Report: The Bristol Sound and Vision Show 2018

I too sat through a very cringe Sony demo. Quite awkward when the lad asked if anyone wanted the offer and we all sat in silence waiting to leave... watching the A1 too made me feel like my KS9000 does a bloody good job. And how 5.1.2 really does fall flat in front of you. So know to invest in a 5.1.4.

Did anyone catch the WhatHiFi demo? Was it any good?

Yeah I think that 77 inch A1 wasn't setup correctly. My 55 inch one showed a better picture at home. I also noticed a lot of image interpolation during the demo, so they must have set smoothing to the max or near it! But no doubt your ks9000 probably has better brightness and HDR. Yeah I've yet to hear a good ATMOS demo. At the moment I haven't heard what all the fuss is about. I missed the what hifi demo too. We went to queue up and there was no queue at 20 mins to go and the 5 mins later a big queue and wouldn't let us join it, so we left and went home. Intrigued by the rollup oled panel.
 
PMC Twenty25 was the best 2 channel for me. Really spacious sound in a large area. The Leema and seriously pricy ATC room was way too loud and overly bright sounding made me wince and I had to come out. Hegel H360 was excellent but thenI own one so know it well.

Epic Home Cinem’s XTZ demo room was easily the pic and then some of the Cinema stuff. High end system with the new flagship M8 floorstanders in the Cinema series with a 5.2.2 immersive audio system. Not high end priced for sound an amount of hardware. Noticed that the room sounded better in the afternoon, probably all those people in there holding it back. Found the SVS / Emotiva disappointing, they butchered Baby Driver with way off lip sync and their display wasn’t as good as I’ve seen it elsewhere. Those bright blue displays (info screen and button light) would put me off unless the unit is hidden in a cupboard or you can turn them off. Hey used to a dark room!

Sony Atmos was disappointing and the 77” OLED wasn’t sharp looking and seen much better on LG’s take on OLED.
 
Had a couple of days to wander around the show. I tend to avoid the rooms displaying the expensive and forever out of reach equipment. I'm more inclined to return to my favoured brands and those surprises that I may just be tempted by.
Enjoyed the sound of the Proac Tablette signature and had a long and interesting chat with the Proac team. Also thoroughly enjoyed Totems Skytower floorstander. Very nice sounding speaker.
Most impressive though,for me,was the Jamo S805 demo. Amazing sound for very little outlay and a HCS available as part of a package to boot. Will definitely be demoing a full Atmos set up when all the speakers are available.
 
Spent a good few hours there yesterday, here's my take, for what it's worth...

SVS room sounded good at first, but after a while it became apparent it was very overblown in the bass dept.

XTZ room was dreadful. Sound was flat and lifeless and couldn't even tell the Atmos speakers were on - had to ask!

Handily, the exact same scene from Baby Driver was used in both the SVS & XTZ demos, which made differences in the two systems very apparent.

I didn't see the Sony or What HiFi demos, but all the demos using a display looked awful - far too much image processing going on.

Kef LS50 sounded very decent for their size and price.

A huge pair of Fyne looked absolutely sublime, but sounded very ordinary.

Chord Qutest demo using a £12k amplifier and £13k B&W 802 didn't impress, especially when you consider the combined price of the kit!

REL subwoofer demo sounded OK, but there was a standing wave right where I was sitting. Not sure if any of the rooms were using EQ?

Most impressive things I heard all day were a Canton soundbar (DM75 I think?), soundstage was huge and very dynamic considering it was £300 and not backed up by a subwoofer. And Ophidian Minimo bookshelf speakers, tiny little things that really packed a punch especially in the bass dept.

All in all, I'm glad I went as it made me appreciate just how good my system sounds, especially when you consider the price of the components I have compared with what I heard at the show.
IMG_20180225_232218_658.jpg
20180225_141937.jpg
20180225_144026.jpg
20180225_143235.jpg
20180225_141028.jpg
20180225_135906.jpg
20180225_135445.jpg
IMG_20180225_232218_655.jpg
20180225_130756.jpg
20180225_143832.jpg
20180225_141015.jpg
20180225_131402.jpg
20180225_131945.jpg
20180225_133928.jpg
 
Last edited:
Well, I loved it. My mate and I stayed over Sat in to Sun at the Future Inn and went to the show both days. Met some very interesting and knowledgeable/helpful people. The guy with glasses in the Technics room. Great guy.
Ok, some highlights from saturday were:

Ground floor
; I think it was the second room that we went in to, we saw the line-up from Fine Audio (ex-Tannoy bods). The mid range and in particular the hi end (F1-10) looked incredible. Tested some headphones in the next room, with Audio-Technica winning for me. The MSR7's are amazing for the price, but their BT models were also very good. Hi-fi Racks beat Atacama on looks for me. As for the rest of the floor, Dynaudio had a great demo playing, I think it was The Special Forty(?) stand mounts. Sounded wonderful, but we later found out (on Sunday) that the hardware behind it was £40k's worth of Naim kit! No wonder it sounded good. Q Acoustics had their top of the range playing and yes, not to bad :)

Lower Ground Floor
; Quad was meh(except their proto headphone - wonderful sound), as was B&W which surprised me. KEF had their wireless LS50's playing which were very good until we went next door in to the Naim/Focal room. Very impressed with this combo. Looked and sounded like a perfect match. I think the speakers were the Focal Kanta No.2. Didn't like the look and sound of the Technics gear, even though it was around £50k!

