OSCAR STEWART REPORTS FROM THE UK AUDIO SHOW 2023 IN DAVENTRY

Established in 1997, and held at various venues over the years, the UK Audio Show is now held at the Staverton Park Hotel in Daventry, in a central part of the UK that is accessible to many around the country.

Read on for the first part of Oscar’s report…

UK AUDIO SHOW 2023 REPORT

With 55 individual demonstration rooms and 20 trade stands it is a relatively small show in comparison to some, but offers a slightly different array of items with lots of smaller companies showcasing their products.

EMILEN AUDIO

Getting stuck right in the Emilen Audio room was the first room I visited, the setup that was in use consisted of the ES-1 Reference speakers, Equinox line pre-amp, Equinox MC Phono pre-amp and Lumley Audio Stratosphere MK3 turntable. What I was surprised to hear was that the speakers were active, with each amplifier module directly coupled to the drive units with no crossovers, it is all DSP controlled – not something you would realise, the integration was superb.

They had another room with a setup that was not playing, this had their D-Block Class-D monoblocks setup, Emilen have custom designed the front end to the hypex modules. They have custom heatsinks to keep them running cool and promise to solve the usual downsides of Class-D amps

SOLID SOUNDS

Solid Sounds were showing off their new Hex3 open baffle speakers, these offer up a nice and wide sound with some serious punch too. The room was kitted out with ecowaves acoustic panels, and the speakers were driven by a Garrard 401 turntable with the new Alphason HR-200S tonearm, Whest Titan Pro phonostage and Bel Canto pre/power amp setup. Solid Sounds have a new showroom opening in Leeds called the Spinning Room – if you find yourself in Leeds check them out.

G POINT AUDIO

In the next room were some rather large isodynamic speakers, this room was run by G Point Audio and they had quite the setup. Fonica International Flag L isodynamic speakers with Circle Labs P300 pre-amplifier and M200 Power amplifier, Lampizator Atlantic DAC and Lucas audio streamer and PSU – providing effortless room-filling sound. There was an intriguing Pre-Audio DE-1800 linear tracking turntable, this wasn’t in use at the time I went in the room, but it definitely caught my eye.

LONGDOG AUDIO

LongDog Audio (LDA) isn’t a brand I was personally familiar with (that’s my bad), however, Nick Gorham was more than happy to give the rundown of his setup. A standard Technics 1200G was at the heart of the system, running a Hana Unami Red cartridge, and with Critical Mass Systems isolation footers with the Black Ravioli Record Ground and a DS Audio headshell, LDA MCJ3 Hybrid valve phono stage, Music First Baby Reference V2 pre-amp, LDA P6100M monoblocks and LDA own-made acrylic open baffle speakers. It was great speaking with Nick who explained his speakers were a project to kill time during lockdown and are great for showcasing his products, and LDA demonstrates that UK Manufacturing is still alive and well.

ZINAMP

Zinamp are an interesting brand, known for their amps, pre-amps and phono pre-amps, at the show they were showing off their Z-ACT Active Cartridge System. In short, there is a very small buffer-amplifier on the headshell that is powered by Phantom power, in theory, this eliminates any capacitance issues common in runs of cables from the turntable to the phono pre-amp. This is a product for those using MM cartridges and apparently lowers the crosstalk to levels commonly associated with MC cartridges. An interesting concept, and it’s one to keep an eye/ear on.

HENLEY AUDIO

Henley always has an excellent range of products, ranging from the new Musical Fidelity M8xTT to the Wiim streamers and Sumiko cartridges. Their main system had the Klipsch Forte IV speakers paired with the Musical Fidelity A1 amplifier, Lehmann Black Cube SE II SV Edition phono stage and Pro-Ject X8 with 9CC Tone arm and Ortofon Cadenza Bronze MC cartridge. What most surprised me was how well the Musical Fidelity A1 was handling this system composed of much costlier equipment, what a lovely little amp it is.

They had lots of eye candy in the room including the HiFi Rose kit and new Austrian Audio The Composer headphones and Full Score one headphone amplifier. As always it was a pleasure to catch up with the team from Henley, they are always helpful along with having great insight into the products they distribute.

ULTRAFIDE

I was kindly invited to a product insight session with Ultrafide – coming from the brains behind MC2 Audio and XTA, Ultrafide is a newcomer to the home audio world. With a strong background in pro-audio they have been asked for many years to bring out a home audio system, and that’s what they have finally done. The U4PRE is a quad output, pre-amplifier with a high quality, low noise phono stage (compatible with MM and MC cartridges it has a rumble filter and has selectable capacitance for optimal loading). It has trigger inputs along with both balanced inputs and outputs, there is also a dedicated headphone amp built in – this looks to be a very flexible pre-amplifier for many systems.

