Twenty5i series speakers - changing from the smallest Twenty5.21i upto the largest Twenty5.26i in hourly increments, then ending the day with fact.12 Signature. All day these speakers were driven by the £18k all-in-one CS8.3 Black Edition from the German brand, distributed by PMC in the UK.
Having owned predecessor Twenty.26 and currently owning fact.12 Signature speakers, I chose to join the room at the time they were playing the Twenty5.26i and then transitioning to the fact.12s. And here's the thing - if PMC hadn't brought the facts, there's a good chance that Twenty5.26i would've been in with a chance of Sound of the Show. They're good, very good - well balanced, fantastic imaging, tuneful, easy to enjoy.
But fact.12 Signature is in a different league. Its the kind of speaker (when driven by the obviously excellent AVM and by other suitable high performance equipment) that just simply sounds right. Within a minute or two of the first track being played you could hear people in the room murmuring to each other about what they were hearing and how much they enjoyed the music. Pace, timing, musicality, stunningly stable images, clear nuanced vocals, no harshness, stunning clarity and, above all, believability. Superb.
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| AVM and Twenty5.26i |
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| fact.12 Signature |
