Will Critic be in attendance? I don’t see you on the exhibitor list at the moment.

Some interesting new names on the list, including Living Voice.

Good stuff. Don't think I have any quandaries to run past you this year, so you might avoid being cornered! ;)

Back from the annual assault on the senses!

It was a shame not to bump in to Martin. I am guessing he wasn’t there today and decided 2 days was more than sufficient. I haven’t been in a Sunday for a few years but it definitely felt quieter this year. It felt like there were more female attendees though.

I felt shouted at in most rooms. A lot of rooms were either toppy or had bass bloom. Music selection was universally not to my taste and quite often included twinkly sounds that didn’t represent music at all. So nice to come back to my system. Various thoughts below:

Naim statement set up was shouting at me. Didn’t hold my attention at all.
Kudos active system with Naim gear was more successful.. probably the most balanced set up of the day.
Heard Vincent Belanger play live cello in the Audio Note room. Not my taste but it did reinforce how there is no mistaking positioning and size in real life. Hifi doesn’t come close on that. New AN integrated amp shows promise. Not the usual bass control this year though. Smaller speakers might be why.
New Fyne F1-5 speakers with Rega Electronics were pleasant and showed that you are probably better off keeping it small in those rooms.
Intrigued by the Voxativ Absolut Hagen system. Great midrange and bass but perhaps a little uncontrolled in the high frequencies. Might be something that the right toe-in can sort. They are possibly getting Audio T distribution, so I would be interested to hear this £9k all in one system in better surrounds.
Hegel with Kef LS50 showed promise but was very toppy. Going from 390 to 590 showed a marked overall improvement.
Von Gaylord had good life but was too toppy.

I am sure most of these systems are perfectly capable of providing pleasant and enjoyable music, it just never seems to be possible at shows. Everyone gets used the their own system, but I think some of these demonstrators are leaving the critical ears behind when they set up these rooms. I struggle to think that 17 year old me would have been leaving the show desperate to attain any of these systems.

Only one mention of MQA by Hegel. They did compare 96k MQA vs regular 96k. MQA sounded better to me. Overall sound wasn’t really to my liking though in either format. A surprising number of new albums I like are in MQA on Tidal. My Network Bridge does the first decode then my Totaldac does an R2R conversion. Sounds good enough in that configuration.