Terrace and Conservatory
;
Now I love the design of Wilson Benesch speakers (far end on this floor), they were playing some bizarre music, no idea what it was. Anyway, the highlight was that we had a free desert with our lunch in the restaurant. Result! Lots of smaller sellers/magazines on this floor so not much interest for us.

Some highlights from Saturday were:
10th Floor; Leema Acoustics playing their new streaming products hooked up to ATC speakers. Very good, especially as they were receiving their stream from a few rooms away. No drop in strength that I noticed.

4th Floor
; Even though I liked the sound of these next speakers, the look and name just killed it. There would be no way I'd have a pair of Von Gaylord's standmounts in my living room......Ophidian Audio were amazing for their size, but in the next Room, Canton just blew us away with their active bluetooth floorstanders. Just hook them up to your TV and off you go, virtual surround sound heaven with plenty of bass. Great demo. Apparently there'll be a standmount available by the end of the year.
Didn't like the look or sound of Mission. Elipson looked cool. I wasn't blown away with XTZ and their Cinema series, which is a shame as I was really looking forward to their demo. Admittedly it was a loop demo disc and not an actual film.

3rd Floor
; AKG probably had the best closed back headphones at the show. You had to put the head phones on, press and hold a button for 5 or so seconds when it then beeped and this then meant that the headphones had auto calibrated the drivers to your ears or something. Did the test of before and after and we both could tell the difference for the better.....shame I didn't have £1399 burning a hole in my sky rocket. Fyne Audio demoed their flagship. I had brought along a couple of cd's, and Opeth - Windowpane has never sounded so good. Headroom and clarity like I've never heard before. REL looked nice but can't remember if they had a demo running. AE sounded good. I nearly ordered a pair of their stands. Big subwoofer fight out coming up, JL Audio vs SVS. Now then, SVS had an ATC speaker package compared to SVS having Ultras all round, but they both had their top end subs turned up to 11. For sound quality I'd give the nod to JL/ATC. Superb sound steering. But, for impact I'd go with SVS. They had a better film that was more suited to test the lower frequencies.

2nd Floor; Audioquest had one of the best demos. For some reason I get a little skeptical about the difference cables and noise conditioners can make, but that always changes when I go to the shows, and this was no different. Heard every change (subtle) that was made regarding power cables. Audioquest's problem was that their system on demo was REALLY good to start with. Kudos speakers but I can't remember the electronics. I think they played a track by Daft Punk and even though it's not my type of music it just sounded fantastic. Biggest change in the sound was from basic kettle leads to their NRG-2. Very impressed and will be buying 1 or 2......

1st Floor; ATC, again my cd that I'd brought along sounded stunning. Their speakers are worth the money imho, but......we moved along in to Spendor and WOW. Now I've never really given Spender the time of day for no other reason than I think they look, er, boring, but jeez arse the D9's are fantastic speakers. Headroom, Soundstage, clarity, bass, mids, highs. Lovely stuff. Another dance track but I didn't mind as the sound was.....music to my ears ;) Loved the high gloss slate grey finish too. £7500.....
PMC was...ok. Smaller floorstands on demo than previous years, and it didn't help coming from the Spender demo. Jeez that was good. The Bryston and AVM gear looked great though.
Another cable demo in Chord Company's room, and yet again I could hear every change that was made. Biggest difference was from Rumour to Shawline speaker cable and then the non-Teflon interconnect plugs to the Teflon versions. Great demo.
Dali was just ok, and I own Dali speakers myself. The wireless speakers they had on demo didn't compete with Canton for us.

So there we go, great show and will more than likely be back there next year., which will be 3 in a row, and I haven't done that for about 10 years now! It certainly helped staying overnight, which I'd never done before.

I'll add some pics tomorrow.

Ian.
 
DSC_1314.JPG
DSC_1312.JPG
DSCPDC_0003_BURST20180224134711590_COVER.JPG
DSC_1313.JPG
DSC_1315.JPG
 
Thanks for everyone's show reports to date, many of which are far more informative than a certain publication. I did not go this year due to the dwindling visual aspect but will keep an open mind on next year's show.
 
