Bristol show 2024

brill well see if you can give an opinion on the nelson if they are there

harbeth.co.uk/nelson-subwoofer-stand-solution/

i'll be delighted to

Anyone going to the show on Friday, that's when I will be there

Spent the morning reflecting on the show, while listening to a variety of tracks, many I heard yesterday, on a variety of systems.


I get that the Bristol Show is not the best, for a number of reasons, but it is a short train journey from me, and an interesting day out. What is a real pain though, is most of the exhibitors spend most of their time talking to other exhibitors and blocking the door to the room I am trying to get into! Moan out of the way!.


I did not have any real focus for the day, just comparing rooms and their sounds. Some thoughts in no real order:

hifinutt mentioned the Harbeth Nelsons. Seems they are named the Nelsons as they are a column, bloke representing them thought this was very funny, so much so I heard him repeat it a number of times.




The speakers sounded wonderful alone. The Nelson is NOT a subwoofer, according to the manufacturer, but an enhancer. Seems the speaker alone goes down to 80Hz and then the column kicks in. Seem very easy to set up, just plug and play, no tuning of the sub to the speaker. They look really good too. Negatives, the power supply looks like something that would go to a laptop, see left of the picture. They cost the best part of £2750 and, although they do increase the lower frequency response, they do it in, to my ears, quite a boomy way. More like the way a sub adds to a cheaper sound bar. Perhaps it was my ears, or the room, but the Nelson didn't seem to be anywhere near the quality of sound of the P3ESR. Clever product though and worth a second listen, set up properly, if you have or want to have these speakers.

Speakers in Kerr acoustics room sounded wonderful again, they have the same Scanspeak driver as my 851 midrange driver.

Anthos Audio had some wonderful looking horn speakers as part of their £100K system, that does not include the source. They seemed to demonstrating them with a sound effects CD, they sounded great doing this, but when more complex music came on I was not so sure about them, definitely preferred the Kerr!.

Wilson Benesch sounded fantastic, as ever. Best soundstage, width, depth and height, super engaging. As a £150K plus system should be. Best sounding system in the show for me, also probably the highest cost by some distance, except one..... I'll mention later!

Russell K Red 50 SE speakers were producing a really engaging sound, with loads of well controlled LF extension. I was able to speak to the owner / designer who was very pleased to go into loads of detail about why they they sound so great. A very engineering led approach to design. I would like to hear them more.

Supatrac Blackbird arm. I have been interested in these for a while. Again great to speak to the designer and get his insights into the engineering behind the arm. Great sounding on the Rega 10. Impressive review here: trackingangle.com/equipment/the-supatrac-blackbird-farpoint-a-tonearm-like-no-other

Michell room had a brilliant sounding £5K system using the Tecnodec as a source. Great value.

Great conversation with someone about the acoustic benefits of artex.

It was getting late, I was tired, so I went into the Linn room. Large room, large speakers, large amplification and an LP12. Everything looked very futuristic in the system, and there was also an LP12. I felt the system sounded very lifeless, a bit dull and mushy, I had just been listening to Wilson Benesch though. I went up to a bloke from Linn to ask which model of LP12 it was, thinking it was not sounding that great to my ears. Turned out it was their 50th anniversary one, costing £50K. He was raving about the plinth which was made out of compressed ply, nothing like Panzerholz though apparently, I could tell he was not impressed when I mentioned Panzer'! I recon the Linn system must have not been far of the cost of the Wilson, but to my ears didn't sound anywhere near as good as the best systems in the smaller rooms. Apparently Linn have 37 of the LP12 50's yet, Linn man was impressing on me what a great investment they would be!!

So a good day out, but main thing I took away from the day, listening to my system, was that I am a very lucky person. To my ears, my system is sounding better than everything I heard yesterday, with the possible exception of the Wilson Benesch, but I recon that I am not a million miles away, and could be even closer that that. And when I have done my next upgrade!!!

 So thanks must go to Arke , Bigman80 and phonomac for their great designs and builds which form a good part of my system. And everyone else who have had an input on my hifi journey

Great write up pete!

Wish I could've gone, but a bit of a trek for me.

Which speakers did Wilson B have on? Act 3 or something like that? Their system was about £200k last year and sounded very good. It was let down by the poorly integrated subs - why demo a system that costly and not bother to integrate the subs!? I spoke to the guy there and it seemed that they didn't really know how to integrate the subs.

