[sapper44]

This was my first ever what Hi Fi event.I would recommend using the park and ride paid £2 a head cost £4 had my wife with me. Wanted her to see all this wonderful stuff so she can have some idea what I am on about. Didn’t much like the venue much. Most of the rooms with the demos were too small and very stuffy. Peeps hanging round by the doors blocking exits etc instead of getting inside and sampling demos to there full. Smoking allowed in the cafe comes bar area. Couple of stalls one doing teas and coffee ete £1.50 a pop. Hot dogs £2 a pop. There is of course a bar so you can have a beer.

What HiFi had a demo room did a comparison old technology(4 years old) stuff that the gave best buys to up today top stuff They showed King Kong to show the difference had a look at the Pannys 1080 pj in the demo thought that was good .Yamaha demo was well done I thought. Showing of there latest speakers £2 grand a pair nice demo..The fujitsu panels were great showing high def not all 1080 panels so mixed flavors all looks great. Pioneer had a stand once again nice panels They had a competitors LCD very very well known brand and the pic was dreadful up against them. Told the demo guy that was a joke. No way would I see a panel that bad from that brand of LCD.He said the panel is set to factory setting same as there panels. Walking around all the speaker demos and Musial stuff they all sounded great just some were prettier than others. There was a fair selection of sacd discs in the Linn demo room too the right as you walk in. there are also stalls selling cables and stands and dab stuff. I think to take all this in I need more than a day. But still enjoyed the experience and the wife did as well. So those who are going enjoy.

[SPANKYSPANGLER]

I've just got back from Bristol and all I can say is what a load of S**T.

How the hell can they call it a SOUND & VISION show ??

From what I saw it should be called the Bristol HI-FI show !

I saw no more visual products than you could see in a good high street store.

I originally went because I am thinking of setting up a descent home cinema set up based on a projector screen and was hoping to see a good selection of different screens and projectors, but all I could see was a load of hotel rooms packed with various different HIFI equipment.

What a waste of time and money - if your thinking of going tomorrow - DONT BOTHER wasting your time.

[teabelly]

Pretty good show. Made you realise how poor even some expensive stuff is! Highlight of the show was totem acoustics. Fantastic speakers. The small floor standers at 995 are an absolute bargain as they sound much better than their price tag. The 3 grand stand mounts were stunning. They were using some einstein amps which I have never heard of. Can't decide whether I preferred the totems over the Vienna Acoustics large floorstanders (lots of drive units each). Dali's big floorstanders were fine sounding apart from bass resonance which was really annoying. Spendor's were nice and easy listening. Tannoy were the same as ever. Quad sounded quite good with their massive electrostatics but jazz drove us away. Dynaudios floorstanders were a bit disappointing. Very restrained and a bit flat. The panelled room can't have helped them much....Wilson Benesch's speakers weren't very impressive either. No idea what their price tag was but I wouldn't give them house room - uniform presentation of both live recorded and studio recorded material.

Chord Electronics were interesting. I'd be embarrassed to own amps which looked that they'd fallen off a large SUV driven by a gangsta rapper but somehow they have something about them which is quite beguiling.

Biggest gripe was the dreadful music being used in most of the rooms - mostly acoustic stuff which doesn't show up any short comings of anything so you can't honestly tell whether the kit is any good.

Loved the fatman sub just for the design.

MJ & M&K both had their subs turned up way too loud so you couldn't tell whether the rest of their speakers were any good. I'm still a bit mutton! The arcam /AE stuff was ok but again mid range muffling was the order of the day, ditto most of the cheap naim stuff. The expensive naim kit (c15k worth) was seemingly disappointing but again rubbish naim label music meant it was hard to find something to like.

After 20 years you'd think the marriott could sort out enough places for people to sit and not have the biggest throughfare being in the narrowest part of the hotel! Squeezing through the terrace corridor in single file was like a military operation.

[Scaleyback]

I was looking to buy a Harmony remote today. They were taking pre-orders for the 1000

895 was £175. I found it online for £159.

785 was £115. I found it online for £89.

Moral: If you're looking for anything specific, do some research before you go and don't get carried away.

Biggest laugh of the day was £17 for a 13amp fuse. (it was gold plated though)

[Alan_W]

Originally Posted by Scaleyback

785 was £115. I found it online for £89

[Arcam_boy]

glad I did'nt make the effort to go by the sounds of it I was sooo tempted to make a 400 mile round trip to go and have a luck but glad I saved my petrol and will use the moey for some more hi fi stuff

[Scaleyback]

Originally Posted by Alan_W

Just bought the 885 from Amazon for less than they were asking for the 785. Delivery is due Tues.

[fishman09]

hi guys

i too went to the show and whilst i enjoyed the day itself cos of the lads i went with, overall i was disappointed by the offerings on show. now i've seen other posters saying that there was an abundance of audio over the visual due to the shows 'roots', however, i would estimate that the ratio between the two was around 80-20 in audios favour.

i enjoyed the yamaha demo and a few others, but i was seriously underwhelmed by the lack of 1.hd displays, 2.hd footage. even the yamaha demo was predominately upscaled sd stuff. is it too much to expect these days, to see most of the major manufacturers, both audio and visual, using hd footage to demo their wares. i mean all the big named audio guys could have at least shown the impact of their products in the context of a hd/blu-ray deck aligned with a nice plasma/lcd?

as i say overall i enjoyed the experience and yes i saw the floor plan prior to going, but frankly theres only so many jazz/soft pop speaker demos i can take in one day lol

cheers

fish

[Guvna]

I agree with fishman except I wasn't so fussed on the guys I went with, though that is another story. The small hotel rooms were useless for demos even though many of us may not have demo rooms much bigger at home. The Yamaha demo was on a big scale and the Kef Reference speakers sounded lovely in the basement. I've even bought a stereo set up for the bedroom since the show, as inspired as I was.

We missed the Domino display, as somehow we missed it on the program, and I know that would have tickled Fishmans fancy.

The find of the show for me was Totems Arro floorstanders. When there's a spare grand knocking around in my bank, i'll be having those for my music set up. The worst form me was the REL demo (wooly and boomy - I use a Q200E and it sounded better than their Stadium?) and the M&K room. Think there were K5's in there. Utter crap. I'd like to have seen a proper M&K room also rather than a bedroom, although I hear on the grapevine they may have gone bust?