The show was a little disappointing compared to previous years with little in the way of new products and with poor sound throughout the show. However there was still plenty to lust after, many of which I’ve tried to feature below. However unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of a few items including the preview of the new EAR turntable that was on static display in their room. There was also a new cheaper deck from the makers of the £50,000 Blue Pearl Audio Jem which was a striking design with huge springs on proud display.

I kicked myself for missing a rare appearance of the laser turntable although I heard mixed reports from other show goers suggesting that its performance is as dependent on the condition of the LP as various articles have already mentioned.



Art Audio bought along some mouth watering amplifiers (as usual), this time in the form of the new Argento. This a parallel single ended design which unusually is available in either stereo or mono block form. They are wired throughout with cryogenically treated silver wire, including the output transformers.

Sources were either the resolution Opus 21 CD player or a Garrard 501 which were playing through Art Audio’s own speakers (see below) which are an interesting design, that uses an active bass system to lighten the load on the amplifier and are mounted in a separate enclosure from the higher frequency units. The sound was rather bright when I stuck my head around the door, but other elements to the sound seemed very promising.



In the Audio Reference room the Acapella Campanella speakers were being shown in the UK for the first time. In a departure from their larger models these do not use their famous ionic tweeter but instead seem to use a more conventional dome, albeit loaded with a wave guide.
Sadly they just weren’t working at all well in such a small room as the bass output from the four LF drivers were rather overpowering when I visited.


Avid showed the £9,000 Actus Reference turntable which is shown above with the extremely cool Dynavector DV507 tonearm. Even the power is massively over engineered (pictured below) with huge storage capacitance.

For those that want something that bit more extreme Avid also produce a gold plated version of the Reference (below), which costs a not insubstantial £11,000.






Indian firm Cadence bought along their hybrid electrostatic and reflex speakers and were being driven by their stunning looking hybrid Canasya which use four 845 valves per channel to produce 200 watts a side.



Exposure debuted the new 2010S electronics which will be available in time for Christmas ‘05. These are in essence a tweaked version of the previous model with the ‘S’ in the model name standing for ‘Super’, named in the tradition of the classic Exposure amplifiers.


Ferguson Hill showed their new active bass speaker system which has been designed to augment the output of their Lowther based FH001 horn speakers. Cosmetically they are a big success with their spherical clear acrylic cabinets although when I visited the room there seemed to be rather too much bass output for my liking, spoiling the blend between between the two. I suspect that this was just a case of a little too much level on the bass drivers (or the dreadful room acoustics rearing their heads again) but if they can solve this issue then they should have a nice full range speaker system.



Show Report Page 2