Unilet demos today

Anybody been to Unilet today? here is my report:

A great open doors day at Unilet.

There were PMC reps demoing PMC and Bryston kit, 20% discound on the brands on the day. there were 3 main demos:

1 - the main one: the flagship active PMC/Bryston set-up









Bryston CD and pre-amp were used, feeding into Bryston active crossovers (1 per channel) and into Bryston PMC Active power amps. For each channel, a stereo amp used in dual mono was driving the tweeter and midrange drivers (300W per driver) and two monoblock amps were drving the woofers, 1,000W per driver, making the total power output 2,600W per channel or 5,200W total.

There was a variety of tracks played, most unfamiliar and all from CDs, although some were CDRs containing digitised vinyl tracks (the only familiar track was Queen "Another one bites the dust" and it was a vinyl-to-CDR version). I was surprised they did not play anyting higher resolution than CD! Bryston does make a nice DAC capable of 24bit!

the sound of cause was great. Initially I was underimpressed, but when they played a track of drums I was properly impressed with the power and the dynamics that the system was capable of. Of cause, with that much power and with this size (the speakers are abt 2.3m tall, very deep and the rest of the kit needs a huge rack as well) one would expect nothing less than very impressive sound.



2 - 3D TV and active PMC monitors and a PMC sub in 5.1 setup.





The speakers were small PMC active monitors (cannot remember the model name) and a PMC sub, driven from an Anthem processor and a bluray player (do not know the model). the material I saw was a nature documentary (in 3D), an episode of iron man 2 and a piece of Tony Benett's concer tin Vegas (both in 2D).

The sound was excellent.

As for 3D - I think this was my 4th time looking at 3D (both at cinemas and on TVs) and it confirmed my observations so far:
- 3D needs screen big enough to fill peripheral vision, otherwise it feels like you are looking through a small hole in a wall or a window, very restricted view
- the picture is not ideal. the resolution is fine but it looks like there are some 3D-related artefacts, sort of flickering or a bit smudgy areas at times (without movement)
- the glasses are a nuisance
- the producers of 3D material are probably still learing how to shoot for 3D. there are a lot of scenes that look annatural, probably becasue too much of 3d effect (e.g. scenes done with very long focal length lenses with the main subgect close to camera but very far from the background - it looks very unnatural, like paper cut-outs. scenes that fill the frame more evenly in terms of distance do not have this unnatural feel.
- another curious observation was that you get two sets of lens flare in one picture (e.g. from the sun) - obviously from using two lenses.

So, my position on 3D remains - wait and see. Let it mature.

3 - PMC Fact 3 and Fact 8









I have heard Fact 8 before (also at Unilet). Both Fact 3 and Fact 8 sound very good and have surprisingly deep bass. But the bass is a bit boomy to my taste. Very good looking.

And here is a shot of the back wall in one of the demo room if you have not seen it. Nice!



So, overall, very good. No crowds, excellent demos, opportunity to speak to PMC and Unilet people. And even nice food and drinks as well! A wine dealer was there offering wine to drink and sample, as well as selling some. My other half bought a bottle of bubbly - tasted rather nice. [:)]

there was bad news too, unfortunately. My trusty Canon 20D has broken down as I did the final shots of the small PMC cut-out and I now need to arrange for repair... [:'(]