To pair with it, they have made the U500DC power amplifier – not content with the current Class-D modules on the market, their technical designer created his own module for this amplifier. They built this amp from the ground up, and it has a massive toroidal transformer allowing for 250w @8Ohms, 500w @4Ohms and it can handle some dips to 2Ohms, this amp should easily drive complex loads. It has a class-A input stage promising excellent audio quality and features a timbre switch on the back, allowing you to choose between pure and vintage.

In their room they had this pre/power setup hooked up to some new Quested speakers, the Oly 108 and 109. These speakers come from a brand they are known in the pro-audio world too, but they have made these 2 models for the home audio clientele.

I got to listen to one of my test tracks – Trains by Porcupine Tree, and this system was bold and powerful but very clean and detailed throughout. I have no doubt that the Ultafide kit is going to be a hit, and I am sure you’ll hear a great deal more about it from HiFi PiG soon.  

Going back to the ground floor, we were greeted by a little robot doing the rounds distributing leaflets, very cute.

ART AUDIO

Art Audio had a room with lots of valves and some nice looking speakers too, they were running a PS Audio CD player into an Art Audio Conductor pre-amplifier and Adagio mono blocks, powering a pair of new Art Impression Diamond 10 loudspeakers. There were plenty of other lovely valve amps along one side of the room, and on the other, you had an unfinished speaker cabinet showing off how they make them. The multi-layer wood cabinets are very stiff, this is great for allowing less colouration from the cabinet itself and allowing the drivers to do the work.

GOLDEREAR AND AUDIOQUEST

Goldenear / Audioquest had a setup comprising of their BRX Reference standmount speakers, Forcefield 3 Subwoofer and HEED Integrated amp with DAC, using Audioquest’s Type-9 speaker cable. This was a small system however the sound coming from it was bigger than their size would suggest.

BLACK RHODIUM

Black Rhodium had a nice selection of their cables on show, this is a company that tries to take a more grounded approach to cables, and having experienced some of their cables in the past I can say they are very well made and do sound rather lovely too.

AIR AUDIO

Air Audio had their usual display of Hana cartridges, I know Stu is a big fan of these, and I hope maybe one day I’ll get my hands on one to try out. They also had an assortment of isolation products, tonearms, and turntables.

ICON AUDIO

Icon Audio are a well-established brand here in the UK and for good reason, they make superb valve-based amplifiers with a huge range of products covering HiFi and Headphones alike.

On the headphone side of things, they have their HP8 MKII and the lesser known HP205D – this uses the 205D valve which is swappable to a 300B valve should you wish, and comes with its own separate valve-based power supply too. 

HiFi wise they have the Klipsch Heritage Cornwall speakers being powered by their Stereo 300 MKII integrated amplifier, the source was a Marantz CD player. They did have a pair of their speakers in the room hooked up to a different setup, and they had a good range of amps on display around the room. David took some time to explain how the 205D valve used in their HP205D headphone amp was likely the first valve made for audio back in the 1920s, it would be great to spend some time with one at some point in the future.

OSV AND DIPTYQUE

OSV / Diptyque shared a room, with the DP140 MKII isodynamioc speakers on display being driven by the OSV HT-50 hybrid integrated amplifier fed by a Lampizator DAC. The OSV amplifier has a valve-based preamplifier circuit that then feeds a bipolar class A/B power amplifier section, if you have not noticed already, valves were very popular in products at this show.

3 SQUARE AUDIO

3 Square Audio makes loudspeakers, HiFi racks, plinths, and bespoke furniture, they were showing off a new rack made to be used with the Audite Acoustics isolation platforms. They had their 3 Square Ayal compact speakers (which HiFi PiG reviewed last year) on demo being driven by NVA monoblocks and an NVA passive pre-amplifier.

MOOR AMPS

Moor Amps are another small British company making things in-house, their new Ascalon 8 speakers (which we heard at NWAS 2023) use drivers made by Volt loudspeakers, just down the road from their headquarters. They sounded superb when powered by their Angel pre-amp and Angel 6 power amplifier (which can handle 2Ohm loads at 580w per channel), they also had their smaller Angel 4 power amp on show. All their amps are hand-built and they use local suppliers for all their manufacturing, ensuring a tight grip on quality control and the overall build quality of their products.

MUSIC FIRST AUDIO

Music First Audio is a boutique British brand with a very devoted global following, their Baby Reference V2 pre-amplifier is widely regarded as one of the best pre-amplifiers out there (winning the HiFi PiG Outstanding Product Award back in 2016). Their demo system had the Grahams LS5/9 loudspeakers with a Nagra 4.2 reel-to-reel tape deck which outputs a mono signal that is split by some Music First Audio transformers into two audio streams, into the Baby Reference V2 pre-amplifier then into a pair of LongDog Audio monoblocks. There was a Music First Audio 632 MM phono-preamp on display too for using with the vinyl setups – Music First Audio products really do aim to get out of the way of the music.

That’s it for part 1 of my rundown of the UK Audio Show 2023, however, there is still more to come!

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For Part 2 of Oscar’s day in Daventry at the UK Audio Show 2023, click here!

Oscar Stewart