BEST DEMO ROOM- -WORST DEMO ROOM = MANCHESTER 2010
Hi im no expert and very new to sound and vision. So here goes my BEST demo room was spendor. they were simply brilliant to my taste in sound . A big airy sound feild that sounded so realistic the band were playing in the room. My WORST demo room was the Onkyo demo room with Monitor audio RX range. They had some concert/band playing, the sound was a load of muffled bass banging away with no clarity no detail the combination was easily by far the worst room . I have the RX RANGE with a yamaha receiver and was really excited about what my speakers could do with a really good amp ,cable setup. It was a shambles . My living room any day over that @$%@. Short and sweet im am not good with reviews but this is my opinon P.S 3d tv was kack a load of flickering fuzzy-head nonsence which isnt ready.
Which Spendors were being used in their demo room?
Spendor did sound pretty good. For me, Dynaudio was just amazing. They had these tiny little speakers putting out this huge rich sound... gorgeous.That was much more interesting to me personally than seeing a huge wall of speakers putting out a similar sound.
And yes, Monitor/Onkyo - I just didn't get that at all. Bass was all boomy and I couldn't pick out any details. The room was packed though, so maybe it was just too distracting in there or something. Didn't like Denon. Went in there twice but they never seemed to be playing anything. Not at a decent volume. Just loads of units whispering away so quietly they might as well have been switched off. Perhaps I missed something there.
When I went to the Bristol Show they had an Onkyo/MA Platinum set up and I was not impressed with that. Maybe Onkyo/MA is not a good match...
No AL the jvc was the only demo i didnt see ,to big of a que by the time i got round to it. I left the jvc till last because projectors are out of my reach -price and room size although somone mentioned it was best 3d demo than the rest,
Igglebert im sorry i dont know although i went in 3 times to compare the spendor demo room with others on the same floor, The rooms are quite small and crowded at times so unless familier with all speakers i didnt get time to know half of the demo gear over the 3-floors. But they just sounded brill to my ears.
The best rooms by far for me today were the Vienna Acoustics, Cyrus/Vienna Acoustics, Arcam, and Focal rooms. The Arcam CD37/A38 set-up with the Focal 806Vs was one of the very best and most musical sounds of the entire show. I also loved the Vienna Acoustics speakers - both the Mozart floorstanders driven by the T+A unit, and the Beethoven floorstanders in the Cyrus room. In Arcam's own room, John Dawson was a true gentleman and their AV set-up was superb.
I also enjoyed listening to the KEF Q100s and Q300s in the BDI and KEF displays respectively. Very impressive new models indeed.
The Dali room was excellent, with their new Ikon 6s beautifully driven by the new Quad electronics.
In the Roksan room I was disappointed with the Caspian CD player, but when they switched the source to the Pro-ject 6 the Caspian amplifier showed how good it is.
So, stand-out products of the whole show for me were:
Focal speakers
Vienna Acoustics speakers
Arcam
KEF Q100 and Q300
Quad electronics feeding the new Dali Ikon 6.
Denon DCD-1510AE feeding AD-H5000 headphones
Grado SR80 headphones
In terms of disappointments I thought the Naim room sounded awful. Cardboard bass and nothing that really made the elelctronics or the speakers stand out.
The Onkyo/MA rooms were, I agree, a complete disaster. A very average sounding AV system pumping out repetitive show-off music, followed by a demonstration of the BX2s which showed me all the reasons why I rejected them during auditions recently. They are incredibly thin sounding speakers.
The Rega room also sounded poor. I recently rejected the Brio 3 on the basis of it being too in-yer-face, and today it supported that. Just brash and lacking in control.
I was also disappointed by the PMC and ProAc speakers I heard.
igglebert:Which Spendors were being used in their demo room?
They had the A9's on demo.......nice, but the PMC's were better. Think they were using the PMC GB1i's or FB1i's......and in my opinion were the best sounding speaker there today....
