Conference hips::uk_audioo

    I have exact dates at home in the August HFN/RR, I'll tap them in
    next week unless someone beats me to it. If my memory serves me,
    it's around the back end of September.
    
    Dave

    From about 1400 on 14th. September, all day 15th. and 16th. September,
    are the "public" times. Before that is trade only. Apparently they
    have a special car park, visitors are asked to follow the signs
    to this and not drive to the Penta hotel. I believe there are courtesy
    buses laid on for those arriving by train/tube.

    Dave

    hi,
    
    Do you know till what time in the evening it is open?
    Also, do you know if they charge for admission?
    From past experience do you know if this is the sort of place to get
    good demonstrations without the feeling that there's a compulsion
    to buy? I assume you can buy at these shows? 
    
    Malcolm
    

    You can usually buy only accessories, audiophile recordings, etc. at
    shows, nothing else. You couldn't make an informed buying decision
    based on a demo in a hotel room crammed with people, but you can
    use it to draw up a short-list by talking to the manufacturers or
    distributors, if you can past the brochure-collectors!
    
    Dave

    I enjoy them, I couldn't think of a better way of listening to such a
    wide range of equipment, other than inviting all the HiFi Manufacturers
    to set up their equipment for demonstration in your home.
    
    I'm game for Sunday, anyone want to share the journey from Basingstoke
    ??
    
    Mark.

    re.-1
    
    If the dates posted earlier were correct I think you'll find
    the last day is Saturday! 
    
    Anyone know what time the show closes?
    
    Malcolm

    should've read 15/16/17th. I'll keep taking the tablets....
    
    Dave

    
    It's that time of year again. I know the show is on this weekend. Does
    anyone know the times ?
    
    Trevor

Sat and Sun, 10am to 6pm I believe.  Think I'll trot down there myself.  Wonder
what the car park cost is?   I heard it was some extortionate rate last year.

Nick

    
    I went to the show on Sunday morning, and here are a couple of
    impressions.
    
    It's definitely good to get there early. I was there before it opened
    at 10.00, and several stands were already open by then. It was pretty
    empty to start off with, but by about 11.30-12, it was really a bit of
    a crush in all the small rooms (the majority).
    
    I spent most of my time wandering round the major loudspeaker company
    stands (as I've decided I'm in the market for some new ones). I didn't
    really see anything particularly worthy of documenting on these stands. 
    
    An awful lot of companies (who don't make their own) were using Arcam
    CD players and amplifiers. Most of these were also using the Black Box
    D/A converter. Speaker cables the diameter of garden hosepipe were also
    much in evidence.
    
    I heard a couple of systems that I'll note. One was in the Cornflake
    Shop's room, which was a Xerxes t/table (I think), with Onix pre/power
    amps and Monitor Audio Monitor Seven speakers. The Monitor Sevens are
    *tiny*, but the system was making really quite an impressive noise.
    
    I also went to one of the ticketed demos from Absolute Sounds. This was
    of an ultra-high end system, with the (at least) the following parts:
    
    - Goldmund t/table  (can't remember the name, but it's about 4-5K to
    buy), with Koetsu Red Signature cartridge.
    
    - Krell MD1 "CD turntable" with 64x oversampling D/A .
    
    - Krell Line pre-amp and separate Phono pre-amp.
    
    - Krell KSA250 power amp (one only). You'd really have thought they'd have
    used dual monos, wouldn't you ?
    
    - Wilson WAT/PUPPY speakers. The WAT is a small pyramidal monitor, and
    the Puppy is an optional LF unit that fits underneath it. There is also
    a subwoofer available, apparently.
    
    At a conservative estimate, this was about 40,000 pounds worth of gear.
    It sounded quite amazing - *very* detailed, but also very involving. AS
    were demonstrating two other systems in different rooms, but I didn't
    get a chance to listen to those.
    
    All in all, I found it a worthwhile and interesting visit.
    
    Trevor

    Anyone going to Penta this year?
    
    Dave

    
    I'm planning to go, probably early on Sunday morning again.

When is it?

    Your Heathrow correspondent was up last night bashing away on his PC to
    bring you this stop press report on this year's show. Anyone else go in
    the end ?
    
    
I went to the Penta show on Sunday morning. I enjoyed it rather more this
year, as I had planned what I really wanted to see beforehand. I got
there before the show opened, and so I was able to see all those exhibits
that were in small rooms before they got ridiculously crowded.

My first stop was in the Epos room, as I wanted to find out a bit more
about my ES11 speakers. The system they had set up consisted of a Naim
CDS, NAC72 and a NAP250, with ES11s (i.e., ~5,000 pounds of front end
driving 330 quid speakers), and I thought it sounded really good. The
only other person there at the time was Robin Marshall, so I managed to
have quite a long chat with him. He said that his next project would
probably be to update the ES14, which is getting a bit long in the tooth.
He also said that Epos didn't have any ambition to produce a complete
99-999 pound range of speakers, as he felt that it was a waste of time
because at least some of the models probably wouldn't be much good.
That's an interesting point of view from a member of the same group of
companies as Tannoy and Mordaunt-Short...

Next, I went to one of the Absolute Sounds ticket-only demonstrations.
This was of the following:

        Krell CD transport & DAC
        Krell KSL line stage
        Krell MDA300 power amp
        Martin Logan Quest speakers

This was a really stunning system. It produced an enormous and believable
soundstage, the Quests contributing real bass in addition to their very
transparent midrange and treble. It was real "musicians in the room with
you" stuff.

