PART 2 OF THE HiFi PiG UK HIFI SHOW LIVE 2024 REPORT

Enjoy the final part of our UK HiFi Show Live 2024 Report from Ascot, with Oscar Stewart.

Have you read Part 1 of our UK HiFi Show Live 2024 report Click here for the first instalment of Oscar”s tour of Ascot.

ALL IMAGES AND TEXT ARE COPYRIGHT HiFi PiG AND MAY NOT BE USED WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE EDITOR

For Part 2 of Oscar’s coverage of the UK HiFi Show Live 2024, we continue in the middle of level 4 of the Ascot Grandstand.

UK HIFI SHOW LIVE REPORT 2024 PART 2

VINYL FAIR

Starting with the vinyl fair/music sales, an open area filled with physical music sales from various vendors. I ended up walking away with a copy of Sigur Ros – ÁTTA, an album I’ve been meaning to pick up for a while.

HEADPHONE ZONE

Next up we had the headphone zone, there was a mix of vendors including Campfire Audio with their new Astrolith (this seemed popular as every time I went by, someone was listening to it), along with the rest of their range (Trifecta, Solaris, Fathom etc…). Astell & Kern were there as usual, with the SP3000 DAP, SP3000t and the new Activo P1 – with a range of headphones to test the DAPs with. Austrian Audio had their Composer headphones with the Full Score one headphone amp paired with a Musical Fidelity DAC. They had another setup using the Composer with a Lehmann Phonolith and Pro-Ject X2 B as a vinyl setup. HiFiMAN had their usual range of headphones including the Susvara, Arya Organic and Prelude headphone amp along with other models on their table.

MBS had a stand in this zone with a range of power filtering products from Synergystic Research including power conditioners, linear power supplies, cables and fuses.

HiFonix are ever-present in the headphone zone of shows, this time Aseem (with help from Tony) were showing off the brand new Noble FoKus Apollo wireless headphones. I listened to these at CanJam London and they are a brilliant headphone, up there with the best wireless headphones on the market today. They also had the Noble FoKus Prestige and FoKus Triumph true-wireless earphones. The Final D7000, Meze Elite, Viva Egoista 2A3 headphone amplifier (in partnership with High-End by Oz), HiFiMAN Susvara Unveiled, full Ferrum stack, Auralic streamer and more.

Focal had their Bathys wireless headphones on demo alongside the new Azurys and Hadenys wired headphones. They had the Naim Uniti Atom Headphone addition running into the Utopia 2022 and Stellia too.

GIK ACOUSTICS

Room acoustics are key to any proper listening space, and GIK provide acoustic solutions along with free advice on setups for your room.

PURITAN AUDIO LABORATORIES

Puritan make a range of mains cables and devices to minimise interference, noise and distortion from your mains power. They don’t hide anything when at shows and are happy to demonstrate how their devices work, along with showing off the insides too.

NODE AUDIO

Node make some interesting looking speakers with an integrated stand that houses the crossover, on demo they had their Hylixa Signature model in a special Ferrari red finish. These were being powered by a pair of SPL S1200 power amplifiers, SPL Elector pre-amp, SPL Diamond DAC and a Melco reference transport/server with SilentPower LAN iPurifier Pro network filter. Node were also showing off their SS1 support system which is modular and can be used as isolation devices for audio equipment, as well as having an adaptor to turn them into cable risers.

The second Node system had the Hylixa Signature speakers in a grey finish with the iFi iDSD Signature DAC, iFi PowerStation, SilentPower iPurifier Pro, VALVET soulshine 2 MKII pre-amplifier, VALVET A4e mono-block power amps and an Aurender A10 music server/streamer. The Node speakers are very open sounding, with plenty of drive for their relatively compact design.

KOG AUDIO

KOG Audio had the Fink Team BORG Episode 2 speakers on demo, Karl-Heinz Fink himself was at the show with these, paired with a Soul Note A3 amplifier, Soul Note E2 phono stage, Soul Note D2 DAC, Transrotor Massimo Nero turntable (with TRA Studio arm and Merlo MC cartridge) – all linked together with Tellurium Q cabling.

