UK Audio Show 2024 - Meridian - Highly Commended and Sound of the Show Awards

 

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 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 breaths 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.

UK Audio Show 2024 - Alchris Audio Highly Commended Award

 

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.

UK Audio Show 2024 - GoldenEar Highly Commended Award

 

Just across the corridor from a £100k system that was difficult to listen to, 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 expected) 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.

UK Audio Show 2024 - Leicester Hifi - Value for Money and Highly Commended Awards

 

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 by 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.

Bristol Hifi Show 2023 - High Commended - Rega, Hegel and Amphion

 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.

Bristol Hifi Show 2023 - Highly Commended - Mission / Audiolab

 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.