I expect that if you asked him, you’d hear he’d made his way on foot from Ashford 
.
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Every photo reminds me why I don’t go to these zombie wrangling trade shows 
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They (CAD) had a spectacular leaflet on why you should be grounding the usb firmware sockets on your devices.
Well mugs pay £5000 for their speakers
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The real question is how many times did you hear big john playing?
No room for it in amongst the Floyd & Steely Dan.
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I have heard Wish You Were Here twice in the last couple of days. Once was in the PMC room and the other was at my uncle’s funeral. Take of that what you will.
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I always like the varied and wide selection of music in the Audio Note room
TBH …they could have a floating turd water feature and I’d still be happy to sit there …
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A bit pissed that I missed the Klingfilm singing fridges tho … 
On that note, I did notice the number of rooms that had air fresheners/diffusers going on. Probably for the best…
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Meeting them all once a year at Lopwell is enough 
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I think the paint on the Lockwood speakers which I thought was still drying… was doing a good job of killing the herd odours …
The Lockwood guy in their demo room did confess to being a “little high” … 
Back again today, might actually try and take some photos.
Drop me a message if you’re here and I’ll try and pay attention toon to my inbox.
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Sorry we missed you Jon.
(Matt and Stu will have to apologise separately for the lack of any freebies to purloin)
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Maybe I’m falling out of love with Hifi and audio
This was the second disappointing show Ascot was pants Bristol no better. left home at 5 in the morning 4+ hour drive just an hour into the show I’d had enough. Only 2 rooms worth listening to Harbeth surround demo audio note room. Most room were just rammed with mostly trade rabbiting away. Went to Spoons for food and beer and then home. Got an arm band for entry tomorrow if anyone local to me wants it.
Edited non-pie highlights from yesterday:
The cafe opposite the queue was pretty decent. Slightly overroasted coffee but a double espresso still had some depth of flavour.
The Keith Monks record steampunk record cleaners are pleasantly bonkers, if a bit pricey.
The Rogers room was nice sounding. Not necessarily £10k nice sounding to my ears but still pretty good. Two tracks of Verdi was also the longest I think I stayed in any room.
Pro-ject’s little system was also enjoyable to listen to, especially for the cost.
Hifiman headphones: first time I have tried any. The HE1000s sounded very open, but I don’t think I can quite justify that amount on cans at the moment given how much I don’t use the existing ones.
The Amphion Argon 1s sounded much more neutral to my ears than the ones Nick had a few years ago off the end of a Hegel amp.
And then the lowlights:
The music, as mentioned upthread, was almost entirely dreck. Dynaudio was playing Creep when I stuck a head in which was a start, but unfortunately it sounded like Thom Yorke was singing through his nose rather than his mouth and Devialet managed to suck any sort of atmosphere out of Teardrops. Special mention needs to go to Harbeth for having a (admittedly terrible) background of some sort of orchestra like thing and then playing Take Five.
There was a lot of overblown bass, even in the bigger spaces (hello Cyrus and Kerr). Kii were saying how they were controlling the bass with their DSP gubbins and then thudding some sort of nondescript sound out. The one exception was, for some reason, the Spendors which had no bass at all to my ears. Not sure how they managed it…
Voxativ. Erm, yes to the knob prize but those speakers made a mess of everything.
Fyne Audio - don’t care about a supertweeter when the midrange sounded that grubby. At some point I would like to hear the Accuphase SACD into something else to hear what it could actually do.
ATC. FIrst time I went in they were playing Hey Now. All that was obvious was the fundamental of the bass line and the vocal, the rest of the sound was hidden so I am not sure what was going on.
Singing fridges probably deserved a different system to Musical Fidelity, unfortunately.
Everything else has slightly faded into a haze of meh.
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That’s crazy … On the Friday one of the first rooms I went into was Dynaudio …about 10 to fifteen punters and I sat …first track was creep …ok I guess …then at the point where the track steps up and it all comes in …awful …quite a few left including me …so seems like poor guy was struggling with the setup …
One really shite room was AV tech solutions… basically a sea of meh …subs etc…but I saw a 300b amp doing the business…caught my attention ..(qualiton 300b). .active subs basically swamping the room .
A bloke asked for some steely Dan.. …he played it …way too much bass …guy was grumpy and told the demo jockey … I asked the demo jockey if he could turn off the subs …as I would like to hear what the 300b was doing …said no can do …they were distributers for all the gear in the room and needed to demo it all. I did say I’d like to hear what the 300b was doing …no joy. …
Imagine the poor reps who had to spend 3 days with a poor sounding system.
Remember the first scalford I did where only a few tracks sounded ok. It was awful.
Yeah. I can imagine…