Another demo that surprised me was the Castle Knight 2 speakers.......wow, fantastic for the show's offer of £299 a pair.
Sat through the demo of the new KEF Q series speakers.....Q300...ok, Q500...better, Q700....very nice!!! Of course it would have been a better demo if the same piece of music was used for each speaker.....why do we have to listen to different types of music when hearing and comparing three different pairs of speakers??? Anyway...great soundstage on these speakers....
Tried to get into the 3D Sony demo....no ticket to get into the 2.20pm demo......next demo 4.20pm
Why the 2 hour gap between demo's?
Saw the new KEF T series...but didn't get into demo...they look great thou......
Next came What HIFI demo room.....but the 3D expereince didn't work in there for me......but they did have a 3D game running outside, which was amazing!!!
Which reminds me.....3D demo from Panasonic with Avatar playing was excellent.....
Next we went to the demo rooms on the 3 floors......
Both I and my friend came out of most of the room wondering why the systems had not been set up correctly!!!!
The worst offender was the Onkyo/MA set up.....very little coming out of the rear speakers, and 'cinema' setting being used when playing a 'Pink' blu ray disc...did they forget the set up microphone/sound level indicator???
The other thing we didn't understand was that some rooms were using what seems like very old music/recording to demo the equipment.....was that to show up the poor quality recordings, or not highlight the equipment???
On a positive......the REL demo was very informative, and although I didn't attend any, at least Chord Cables were creating a demo of cables....shame heathpw didn't attend one....
Again....great show, but was it my imagination, or were the number of visitors less this year....it seemed much easier to get into the rooms than last year.....
sounds like some/everyone from the onkyo-monitor audio pair-up made a bit of a boo boo
Pistol Pete1:
Another demo that surprised me was the Castle Knight 2 speakers.......wow, fantastic for the show's offer of £299 a pair.
Me too. They sounded good didn't they? Just goes to show that price isn't everything.
.
DIB:
Pistol Pete1:Another demo that surprised me was the Castle Knight 2 speakers.......wow, fantastic for the show's offer of £299 a pair.
Me too. They sounded good didn't they? Just goes to show that price isn't everything.
Absolutely amazing!!!!!!!! Love to test them against the B&W 685's......
One thing that made us laugh though....according to the banner they won Best speaker under £2000 with another magazine.....
Really!!!!!!!
Then why bother bringing the rest of the Castle range to sit on a table for the weekend?????
The Knight 2's are all we need........
albriscoe:out of interest did you get to see the jvc 3d demo at all and if so what was your opinion?
Al
I did. We were there early doors and got into the first sitting.
First two minutes was an action fight scene from the Iron Man movie in HD, and then was a 2 minute 3D piece taken almost inevitably from an underwater sealife documentary. That was really good and I found myself reaching out to touch a fish at one point. Mind you the size of the screen was bigger than my front room, it felt like being in a cinema, but an interesting experience none the less.
.
maxflinn:sounds like some/everyone from the onkyo-monitor audio pair-up made a bit of a boo boo
Major mistake!!! They were using the MA RX6's, and two subs too. The receiver was the newly crowned best receiver between £800-£1000......Onkyo 808!!!
Not a good advert for either, really.....
Pistol Pete1:The worst offender was the Onkyo/MA set up.....very little coming out of the rear speakers, and 'cinema' setting being used when playing a 'Pink' blu ray disc...did they forget the set up microphone/sound level indicator???
I have just put this blu ray concert on, and what makes the set up even worse today in the Onkyo/MA room was that it is recorded in TrueHD!!!!!
The 'cinema' setting doesn't even work in 'TrueHD' mode......
Do you think they put the disc in and forgot to change audio settings on the disc menu????
Rookie mistake, I guess, from these 'experts/professionals'.......
Poor....very poor......
out of interest did you get to see the jvc 3d demo at all and if so what was your opinion?
Al