Heathrow High Fidelity show report 3rd-4th April 2004
The Chester Group hosted their third show at Heathrow this year and even though its been growing each year the exhibitor list still numbered only 22, so I thought I was going to get away with writing just a brief account. However the quality of the exhibits were on the whole very high, with the majority of the systems shown sounding very musical and ably demonstrating their designers particular take on reproduction. The location, the Radisson (5 star) Hotel, is a quite spectacular venue, which I sadly haven’t been able to do justice to in any of the pictures here, but the quality of the building construction I’m sure led to the better than average show sound.
In order of our route around the show here are some of our favourites:
The first room we ventured into was Beauhorn’s and they were running the Lowther equipped Virtuosa. Compared to the B2.2’s that were sitting alongside, these speakers almost looked small in this substantial room, but with some superbly integrated subwoofers the sound easily filled the large space. The system was being driven by the matching Obligato amplifier, seen nestling on the table between the speakers with its bright blue fascia making it really stand out.
This was a bit of a surprise to me, until now I’ve never heard a McIntoch amplifier in a system that really appealed to me, but in this room the MA2275 integrated amplifier was sounding very musical when combined with the matching MVP851 CD/DVD player and the Dali Euphonia MS4’s.
‘A’ Audio Solutions impressed us at the recent Bristol show and they didn’t disappoint this time either. The system was somewhat simpler than before, with no DSP or sub woofers being used, instead the Dali Euphonia MS5’s were being run from a pair of Korato KVA150M (150 watt) valve monoblocks. The sources used were either Audio Note for digital or the incredible Opus Continuo turntable (see Bristol report for details).
But perhaps the main focal point in the room was the massively engineered equipment support, custom made unit by Crombie Smith. This beautifully constructed rack featured air suspension for all of the internal shelves, with a shell made from solid, rather than veneered, real wood. The total weight without equipment was a daunting 150 kg and the price was an equally disturbing £4,500. Above you can see the rack in all its glory, with the right hand photo showing the elaborate aluminium structure, almost hidden beneath a mound of Silver Arrow mains and signal cables.
GT Audio bought one of their smaller systems for use in their tiny room and despite the limitations of the space it was sounding rather good. The active Avantgarde Solo’s resplendent in what is best described as a mint green colour where running from a Tron Meteor pre amp, a DPS turntable, Schroeder tonearm, Allaerts cartridge and a Lindemann CD/SACD player for digital.
Above: Sadly not in use because of the active speakers being demonstrated where this pair of beautiful Tron monoblocks.
Talk Electronics showed their new mid range CD player, the Thunder 2.2, which features their latest casework that looks much chunkier than that fitted to its predecessor. Sadly the room was too small to make any judgments about its sound quality but its one we’ll definitely be looking forward to trying out soon. Merlin cables were sharing the room and their whole range was on display which made quite an impressive sight. We were interested to hear that they are experimenting with Cryogenic treatment of their plugs and cables at the moment. We managed to nab a sample of the plugs and will be doing some comparisons with an untreated set in the next few weeks to see how they compare.
The Audio Atmosphere system was wired with probably the chunkiest mains cables we’ve ever seen, manufactured by Shunyata research it was the aptly named Power Snake Python. Hegel electronics were being used and were being played through a pair of Elac Jet loudspeakers finished in a fetching deep blue.
Hidden at the end of a narrow corridor was the Audio Note room. They were running one of their more affordable systems: a TT2 two motor turntable fitted with an Arm 2 and the superb IQ3 cartridge. Amplification was the giant Meishu 300B SE integrated and the speakers were the latest High Efficiency version of the ‘E’.
We heard these new speakers recently on a trip to Audio Note’s Brighton headquarters and the sound was quite consistent between their large record lined listening room and this small low ceilinged hotel room, which is remarkable given the totally different dimensions. This version is designed only for use hard into a corner (see picture below) and whilst I feel they possibly lacking a little weight in the lowest octaves compared to their predecessor they have a sense of immediacy and energy that can only be found in designs with really high sensitivity.