DSC_1316.JPG
DSC_1318.JPG
DSC_1319.JPG
DSC_1321.JPG
 
DSC_1323.JPG
DSC_1324.JPG
DSC_1325.JPG

DSC_1328.JPG
 
DSC_1334.JPG
DSC_1329.JPG
DSC_1330.JPG
DSC_1332.JPG
DSC_1333.JPG
 
DSC_1335.JPG
DSC_1336.JPG
DSCPDC_0001_BURST20180225120139187.JPG
DSC_1341.JPG
 
DSC_1344.JPG
DSC_1346.JPG
DSC_1347.JPG
DSC_1348.JPG
 
Last few.
DSC_1354.JPG


DSC_1350.JPG


DSC_1356.JPG
 
Can only imagine how good those Chord mains cables / rca interconnects would sound on my LS50w!
 
i'm going out on a limb here to say this had to be worth a mention, being the UK launch of the probably one of the best subwoofers in the world
I should hope so at 14 grand a pop!

I find it quite mind boggling that there are people out there who will actually spend this much money on a sub.
 
I should hope so at 14 grand a pop!

I find it quite mind boggling that there are people out there who will actually spend this much money on a sub.

its 16 grand and taken orders already ;)

to be honest, to some of the 2 channel guys, this is peanuts and because its only £16k it can't be good enough :eek:

the multi channels customers will order though as well, Bristol though is not the best place to demonstrate anything, especially high end equipment
 
crazy to think people will spend more on a cable to listen to it through than the ones it took to record it in the first place :facepalm:
 
I started with the What Hi-Fi? demo which showcased HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Slightly odd as I felt the 2 versions had completely different colour tones.

The most impressive setup I heard was the Revel speakers and Mark Levinson 585 amp in the Arcam room - but then I guess it should be given the amp alone is over £10k and the speakers even more so!

Another one that I really enjoyed listening to was the Falcon Acoustics with Sugden amps. A very sweet sound.

The PMC/AVM combo had a nice balanced quality to it - they were showcasing one of the larger florstanding models when I listened.

The Sony room had the 77" A1 OLED but the slightly chaotic demo consisted of Atmos focussed content. The DN1080 did a good job not only of reproducing phantom rear speakers but I wouldn't say the Atmos content was mind-blowing. The discount offers for all Sony equipment were very tempting for fans of their gear.

Having never seen 4k projection (outside of the cinema) before, I was really impressed with the Optoma UHZ65. In terms of low light viewing, the brightness, contrast and colour saturation on offer would make me doubt getting another large scale TV because the 120" screen size was brilliant.

B&W gave their usual explanatory demo, comparing CM1, CM8, 707, 705, 704 and 702 speakers. Whilst I have owned a pair of 685, 684 and now 805S's, I feel like what I heard sounded a tad bright at the top end. Maybe it's since they started using Rotel amps instead of Classe for the demos? It was still the lovely rich sound and had detail I haven't heard in many other loudspeakers, but I just didn't love it like I do my much older 805s. Personal preference I guess - or maybe the room.

I heard the surround setups of XTZ, ATI and Emotiva briefly. All were quite impressive, particularly the Emotiva/SVS. First time I'd heard Emotiva products and felt the concept of having different module configurations possible within the power amp chassis an excellent one. Obviously JL wanted to show off the Gotham but I thought it sounded too much for the room, and at the opposite end of the scale from REL, who were boasting their ability at blending into a stereo or surround music system. They did not only blend in, but expand the already impressive soundstage delivered by the B&W 804's. I have to wonder though how many people are going to have a 2.2 system in their homes.

I've been really impressed with Totem speakers whenever I've heard them. It was the Arro with Moon electronics 2 years ago and this year the Skytower with Rega gear.

Other shout outs to Quad's all-in-one Artera Solara dac/cd player/amp, the new Neat speakers and Spendor also.
 
ian-500, cheers for the write up and photos. It looked damn good.
 
A great day for me, but not many Home Cinema demos. I am really tempted in replacing my Kef TDMs with the XTZ M8's, those M8 Towers Bad boys look HardCore!

Sony claims they well will send me a discount code which I may use to purchase their 65" A1 for less than £2700.

Did you ever get the code. They promised to send one to me, but I am still waiting
 
Did you ever get the code. They promised to send one to me, but I am still waiting

Yeah I am still waiting too for the Sony Code. Last years email code is come through very promptly. Looked through Junk folder too. Elephant Man whats the title of the email, so I can search my inbox?
 
Any feedback on the Eclipse room?
I was only in there briefly as I was working the show with Auden Distribution (Amphion/Hegel), but it wasn’t enough time to adjust. Eclipse offer something so different that if you walk into their room from another room showing a big bassy system, they won’t immediately impress - they take time to get accustomed to to really appreciate what they do. Plus, I didn’t know the music playing.

Their characteristics are more like active speakers, but rather than get opinions on Eclipse from people casually visiting at the show, I’d pop into a dealer for an extended listen and really get to know them.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom