My Thoughts on Manchester.......
Visited the show today....my third year in a row.
Again, it produced a great day out, but is it my imagination or are the number of visitors decreasing? If that is the case, it means more one on one conversations with the exhibitors.... 
Anyway, KEF created a great demo again. It was their demo of the 'Q' series last year that tempted me in buying some. This year we got to hear the Blade speakers. Wow....If I had £20K spare..... 
The new 'R' series sounded excellent too, and it was nice to hear a current tune on a demo (Maroon 5). I realised that acoustic music has the ability to show off good systems, but it's nice to hear something different occasionally.
The WHF demo was fun.....and the guy that spoke was quite an amusing chap. Again, nice to have a relaxing demo, rather than the full on sale/plug.
Biggest shock of the day came in the Neat Acoustics room.....surely the sub was hidden in the bathroom, or something? lol Those tiny speakers are abolutely superb!! Amazing!
The Rega room demo sounded pretty good too, to my ears, but the B&W PM1's were in another league!
The Panasonic 3D demo was great. I find my eyes ache with 3D, literally straight away. But they were fine in that demo.
The Marantz PM/CD6004 combo sounded pretty good on the Castle 2's (half price....omg.....bargain!!) I was a little disappointed they had the M-CR603 on display, but didn't want to demo it. Why bring it then?
ProAc Response D40R....nice sound!
The final highlight was the Yamaha demo......that soundbar was quite impressive, until the KEF speakers were demo'ed. Yamaha receivers seem to be very good (first one I've heard), with good steering of effects on the new Transformers film.
Disappointments/surprises:
I found the MA Gold speakers slightly dissapointing. Good detail, but no 'va va voom'.....
Tannoy DC6 T - great voacls and detail....no bass and excitement but maybe that's from the fact we had to stand up for the demo (no chairs in the room).
Naim demo....a little dull, but might be music choice.
New PMC speakers.....same as Naim. (model 22)
REL speakers and sub....wow from a distance, but bass was completely overblown when in the room, in my opinion
As I said above....it was another great day out, and we seemed to get the front row of most demo's.....
RE subscribed to WHF too......nice offer, and got some headphones to boot..... 
I'm not surprised!!!!
Remarkable sound, especially considering their size....... If they work well wall mounted, they will make a great space saving alternative to decent stand/floor standing speakers...
Neat Acoustics are on a winner with them.... 
Agreed Pete - cracking little speakers 
Good day out really. I was astonished by those little Neat speakers too, was trying to figure out where the sound came from. Liked Naim stuff as well, havent heard it befoire and it was a nice sound. The one thing that did bug me though was in the B & W room with the PM1's and also a couple of other rooms as well (can't remember which). The speaker cables were ludicrous, gigantic things like cables on Pylons. Don't want to start a debate on cables at all but from an aesthetic point of view they were quite ridiculous and impractical. I'm no physicist but I'd have thought passing a signal through that amount of metal would mean you'd lose detail rather than gain it. Fancy trying to hide those cables under the carpet. Otherwise generally friendly bunch and What Hi Fi managed to get a subscription out of me for a free pair of headphones!
David....are those Neat Acoustic speakers going to be sold as a home cinema package? They would be awesome!!!
Nick...I agree. Some of the cabling and electronics used to show off speakers was completely unrealistic!!!!
Marantz had it right....PM6004/CD6004 and the Castle 2 floorstanders......defo a combo that may well end up in someones lounge.
I did notice other rooms were using the more sensible Chord Silverscreen speaker cable though....
Got the headphones too......
I would assume that Neat are going to sell them individually too, which will allow five or seven to be bought with a sub of the user's choice (Neat don't make subs). If they don't, they'll be missing a trick! Will be interesting to find out....
Good day out really. I was astonished by those little Neat speakers too, was trying to figure out where the sound came from. Liked Naim stuff as well, havent heard it befoire and it was a nice sound. The one thing that did bug me though was in the B & W room with the PM1's and also a couple of other rooms as well (can't remember which). The speaker cables were ludicrous, gigantic things like cables on Pylons. Don't want to start a debate on cables at all but from an aesthetic point of view they were quite ridiculous and impractical. I'm no physicist but I'd have thought passing a signal through that amount of metal would mean you'd lose detail rather than gain it. Fancy trying to hide those cables under the carpet. Otherwise generally friendly bunch and What Hi Fi managed to get a subscription out of me for a free pair of headphones!
I knew there was something else I meant to mention about my visit.
I thought exactly the same about that cabling, how ridiculous it looked. The cables together were nearly as wide as the speaker!
.
Yes, great little speakers, what a sound. think they came in at £1600.00.
PHJ
£650 per pair
http://www.whathifi.com/news/manchester-show-2011-new-speakers-are-neat-compact-and-colourful
What are these Castle 2 speakers you speak of?
- Login to post comments
Thanks for the write up, PP1.
Those little Neats are on my 'must listen' list now.
Hi-Fi: Krell KAV-300cd, Michell TecnoDec/RB250/Grado Prestige Black1, KAV-300i amp, Transparent balanced interconnects and bi-wire to Sonus faber Concerto grand piano speakers, Nakamichi ZX-7 cassette deck, Logitech Squeezebox Touch, Hitachi FT-5500 and Sony S570ES tuners, BCD Engineering stand, RA Powerlink, Chord powerchord, Grado SR60i cans.
AV: Sony Bravia KDL-32EX503 telly, BDP-S370 player with QED HDMI. Currently unused: Denon AVR-1705, DVD-1710, KEF KHT1005.2