Popped in this afternoon. All the usual suspects, I guess. I took a CD
and played it on quite a few systems. Mainly disappointing. Chord
probably the worst, alongside Bauhorn. Both were significantly
coloured, with the Chord CD player adding some interesting pops to the
CD and the amp some earthquake low frequencies. I was glibly told it
was a bad recording and this was the microphone overloading. Strange
how it never happened on any other system ever. Bauhorn system was
like listening inside a bucket - absolutely dreadful.

Usual monstrously huge amps sold by Audio Research and McIntosh - have
the circuits changed since the 60s? Anyone for a re-tube? From the
factory, natch.

Loads of turntables and arms about, and a guy selling vinyl to happy
users. Valves accounted for about half the amplification. Box speakers
for almost all the speakers - what happened to all the electroctatics
and ribbons? Ribbons, of course, as tweeters were quite common. Pinsh
had a longer ribbon which sounded rather nice.

Good sounds from Max Townshend - nice chap too. Another room had a
good Avalon clone speaker with those inverted Thiel ceramic speakers.
It worked for Avalon, and it's still a good recipe for clean sound.
The guy demonstrating is forming English Valve Amps - evidently more
news later.

My favourite room was the Pure Sound one of Guy Sergeant. He had some
unexpectedly good speakers from Germany, which were driven by his own
design Push Pull 2a3 amp, made in China with obviously good
transformers. Clean, clear and remarkably glitch-free sound finally
did everything pretty much right. About £600 for the speakers and
£1,700 for the amp. Dealers margins a typical 50%, so you can work
back to the ex-factory price. You could pay a huge amount more money
and get worse sound.

Andy