In the second KOG room you had a T&A setup with the Talis R300 speakers with matching stands, R2500R multisource receiver, Transrotor Bellini TMD turntable (with TR9 arm, Figaro MC cartridge and Konstant M1 ref PS). This was also all linked together with Tellurium Q cabling and there was a pair of the EPOS ES-7N speakers on static display at the back of the room.

ORIGIN LIVE

Next up we have Origin Live who make turntables and turntable accessories, in their room they had their Sovereign-S turntable with Agile tonearm and Kagami CS1 cartridge playing into a Discovery Ultra phono stage, Sugden A21SE integrated amplifier powering the DeVore Fidelity O/baby speakers – what a natural and spacious sounding setup this was, not clinical in the slightest and one that you could lose yourself in for hours.

SOUND FOWNDATIONS

Sound Fouwndations distribute DS Audio optical cartridges alongside Clearaudio turntables and accessories, they also have Furutech cables as part of their range. In the demo setup they had two different Clearaudio turntables playing, one with the DS Audio Master 3 cartridge, the other with the more affordable DS E3 model. Both using their matching DS Audio phono pre-amps, running into a Music First Audio Reference V2 pre-amp and GamuT D200i stereo power amplifier powering a pair of Kerr Acoustic K320 mk.3 speakers. Cabling was Furutech all round and anyone that has listened to Kerr Acoustic speakers know how dynamic and punch they can be with the right source; this was a well-matched system.

JBL

JBL were partnered with Arcam earlier however, they had a room of their own with some of their more lifestyle products on display. Mark was speaking to some people about the Authentics range, a lifestyle speaker that’s easy to use and fits into modern living spaces neatly. Having heard the Authentics 500 at home, it is a room filling all-in-one speaker that sounds great at sensible levels, they also had their Spinner BT turntable on show too. The Authentics 500 was the main speaker playing in this room, and it was sounding brilliant.

ABSOLUTE SOUNDS

Absolute Sounds had a huge area dedicated to the brands they distribute, along with two ticketed demo rooms. In the main areas you could find Wilson Audio speakers, Audio Research electronics, Dan D’Agostino kit, DeVore Fidelity speakers, Trafomatic amps and more…

One of the main attractions was the brand new dCS Varese stack, a huge streaming DAC system with user interface (which was showing an epic song in my picture), master clock, two mono DACs and a core.

Elsewhere in the rooms you had Reed turntables, Franco Serblin speakers, Dohmann turntables, darTZeel components, Magico speakers, Constellation Audio, Jadis amplifiers and a whole load of Primaluna and Copland Audio amps. There was so much to look at in the room, without even getting into the demo setups they had, let’s take a look at what these consisted of.

The first demo room I went in had Enrico Marconi (conductor/composer) doing a talk on an introduction to classical music with Ricardo from Absolute Sounds assisting. Digital source wise they had an Antipodes Oladra G4 server, dSC Vivaldi CD/SACD Transport II, dCS Vivaldi Apex DAC, dCS Vivaldi Upsampler and dCS Vivaldi Master clock. The analogue source consisted of a Dohmann Helix One MK3 turntable with Reed 5t tonearm and Analog Relax EX500 cartridge. They were using a HSE Swiss Masterline 7 phono pre-amp, Constellation Audio Revelation 2 pre-amp, Constellation Audio Revelation 2 stereo power amp into a pair of Magico S3 (2024 edition) speakers using Ikigai Audio and Transparent audio cabling with room acoustics by Artesania Audio. That’s a lot of kit, and sound wise it was perfectly balanced, the system handled the dynamics of classical music without breaking a sweat with impeccable transparency, timbre, and timing.

The second demo room had the same digital source setup analogue wise though they were using the Thiele TT01 turntable with TA01 tonearm and Analog Relax EX300 cartridge. There were two different amplifier systems after this, a valve-based system running a PrimaLuna EVO 100 tube phono pre-amp into the Audio Research Reference 6SE pre-amp and Audio Research Reference 330M mono-blocks. Or, a solid-state system with a Dan D’Agostino Momentum phono pre-amp and Dan D’Agostino Momentum MxV integrated amplifier. These were powering a pair of Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy speakers via Ikigai Audio and Transparent audio cabling with room acoustics by Artesania Audio. I didn’t have as good a listen in this room due to time constraints however, the Wilson’s with the Dan D’Agostino kit that was playing at the time had excellent control over the music with plenty of drive and clarity.

