Noteworthy Audio Heathrow April 2006

Heathrow High Fidelity show report
1st-2nd April 2006

For the second year we exhibited at the Chester Group Heathrow show. This year it had grown substantially with nearly double the number of manufacturers in attendance and considerably more visitors.

Pictures of many of the exhibitors rooms can be found in the show reports section of the Hifi Portal website

What follows below is a very short tour of some of the most interesting sights we saw on our brief visits away from our room.

But to start with here is an overview of our room:

On arrival we were rather surprised to find our room was a lot smaller than we’d been told, with effectively square dimensions instead of the rectangular ratio expected, which is not good when you’re bringing speakers that have very extended bass. Thankfully the ease with which the side ported ProAc D38 can be accommodated and a few simple foam panels meant that the bass was acceptible particularly when the room was full of bodies and listened to away from the back wall.

You can see an overview of the system we were using by clicking here to download the handout we prepared for the show (and thanks to printer trouble at the last minute very few people got a complete copy when they came to our room).

The only change made to the system from that listed in the handout was the use of a 12” Ikeda tonearm on the Platine Verdier, this was because there was a last minute problem fitting the Tecnoarm to the armboard supplied. The Ikeda is currently out of production but is a lovely arm, and we’re looking forward to its replacement which should be available quite soon.

Above: The Isotek Titan (at the far left) conditioned the noisy hotel mains supply. At the bottom of the left Something Solid XR rack were the Audion Silver Night 300B parallel single ended monoblocks, above them was the Audio Note Dac 2.1 Signature and on the top was the Tron battery power supply for the turntable and its motor.
On the bottom of the right rack was the Talk Electronics Thunder 2.2 Transport, above it the Silver wired Music First Audio pre amp, and beneath the Verdier was our Note Products PhoNote MC phono stage. Mains cabling was the new Chord Rower Chord, digital interconnect was the Chord Signature Digital and all analogue cable were Note Products PurerNote.

Horn Audio were our neighbours for the weekend and were demonstrating their version of the classic Lowther Opus One cabinets, constructed from Baltic Birch Ply and fitted with Lowther EX4 drive units.
On static display they also had their version of the Fidelio cabinet, shown below.

Aspara Acoustics is a new speaker brand from Brian Taylor (previously of Impulse speakers fame).
The Ł6,000 HL1 (pictured above) uses a 12” paper driver in what’s described as a modified exponential cabinet, with a compression driver on a radial horn for the high frequencies. The overall sensitivity is in the region of 100dB.
Their smaller model, the HL2 pictured below, costs Ł3,250.

The Audio Reference room (was as usual) festooned with Shun Mook Accessories throughout.

The foyer was busy, with the two record stalls getting a lot of attention.

Alium Audio had a good range of Consonance equipment on display being played through the Coincident speakers.
On static display was the very attractive new Forbidden city range (pictured below).

Musicology, importers of the Zu range of products were playing the Druid in their room, an excellent speaker we’ve already had the pleasure of enjoying in our own dem room. The system used had what was probably best described as a prototype CD player (basically what appeared to be an MDF box with a lid that hinged up to access both the transport and circuit boards inside, which were running of a large battery. A 1.6 watt valve power amp was driving the speakers. The mains cable (see below) was quite an unusual design to say the least!

Isol-8 and Funk shared a room, with Arthur doing comparative demonstrations of a standard LP12 and one that had been funk’d with the addition of the Vector drive and carbon fibre top plate.

Isol-8 displayed The Grid (below), a rack mounted 8 to 12 way output mains conditioned primarily designed for the professional market.

Audion were playing their 300B PSE amps, the same design that we’d chosen to use in our room too (shows great minds think alike!) They were being played through a pair of prototype Revolver speakers which when prodcued will be their new top of the range design.

I couldn’t resist including the picture above, as Audion were proudly displaying the Silver Note, the 2A3 amplifier they make exclusively for us, which we too had on display in our room.

GT Audio showed their latest import into the UK, the stunning looking TW Acustic Raven AC turntable. This high mass (50kg) design uses a high torque DC motor and can even be ordered with up to 3 motors if required. It was being played through the Avantgarde Duo speakers pictured below.

The Emporium brought along a Garrard 301 which was being played through the Italian Viva amps that they distribute, which were driving Quad 57 electrostatic speakers.

Lovington were showing the SH.1 (Single Horn) which is an interesting design. It’s based around a 4” Fostex FX120 full range drive unit mounted in a reflex enclosure, which itself is ported into a truncated exponential bass horn.
Thin materials are intentionally used for the cabinet including 12.5mm ply and veneered mdf which are used to add “an amount of resonance, producing natural warmth in the bass region”.

It was good to see Tannoy represented at this event. When I visited the room they were playing the Glenair (close up pictured below), being driven by Cairn electronics. Unfortunately the room was far too large and sparsely furnished to get a good sound.

I was intrigued to see the tiny Autograph Mini for the first time, this most compact model in the Prestige range (pictured on the speaker stand in the picture above) looks very interesting and its Ł1,250 price tag makes owning a Tannoy Prestige model far more affordable than ever before.

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