I then wandered around for a while looking at various different exhibits.

Roksan were showing a new CD player and DAC [not actually working
though], plus a new turntable based on the Radius. The CD player is
styled in an extension of the form taken by their amplifiers; a real 1930s
science fiction film prop.

The Pentachord speakers were quite interesting; they are really tiny,
and sounded pretty good. The weakest point was the integration between
the satellites and the subwoofer.

I also have to admit that I went into the Cerwin-Vega! room. They had
been placed at the geographically furthest point in the hotel from
anywhere else. If anyone's looking for some speakers with which to
bang head and seriously damage the hearing, look no further.

Systems that I was unimpressed with included the Monitor Audio Studio 5s,
mated with the Audiolab pre/power combination. I would have to agree with
this month's HFN/RR verdict on the '5. Musical Fidelity had some new MC-4
sized speakers, plus the Odysseus valve amp and their new CD-1. This
sounded rather anaemic when I heard it. 

I managed to hear the new Sonus Faber Extrema, also reviewed in this
month's HFN/RR. On the basis of a very short audition, I can't say that I
was blown away by the sound. They certainly look pretty wacky though.

The most interesting part of the day was a demonstration by Malcolm Hawksford
from the Electronics department at Essex University of their DSP-based
loudspeaker equalisation system. First, they accurately measure the frequency
response of a loudspeaker, and they produce a mathematical model of this. This
allows them to then use digital signal processing in real time to invert the
unpleasant characteristics of the measured response. The DSP software runs in a 
special box inserted between the CD player and DAC.

Hawksford sees this as a way of improving loudspeakers, and not really as
a way of correcting room-induced problems. They have concentrated on
improving the transient response of speakers, and were able to back this
up with some graphs showing the clutter of stored energy after the
un-equalised speaker was hit by an impulse, and the huge improvement when
the equalisation was used.

An amazing demonstration of the power of the technique was performed
using a pair of speakers that consisted of two mid/bass units
and a subwoofer mounted on a pole, with no cabinet whatsoever. Without
the equalisation turned on, it sounded execrable: no bass; horrible
resonances in the midrange; phasey sound etc.  With the equalisation
it actually sounded like a real pair of loudspeakers. The un-equalised
response graphs showed dips and peaks of 6-9db, with a massive dip of
about 30db at 8khz. The equalised graph was flat within 1-2db, with the
exception of a 10db dip  at 8khz.

They also demonstrated the technique on some slightly modified Canon
wide-imaging speakers, and on Wharfedale Diamond IVs. I thought the
demonstration with the Diamonds was more impressive. There was a
noticeable increase in the level of detail recovered, and in the quality
and drive of the bass.

Hawksford predicted that in a short time, we would see commercial
products that incorporated such systems. He showed several places in the
audio chain where you could incorporate the equalisation, using plug-in
ROMs matched to different types of speaker.

I'm sure that die-hard analogue freaks would see this as yet more
pointless digital tinkering, but I don't agree. A good analogy is the
F-16 fighter, which won't fly without a computer that keeps its
aerodynamically unstable airframe flying, but which benefits from much higher
performance as a result. There are some things that you can do with
computers that you just can't do with elastic bands and jewellery...

All in all, a few hours well spent !

Unrelated now to the base note, but the equalisation system in .18
does sound interesting.

When I did DSP as a module in my degree, the disappointing thing was that
with digital filters, you get roughly the same problems as analogue filters,
i.e. problems with phase. Obviously you have more flexibility on what you
filter out, but it would be interesting to know how they got round the problems
with phase lag (at least I think that was the problem, the course was 5 years ago!).

The best area for this to go would be in the Loudspeaker, with an active power amp,
after the digital stage, with just a digital input to the speaker!

Mark.

Hi,

I also went, and took a friend along. My friend is a musician, and is thinking
of upgrading his system. It would be a big step for him, as he has had an Eagle
system for a long time, and none of it can stay really.

Anyway, we wandered around, and the impression I had this year, is that the
expensive systems from most manufacturers don't sound better than the cheapest!

I used to think that this only happened to Japanese manufacturers, but it also
seems to afflict a lot of other companies. My main beef was the music that was
played, and that when we found somewhere playing good music, the record always
finished when we walked in.

Apart from the Phillips DCC stand, no one played Dire Straits! However, they all
seemed to be trying to be as 'cool' as possible, playing some esoteric jazz. I
would have loved to hear some REM or Talk Talk or anything good!

What struck me about most of the systems was how fatiguing they sounded. The
notable exception to this was the Monitor Audio room. They had the baby Monitor
Audio speakers playing with a sub woofer playing. We asked them to try it
without the sub woofer, and preferred that. These speakers are smaller than
my diamonds, and sound much better! I might invest in a pair, before I get
a CD player!

I'm thinking of the Marantz CD-52 (I'm not going to bother auditioning, coz
Which magazine says that all CD players sound the same!! ;-) ), and went into
the Marantz stand. This had the mighty Tannoy Westminster Horn speakers,
playing from Marantz CD and amp, and the system sounded quite nice.

Overall, a good mornings worth, and reassuring for the bank balance that I
don't have to go to stupid expense for Hi Fi.

Mark Jeffery