Bristol Sound and Vision Show 2003
Bristol Sound and Vision Show 21st -23th February 2002 by Hifi Corner's Colin MacKenzie.
The Hi-Fi Exhibition at Marriot Hotel organised by friends Jerry Lewin and Tony Revelle is one of the largest in the UK. (I owe Jerry a lunch). Although it's some distance from Edinburgh, thanks to BA and advanced booking it's an economic journey, especially when there is something worth seeing. There was this year. The highlights below are just my personal view of some of the more memorable moments.
Some of those are of expensive pieces of kit I wouldn't have in the house (or any of our stores for that matter) but as sound is personal (so they say) I won't embarrass any manufacturer here. I'm slightly wiser and more discrete as I get older, but only just. The best sounds that I heard were in the Spendor and ART Audio rooms. The, as yet unnamed, ART speakers expected to sell around £3000 sounded great value for money. I did upset my fellow Scots that I wasn't complimentary for the looks of their tweeter, but liked the sound. They also were displaying the new-ish Skiibo, which we have in stock in our Rose St store.
Spendor showed an updated S3/5 SE edition. Chris Jackaman of Spendor says the 'se' means 'Scottish Edition' which immediately means I want to hear it! As it had just been finished a couple of days before I had to make do with listening to their new S5 speakers (specifically designed for wall mounting at £1000 per pair). It was a most natural sound, and I was pleasantly surprised. They also were exhibiting the C9, 'super' centre channel speaker (£1250).
In terms of personal interest liked the new Evoke 2 portable battery/DAB/fm radio from PURE. It is the first real single aerial 'quality' portable radio and I predict will sell almost as well as its famous little brother the Evoke 1. Selling at £155.00 this radio also has, in addition to a 'line out' socket, an optical digital output. A special limited edition of the EVOKE 1 with the very English name of Elgar, is shortly being released . How it can more limited than the EVOKE 1 which have been like gold-dust you may ask, however apparently it is a one off run. I'm sure I'm not doing it justice but it is essentially an Evoke 1 in a higher quality finish.
From under a jacket the prototype small portable PURE DAB radio was revealed. Not much point in saying too much about it as its specification and possible appearance will probably change when it becomes this years hot Christmas present.
PURE also showed the DRX-702ES. This is a dab tuner with FM and AM. Based on the 701 the people at PURE have not only added FM and AM but some clever software means that you can name your AM stations and search for them in the same way as you would for a DAB station (i.e. search by name). PURE were at pains to point out whose FM tuners they had benchmarked this against and promise excellent FM sound and reception.
Cyrus launched 8 new models including the CD6 at £600- a high quality cd player which can be upgraded to the CD8 (at £1000) and which boasts improvements over previous models. A new DVD player, the DVD6 at £750.00 and the new Ten series including the FMX, PRE-X and a new monoblock the Mono X. My son was taken by the new wooden equipment stand. It did look smart. The prize for the most unusual looking product must surely go to O'heocha design for their speakers (photo to follow). These speakers look like the something from out of this world, so is their price.
Tivoli showed a lovely looking cd player, a kitchen/bedroom office unit which plugs into their new stereo radio and has a matching sub woofer. It sounded much more honest than some £6000 speakers I heard along the corridor. Yamaha have a new £8000 projectors which due to its clever design can produce an extremely high quality picture with a short throw. No longer do you need a huge room to have a large picture; you just need a big wall! Michell launched a new turntable, the 'Tecnodec.' This is a budget deck (at £575 ex arm this is budget for Michell). Despite the name the turntable isn't for budding home disco fanatics. Its a belt driven non floating suspension model and looks like a scaled down Gyrodec. Although the bearing isn't the same the motor is the same as a Gyrodek. Suspension is through three cushioned feet.
For those interested in the mainstream minis, there wasn't a lot about but Denon did show the DM31 the replacement for the highly successful DM30. This model has improved amplification and redesigned speakers. I was pleased to attend a press conference, given by the show organisers and exceptionally well attended by journalists (I'm not sure what is the collective noun for hifi press, a data-stream?). I was alarmed at the proposed dramatic changes that were being discussed. According to one speaker the new surround standard will be 10.2 (yes folks that's ten speakers and two sub-woofers). There was some interesting talk about the future of Blu-ray, Blue DVD and HD-DVD. John Dawson from ARCAM gave a very interesting talk on the future of digital connectivity, all about high definition video and control all in one cable. A modern high quality version of a scart lead. John very kindly volunteered to give my staff a talk on this (and other) subjects which is the sort of continuous education we require as retailers to help translate a potentially technical subject into plain Scots. Bob Stuart from MERIDIAN talked about DVD-Audio. It does appear, at least with the high end manufacturers that they are convinced that DVD-A is the next stage for music cd's. I was fascinated to hear such long conversations from the floor, Barry Fox and others about copyright protection. All in all a real conversation for the anoraks, but with the future such as lossless compression being worked on at present with r&d departments, it shows equipment of the future will continue to be innovative. I recorded this conference and may expand on this paragraph later. There was so much to take in that I worry that equipment could become so complicated that people may go back to wind up gramophones! These are my immediate thoughts on an exhibition that didn't contain lots of surprises but the few that were there were good fun. As the manufacturers products become available we'll update the relevant pages on our web site so keep coming back.
Colin MacKenzie - Feb. 2003