Acoustic Energy chose bean bag seating in this hotel bedroom to get listeners more or less on the designer axis for their brand new AE509, distinguished by all carbon fibre diaphragm drivers. These supplant their long established aluminium alloy cone technology, now with smoother responses and higher efficiency: acoustic waveguide loading for the tweeter allows for a beneficially lowered crossover frequency. Floor coupling hardware is also improved.
ATC With a gutsy demo of the usual high standard, ATC surprised us all when we discovered that this big hearted and well balanced sound came from a tiny box, the almost LS 3/5a sized SCM7, see picture, driven by ATC sources and amplification.
Naturally efficiency is low, in the early 70s dB/W, as it should be for such an impressive sound from such a diminutive enclosure.
Real wood finish, about £750 a pair. We had noted them as support in an ATC electronics system review last year, but I think they deserve our full review attention. A pair has been ordered.
As is their habit their loudspeakers are happy with corner mounting in a hotel bedroom and that is where they were placed, providing a musical and upbeat vinyl replay from the new Cobra EL34 integrated line amp.
No thanks to Coronavirus, he is stalled in the UK for a month or two before he will be allowed to return to the China facility.
They also released their exotic contact cleaner and preservative Chord OHMIC after a second year of development.
CHORD Electronics released many products, five I believe, all UK built: the new ULTIMA PRE 2 preamp, ULTIMA 5and ULTIMA 6 stereo power amps, with design theory input from luminaries Cordell and Hawksford , plus the new 2Go streamer/server and 2Yu digital interface. ‘ A new era of Hi-Res streaming, network audio and digital library playback.’
Dali impressed with their stand mount fully active two-way Rubicon Two C wirelessly linked loudspeaker,
clear and dynamic, worth a review, I reckon. No speaker cable required but they do need some local mains.
Exposure have been busy with an active crossover for the flagship Kudos Audio loudspeaker, the Titan 505 plus their XM CD player.
Falcon Acoustics showed a stand mounted, enlarged LS3/5a based, line loaded, kit speaker at £1500 per pair
and claimed that almost anyone could build it. We have ordered a pair and will find a suitable pre-teen to build it.
Also the formidable Scala Utopia at the NAIM room, powered by the amazing and humongous three-tower NAIMStatement pre-power amplifier. In this difficult room some of the fine qualities of both these products could be ascertained, nevertheless.
of the large higher power ‘concentrics’ visually and sonically impressive, here mounted on a matching heavy duty pillar stand. Could well be a review request (about £6,000 with stand).
KEF had an impressive stereo demonstration using the R11 a slim tall floor stander and then majored on a fine Dolby Atmos surround sound presentation, with a duo of new KF92 force opposed woofers, it was hard to drag oneself away from the big screen!
It was tens of seconds before that unmistakable sense of calm and richness slowly took hold of the analogue sourced sound when the change to DC was initiated.
They were also running a high-power full Dolby Atmos surround sound.
PROAC ably showed the K1 medium sized stand mount, and in the larger lower ground room the impressive floor standing K10.
It may be chosen pre fitted to the top turntable, the Planar 10. Intriguingly they also showed a complete player set, the £380 Io integrated amplifier with the £429 Kyte stand mount speaker plus a Planar 1 turntable with all the cabling, resulting in the ready to go £999 System One record player.
Rogers showed a compact active bass enhancing pillar stand AB3a for the 3/5a, plus a pre-production version of the E20a/ii integrated valve amplifier with EL34 output tubes.
Townshend majored on the latest passive control unit, the Allegri Reference while I spied a youthful Max with his tech guru Professor Dinsdale