VINTAGE SHOWCASE

This is always quite a fun room, Tim Jarman from HiFi News had put together some vintage audio systems running through a pair of Technics SB-F3 speakers. I personally love seeing vintage kit like this and it sounds great to this day, there was an Aurex micro system (cassette, tuner, pre and power amplifier), an Aiwa micro system (cassette, tuner, pre and power amplifier), a beautiful Marantz CD-73 and Technics SL-10 linear tracking turntable.

RUSS ANDREWS

Russ Andrews are well-known for their cabling and mains supply devices; they had paired up with PMC and had a pair of PMC Twenty5 26i speakers running off a Bryston BCD-3 CD player and B135 integrated amplifier. In the middle of the setup they had the little Meridian Ellipse speaker, and I will be honest, the little Ellipse had you thinking the PMC were playing at times when you didn’t know which system was active (very clever DSP going on to produce a wide and deep sound from a small speaker). Around the room they had plenty of their products on display along with a range of Kimber Cables too which they also sell. There was the new Russ Andrews network purifier on display as well as a new DC Blocker too.

BOWERS & WILKINS / MARANTZ

Bowers & Wilkins have just released a couple of new colours of their headphones, Forest Green and Ruby Red – both of which were on display. Marantz have just announced a range of high-end stereo components, all of which were in the demo setup in this room. You had the new Model 10 integrated amplifier, Link 10n network pre-amplifier and SACD 10 SACD/CD player – these were powering a pair of the 702 S3 Signature speakers. I’ll be honest, I do have a soft spot for Marantz gear having had a few of their vintage models over the years, the new range does look stunning and I believe people will be very surprised at the sound from a Class-D based amplifier. At the back of the room, they had a static display of the new Marantz M1 streaming amplifier and the new Cinema 30 surround amplifier. With all that is going on at Masimo, some may have their doubts over the future of these two iconic brands, let’s hope they come out the other side stronger than ever.

SYMMETRY

Symmetry had a pair of the Wilson Audio Sabrina X speakers powered by a pair of Brinkmann Mono amplifiers. At the back of the room on the source side of things you had a full Brinkmann setup including the Taurus and Oasis turntables, Marconi MKII pre-amp, Edison MKII phono pre-amp, Nyquist DAC and a Shunyata Research Denali 6000/S v2 mains conditioner.

KS DISTRIBUTION

KS Distribution are the UK distributor for a few brands, this year they were at the show with a range of Audeze headphones along with iFi Audio components. They had the Audeze LCD-5, Audeze CRBN, iFi iCAN Phantom, Final D7000, Audeze MM100, Holo Audio Spring 3 / Bliss combo, iFi iCAN Signature + iDSD Pro combo, dCS Lina stack and more. It’s good to see headphones being better represented at HiFi shows, headphones have come a long way in the last 10-years or so.

SCV DISTRIBUTION

The last room, this one being run by SCV Distribution, with a range of brands on demo and display. In terms of the static display, you could find a range of Triangle speakers including the new Capella wireless speaker system, Manley labs amps/pre-amps, Isotek mains power cables and Isoacoutics isolation products. Demo setup wise they had a Rega P10 turntable, Manley Steelhead RC phono pre-amp, Manley NEO Classic 300B pre-amp and a pair of Manley Snapper mono-block amplifiers.

Behind these was an Isotek mains conditioner and an EarMen Staccato streamer with Tradutto DAC handling the digital playback side of things, this system was powering a pair of Triangle Magellan 40th Duetto speakers – I really enjoyed this system, big and powerful sound that never got congested. Whilst in the room they played Polyphia – G.O.A.T, a track that I know quite well, it’s a technical piece that has a lot of intricate guitar work with heavy bass drops and is a great system test track – these handled it impeccably.

Well, thus concludes my time at the UK HiFi Show Live 2024 – here’s to the next one!

ALL IMAGES AND TEXT ARE COPYRIGHT HiFi PiG AND MAY NOT BE USED WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE EDITOR

If you haven’t read Part 1 of our UK HiFi Show Live 2024 report, click here.

Oscar Stewart