It is quite surprising how much you need to spend to get better SQ than you have.

I used to have an all Cyrus and mission system 😂. Fortunately, it was half price as I used to work in the trade.

Funny how much we have saved by moving away from the 'big' names.

the dealer who had the RFC rubato at bristol show wrote this feedback . actually if i didnt love my eatons so much i would get a pair of demo !!

My plan did come together.

I played through KEF R3 Meta and Reference Fidelity Components Rubato, which is a reflex two-way coaxial with a very solid ply cabinet at £2000. I was very happy with both but you all know the KEFs so I'm going to talk about the Rubatos.

The first thing to notice about them is that they go much deeper than you would expect from a speaker of this size and weight - Paul of RFC tells me they comfortably reach 40Hz and I can confirm that they produced a deep, rich and very tuneful sound. It was easy to hear the pitch and timing of every hemidemisemiquaver right down in the low registers of acoustic and electric bass alike. At the end of the show we pushed them a bit and they also go loud and stay clean until you really go too far. Their output is going to be more than enough for any reasonable domestic listening, and they are quite efficient if you like to festoon your room with those pretty glowing things. We had several people say that our room was among the best they had heard at the show, and I found the rich deep sound organic and beguiling.

Being co-axial, with moderately narrow front baffles they had great imaging, disappearing laterally and producing a great illusion of instrument distance. No ten-foot-high violins with these. They also had a lot of realism and snap. I had no sense of any region of uncertainty wherever crossing over takes place, so midrange instruments sounded very life-like indeed. I can't fault them in any way, so if you're in the market for a beautifully and cleverly made two-way stand-mount in that price bracket I urge you to give them a listen. This is a brand new speaker but I hear that orders are already rolling in so you will probably get them sooner if you waste no time.

I did manage to pick up a Naia and a P10 the night before the show. I mounted a Blackbird on the P10 for Friday morning, so we were up and running, but it got very busy very quickly and I could not find ten minutes to install cartridge on the Naia and set it up. A massive thanks to Mark (YNWAN) who offered to set it up while I was gassing to visitors - there are few people I would trust as firmly to do so. He did warn me that he was suspicious that, as is often the case, the VMN540ML may not have seated and clicked in fully, but in the excitement I did not check it. The Blackbird install had been a bit pressured too so although we did some a/b comparisons on Friday I did not feel that we had either deck quite right. The majority of listeners, including I, seemed to prefer the Naia on the majority of tracks even though it was considerably quieter.

On Saturday morning I spent an hour setting up both decks from scratch, and this time I felt they were both a lot closer to their full potential. I swapped the styluses between the two decks several times but could hear nothing to suggest they were different. The Naia sounded superb, and I could feel it's authority and flow, but despite that I felt the P10/Blackbird just edged ahead on dynamics, drama, timbral variety and resolution of timing. To me it felt a bit richer, but even though I'm trying to be objective I know it's impossible for me because I have a horse in the race.

A visitor, to my amazement (;-) suggested DSOTM when Roy Gandy arrived so I was able to introduce the patron of these two wonderful turntables. He and I sat in the back row for an a/b of 'Money' and Roy was so polite that I noticed he was even tapping his foot while the P10/Blackbird was playing. A true gent! And a surreal experience.

On Sunday, eventually, we got a Blackbird going on the Naia with an AT33SA, and for me this was the best we achieved during the show.

Altogether a lot of fun and a very interesting experiment. I thought the Rega decks sounded great. They are also very beautiful objects with their Terminator T-1000 finished arms and exo-skeletal chassises.

And almost nobody noticed the naughty amps behind the curtains ;-)

Apologies for the delay to this reply.

I understood them to be the Endeavour 3Zero, their flagship standout, which is £35K. This is what my mate told me, I did not check with the rep who, like so many others, was standing talking to other reps!

Ah, that’s it. Now you mention it I do remember the Kefs. That is why I must have had such a different impression of the sound.

interesting to read hi fi pigs show report and see the tannoy super gold monitors . i guess these replace the tannoy eaton legacy . dont think i will be changing my coatbridge built ones though for these ones made from various countries anytime soon !!!

super gold monitor by , on Flickr

They look like clones 😂