Hifi shows - Has the tide (or should that be Tidal!) turned?

[BigAlMc]

So I attended the Bristol Sound & Vision show yesterday, or the Bristol Show as it's often described and figured I'd share some observations. 

 

First off for once the attendees were mostly youngsters and mostly female. 

 

Nah, I'm just messing with you!  The crowd was the usual mostly middle aged, or older,  men. Occasionally with young adult offspring in tow and occasionally with the wife dragged along. No doubt for some reciprocal arrangement! 

 

The title of the this post refers to the fact that for the first time in the few years I've been attending such shows more of the sources were digital. And better still more of them sounded pretty good. 

 

It's been slightly depressing for me as a fully digital pilgrim that the rooms at these events that tend to take your breath away are generally vinyl sources. Last year for instance the Wilson Benesch room was stunning (as 40 grand speakers ought to be!) but the source was Dido's No Angel on a 20k turntable. 

 

This year the source was a Melco, hooked up to some very expensive CH Precision streaming and amplification components. And it sounded terrific. But then it should! 

 

 

The Chord Electronics room also sounded great. They were demoing their new Cutest DAC and it was very natural and impressive sounding. But the demo was odd because they paired the Cutest with the Innuos Zenith SE, a ten grand Chord integrated amp and ten grand Bowers & Wilkins speakers. The speaker wire (Chord Company, different from Chord Electronics) cost the same as the DAC. So it was odd in terms of I doubt anyone would pair a 27 grand setup with a 1,199 DAC. But I guess that was perhaps their point. 

 

 

The Naim & Focal room had a really nice sound too. It was their all-in-one player (the Uniti Nova I think) with music on the Uniti Core. I didn't get the Focal model but they looked and sounded terrific. 

 

A few of the other rooms I was looking forward to were a little underwhelming. But it's hard to tell because its hard to make music shine in what's essentially a hotel room with the bed and furniture removed. Naim & Wilson Benesch both had larger suite areas. 

 

But a good event and thoroughly enjoyable day. My chat with Nuno from Innuos (as described over on the Zenith SE thread) was my personal highlight. 

 

Will be interested to see if that more digital streaming than vinyl truly is the trend or was an anomaly at this show. 

 

Over and out from the train back to London. 

 

Cheers, 

Alan 

 

[BigAlMc]

Oops - meant to post this in General and not in Servers.

 

Chris @The Computer Audiophile please feel free to move it if you want.

 

Thanks, 

Alan 

[BigAlMc]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Done. 

Thanks Chris. 

[BigAlMc]

The Darko site has a similar but different take on the unbalanced Chord Cutest DAC vs far more expensive components demo. 

 

"Coming down to earth (slightly). Chord’s £1200 Qutest was turning digits into music for a £21k amp and speaker combo (B&W 803s and Chord 3350). David supporting Goliath. With aplomb; digital really has changed system building rules."

 

https://darko.audio/2018/02/highlights-from-bristol-sound-vision-2018/