The HiFi News Show 2001, London
Novotel – September 13th to
16th.
A sombre
atmosphere for a show, due to the WTC attack in America two days previous to
the opening, and also a relatively quiet show in terms of exhibitors – though
those there claimed that UK dealer interest was being maintained at the same
level or greater. Soundwise, there were few stand-out systems but quite a few
that sounded very good in different ways, and most of these were up on the third
floor in fairly tiny rooms whose layout caused the usual pre-show headaches for
the exhibitors (better lengthwise – widthwise – hmmmm is there any way it
sounds right….??). Absent were some of the larger planar speakers of last
year’s show – the full length ribbons and the electrostatics – and that was a
real shame for lovers of that kind of sound. There was no absence of high
efficiency speakers, horns or otherwise, and this remains the popular flavour
just now, offering dynamics and sensitivity at the expense of what panel lovers
see as the superior smoothness and delicacy of their chosen reproducers. The
situation for panel lovers in the UK is not great – Quads and Martin Logans in
abundance, but nothing cheaper like the Newform ribbons and Magneplanars so
popular in North America, and apparently no distributors able to sell those
ranges in any quantity over here. New technology was much in evidence in the
Audio Visual rooms, though digital amps such as those based on the Tripath
module are slow in catching on despite those that rave about them (some still
find them uncomfortable to listen to due to what they hear as some subtle
artefacts).
Path took advantage of a large room for a surround
sound demonstration which, while impressive in sound quality, provided no
greater details of placement of instruments than conventional stereo systems.
In fact, since the individual instruments appeared larger in size than they
should have been, it was less accurate.
Chord electronics exhibited in a large room and sounded
loud and clean but – to me – pretty dry and lifeless through Dynaudio speakers.
A typical studio setup. Not my cup of tea at all, though others seemed to like
it.
Absolute sounds had some very nice kit – Wilson and Martin
Logan speakers and Audio Research amps – in rooms just too small to do them
justice. A tantalising glimpse of the high end, and one that duly provoked
rueful memories of previous shows at Heathrow where “the rooms were much
better, and everyone used to go and watch Concorde take off to signal the end
of the show”
Art loudspeakers shared two rooms with Sugden and were producing
some very nice sounds – excellent piano tone in the Rach 3rd. Sugden’s new lifestyle aluminium casings
looked as chic as Bang and Olafsen, and are made in house – good old Yorkshire
engineering.
Renaissance – a company active in industrial electronics –
showed their ‘hobby’ line of tube amps, and very nice sounding they were, with
WE 300B tubes driven by NOS E88CCs and 6SN7s in a Williamson type circuit. Good
friendly people, and a good product.
Red Rose showed some very nice tube amps in gorgeous cases.
Conventional choice of tubes, though the power supply is quite sophisticated
with individually regulated stages. They couple with 2 way speakers with ribbon
treble units designed and built in house. Ribbon units were in evidence in
other rooms such as Elac and will also be available soon from Max
Townshend, one of the many industry people visiting but not exhibiting
this year.
Rethm provided a very pretty and good sounding
implementation of Lowther units, including an in-house modification to reduce
resonance in the unit itself. Sensitivity 100db, they work off a minimum of 2
watts. One for SET lovers to consider.
Loth X were providing some very good sounds indeed through
tube amplification like the Vitale and JI-300 into handmade loudspeakers. While
the 2 way ION bookshelf speakers already sounded good, the Stamm range of horns
with single drivers featuring huge alnico magnets and light paper cones, were
serious kit (sensitivity 104 to 108db, 8 ohms). All this through gorgeous
looking acrylic turntables.
Best sound for me was the Lamm ML2 amps into massive Dutch Kharma three
way loudspeakers with 12” bass units and a concave ceramic mid unit. The Berlin
Phil sounded very lifelike with extremely faithful timbre to instruments in a
variety of orchestral music – and Frank Schroder (whose local orchestra this
is) agreed that the reproduction was remarkably realistic. The Lamm is an
unconventional amp using 6C33 tubes driven by 12ax7s and 6N6s – not a tube seen
in many products in the West. Though less forward and immediate than the larger
hybrid Lamm amps on dem, the ML2s started to seduce the listener bit by bit
until they were hard to leave. I sat for a good 40 minutes in increasing
listening pleasure, putting to one side the hard fact that these are way out of
reach of most people’s pockets.
Prize for most interesting product probably goes to Schroder
tonearms – the brainchild of Berliner Frank Schroder. Hand made – each arm
takes 70 hours to build – they are a tribute to the survival of good honest
engineering. A unipivot based on a contactless magnetic pivot, the only contact
between the selected hardwood arm and base is the small string suspending the
arm over the magnet. There is adjustment in all directions by means of simple
Allen keys. They look good and provide real pride of ownership, and apparently
sell well in the major European countries. Distributor here is Loricraft.
Prize for the most interesting character goes to A J van den Hul. The
great man was on expansive form, joking, punning, throwing his arms about to
illustrate his points, referring to everything from Greek Civilisation to Zen
Buddhism to illustrate his points – full of life and optimism on a rather
sombre week, reminding us of what life force exists in the human race. I felt
100% better after half an hour with him, and he provided some of my enduring
memories of the show – holding up a small wooden box with samples of all his
cables and saying “this is my life’s work – look at it – all in this little
box. What kind of a life is that?”, and claiming he sees many aspects of life
symbolically as electrical diagrams and parts – “XXXX, for instance, is a pure
diode. Money only flows one way through him. Everything goes in, nothing comes
out again. Granted – many people in this business are resistors, but a pure
diode – that’s something else”.
September 13th -
Andy Evans