It was novel to be back in Heathrow for a hi-fi show, it must be at least a decade since the Chester Group put on a show in what was then the Park Inn and twice that since anything happened at the Ramada across the road. The London Audio Show in the Radisson Red hotel was a small but attractively formed event with exhibitors in 29 rooms of which three were of a good size. But that didn’t stop many from delivering some excellent sounds and others launched or re-launched products at the event.
Onkk
As mentioned in our news pages last week Onkk appear to have finally finished the crazy ambitious Q-SDD direct turntable. Originally shown nine years ago it has taken Paul Beckett that long to finalise his slotless direct drive design. Its curvy exterior hides an Aerotech direct drive motor and Renishaw encoder driving an SDS damped platter on a ceramic bearing with phenomenally high tolerances. I knew it would be a challenge to finish when I first met Paul but the results were certainly very promising, with a Triplanar arm, Gryphon, Quiescent and Phasemation electronics and a pair of Vivid Audio Giya G3 speakers the sound imaged beautifully and transparency was off the scale. The Onkk Q-SDD will retail for £50,000.
Mad
Timothy Jung of Mad fame brought along a pair of Grand Maestro Studio speakers which were combined with a Vertere and FM Acoustics system to excellent effect in one of the bigger spaces. Touraj Moghaddam was spinning vinyl on a Vertere MG1 turntable with Mystic MC cartridge and made a very good case for the system with Prince’s One Night Alone on purple vinyl, naturally.
Tim Jung also hosted a celebration of the life of review guru Paul Messenger, firing off a 12 bottle salute with bubbly and collecting pictures of and tributes to the great man.
Coppice
Coppice joined Connected Fidelity and Audio Detail to launch their BG3 floorstanding loudspeakers. This ‘smallest’ member of the BG family is no lightweight with its solid ash and lacewood cabinet standing over a metre tall and combining a modified Lowther CM45CP midrange with 8inch Beyma bass and Scanspeak soft dome tweeter, these have a lattice machined into each side and a hexagonal wooden reflex port. The system was driven by an Audio Detail PX25 amplifier with Connected Fidelity’s Hub turntable running a Hana cartridge and Sorane tonearm.
Cadnam
David Hall worked with IAS in the seventies and recently resurfaced when that brand’s Beaulieu loudspeaker was revived. He has returned with his own brand Cadnam alongside father and son team Gareth and Tom Ellis. They are building the M range of which the M-8 (£9,953) and M-10 (£12,739) were on dem, the larger of the two featuring a 10 inch Volt bass driver and ribbon tweeter. The acoustic panels behind the speakers are made by Acoustic Forest Manufacturing (AFM) in Manchester, the oak (£700) examples are custom made to suit each room while the black diffusers (£350) can be wall or floor mounted.
Native DSD
Dutch high res audio distributor Native DSD sell music online and demonstrated high res files via a system including a Melco server, Heed DAC and amplification and Tannoy SGM10 loudspeakers.
Chord Company
Chord Company took the opportunity to demonstrate the effects of its various technologies with a Hifi Rose streamer, Hegel H600 amp and Monitor Audio PL100 speakers. They showed visitors the benefits of Tuned and Super Aray conductors, XLPE an Taylon insulation and Choralloy connectors.
Summer House Sounds
I found John Simm of Audio Pinnacle/Summer House Sounds having a bit of fun with a Zavfino ZV8 turntable with titanium arm that costs a not exorbitant £5,500 all in, Canadian brand Zavfino are not just about cables it seems. He also had the M2Tech Larsen Class A monoblocks but wasn’t using them to drive Gershman Acoustics Studio 2 speakers, these were hooked up to M2Tech’s Class D Crosby amp.
Russell K
Russell K made a return to the show scene with an revision of his Red 50 standmount suffixed SE (£3,950). This has a Perspex plinth on standoffs so that the base of the cabinet is not damped by a stand, his schtick being that the cabinet vibration is all part of the sound so it should not be repressed. His was one of two rooms featuring an homage to the late Paul Messenger with whom Russell spent many happy days on the listening panel for loudspeaker group tests.
Quested
Quested and Crescent Recordings had the most interesting demonstration at the London Audio Show. In one room the band Ethemia played live (top of page) and next door you could hear them via Quested OLY208 loudspeakers on the end of a very nice system put together by Crescent’s Damon Sawyer. Among other elements this included the most extreme network switch set up we’ve seen, in the midst of HRS anti resonance devices was an English Electric 8Switch and two ADOT ethernet to SFP optical converters, with Teddy Pardo and Nuprime power supplies. The rest of the system consisted of a monster computer with JCat network card, a Merging Horus AD/DA for the mic feeds and an Ultravide power amplifier. Mains power was delivered by a Quiescent Balanced Mains supply with the ethernet cable provided by the same brand. This was the best sounding digital system at the show and not just when it had a live feed from the band, it sounded so good that I requested the Questeds and will have to get more serious about switch isolation. The recordings played were Crescent’s own 64-bit/384kHz work which is extreme hi-res and undoubtedly helped the effortless sound.
Isoslice
Isoslice make isolation bases using nine layers of moisture resistant HDF and high impact foam, they do plinths for standmount speakers that go between stand and speaker for £285 a pair and equipment bases with adjustable feet for £350. They are also working on a turntable built out of the same material, this is at prototype stage at present but looks interesting.
Unique Audio
Unique Audio rarely do shows, apparently the last one was at the Ramada in Heathrow. They specialise in high end turntables and had couple of choice examples in action, the white one is an NVS Wave Kinetics (£52,000) with a Primary Control field coil loaded unipivot arm (£26,500) on the left and a Durand Tosca (£17,500) on the right. The Etsuro Master Gold cartridge (£22,000) in the Primary Control is the rarest part of this extreme rig, and it did help the system sound spectacular playing Supper’s Ready (Genesis). Amplification included a six box Phasemation phono stage and LFD Anniversary MkII preamplifier with Master Reference power amps bi-amped to drive the Art Impression 15 speakers (£52,000). It’s safe to say that this was the biggest and most expensive system at the London Audio Show.
Art Audio
Derek Dunlop was in the same room with a new range of Art Emotion Carbon speakers which come in five variants, the picture shows the Carbon 5, 6 and 8 floorstanders, the numbers indicating the size of the largest driver, prices start at £10,000. There is also a Carbon 6M standmount (£10,000) and the big Carbon 10 (c£23,000). The laminated cabinets are phenomenally strong and have ports and tweeter enclosures machined in, the front and rear baffles are in an extremely stiff material called Richlite which is apparently made of laminated paper and resin.
Hifi Guy
Paul Benge the Hifi Guy brought a system based around Bayz Courante tubular loudspeakers (£29,000) with MSB, Pink Faun and Synergistic electronics, the glowing box on the floor is apparently a Synergistic Power Cell mains conditioner. The sound pressure levels in this room were rarely below 50 psi.
Audio Lounge
The Audio Lounge combined an SME Model 10 turntable with Sugden amplification and Tannoy Stirling III LZspeakers, a rather pleasant combination even when playing audiophile favourites volume 17!
Connecting Music
Connecting Music brought a very similar system to the one they had at Audio Show Deluxe last month but put it in a much bigger room. Here the Bricasti front end, Mastersound tube amplifier and Sonus faber Maxima Amator speakers had more room to breathe and produced a bigger, possibly more transparent sound. It certainly made Stairway to Heaven reach for the skies.
Jason Kennedy