Heathrow HiFi Show

The Arriva system was sounding really great for the money, and apparently the new NAIT is a powerful little bugger. I reckon the Arrive does that 'small speaker' ballsy sound, but also sounded bigger than I feared they would. They sounded much better at the end of Sunday than at the beginning. I was told that the new CDP & amp (both the first pre-production models) had only started their run-in on the Friday morning. The Arriva is still well short of full production spec, voicing has still to be completed amongst other things.

The SL2 room was pretty dissapointing. The CDX/XPS which went on at 5:00 on the Sunday sounded good on some acoustic guitar material, at which point I had to ask Richard Dane why the CDS3 that he'd just lifted out of the system still had one of it's transit bolts in place? Oh dear!

The Neats were sounding great, especially the MF9s on the Roksan. The Densen CDP was pretty badly outclassed, but still souunded pretty good.

The PMC OB1s were quite a surprise, very tight & powerful, and communicated fairly well. Did anyone find out what they were being driven with?

The tiny Totems were sounding really fantastic, amazingly communicative on 4x Rega monoblock power amps & CD, but their larger brothers on the P9 were very dissapointing. I couldn't put my finger on it, but somehow the track really failed to gel, it just didn't flow properly. I've heard the P9 described as metronomic, and that wasn't a million miles from describing the effect, but I couldn't pan either P9 or speakers on a two minute demo. Any company that can produce that performance from the little speakers certainly knows what they are doing.

Worst of the show - Krell & Sonus Faber Cremona's in the Absolute Sounds demo. A complete lack of any musical ability at all, although they sounded very open and the opera singers voice soared very convincingly. Might as well not have bothered with the rock stuff, as it was completely murdered, and the AV sound on Chicago, well that was utterly awful.

cheers, Martin

P.S. maybe some pics to follow, but I got home and then found that I'd left the camera in the wrong mode for the whole day, so some have come out very poorly.

E-mail:- MartinPayne at Dial.Pipex.com

BTW, I have to agree with the comments made elsewhere regarding the names of the new CDP & amp.

Since the CD5i is a complete re-design, why not just call it the CD6 instead?

Might as well do the same for the NAIT6, although I think I would be pretty gutted if I'd recently bought any 5 series gear.

Did anyone ask what the "i" suffix stands for?

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne at Dial.Pipex.com

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin Payne:
BTW, I have to agree with the comments made elsewhere regarding the names of the new CDP & amp.

Since the CD5i is a complete re-design, why not just call it the CD6 instead?

Might as well do the same for the NAIT6, although I think I would be pretty gutted if I'd recently bought any 5 series gear.

Did anyone ask what the "i" suffix stands for?

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne at Dial.Pipex.com

---

I think because the marketing at the time was all about series 5. But to be honest I don't care what they call it, it's good to see affordable stuff being put out and it brings people into the Naim sound that were not prepared to pay higher prices

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about Russ Andrews. I certainly never expected to hear ELP's 'Lucky Man' again in this lifetime... Particularly not with all that incredible resonance. Not good.

My Guess is the 'i' in 5i stands for 'intro' cos that's just what it's supposed to be, the intro to the Naim product range. The numbering system could make more sense if say an upgraded version of the existing 5 series was brought-in and perhaps called the 5.5 - there seems to be some historic precedent for this!

David

Dev,

I did warn you not to listen to such loud music when you were younger; should save you a fortune in anything other than rooms and speakers though.

Alex

John Luke

Yes Proac was at the show. I am not sure what product ref they were playing when I was in there !!
The speaker was around £11k and about 7 foot tall and being driven by Sugden Masterclass and sounded very good (as indeed any speaker at £11k should !!).

PR and Andy C

Whilst I agree that nobody should be stupid enough to purchase any audio equipment without a Home dem, I do not think that the 'expensive' Naim set-up was in any way a positive advert for what Naim is capable of. I wouldn't have thought any non-naim devotees thought 'wow that sounds good'. Now I have read other threads from eagle eyed naimees regarding transit bolts still being in the CDSIII I am not surprised that the sound was so disappointing. Considering the set up was £15k - £20k worth of kit the sound was just not good enough to justify this sort of price tag.

Regards
Adam

So, a demo that was not met by wild acclaim- and due to a transit bolt left in place?

Well, I suppose in the rush to set up such things can happen.

But if true, then what is seriously worrying is that the Naim marketing team and, presumably, a heap of Naim dealers on the trade day, failed to recognise that the system sounded duff.

Jo

As usual, the rooms worth listening to were few and far between. The Renaissance was almost a complete waste of time except for the Waveform Technology room which had Naim electronics (CDX2/82/Hicap/Napsc2/250) powering their speakers. These are an acrylic afair suited to boundary placement and to my ears sounded a lot like SBLs. Shame they cost £4.5 and the fit and finish was quite poor.

Back at Le Meridien I spent most of my time in the Naim and Neat rooms. As usual Bob (of Neat) was kind enough to allow me to play a few of my CDs including the room-clearing Moving Shadow - 99.1 and the funky house of Deep Dish - Global Underground #25. I've always been a fan of Neat speakers and the Ultimatum MF9s did not disappoint. I just wish Neat would use all Naim electronics at their dems, that way I wouldn't have to spend so much time figuring out what characteristics were due to the various electronics! One thing that was quite obvious however, was that the CD player in use (a Densen I think) is not in the same league as my CDS2/XPS2 and the LFD amps were maybe a bit polite for my tastes. I'd love to hear the MF9s on the end of a 500 for example.

Back in the Naim room, the small system was making quite a respectable sound until anything with a Bass line was played and the sound descended into boomy muddle. Whether it was the room or the pre-production speaker was anybody's guess. The big system sounded ok, but Richard Dane was keen to keep Dev and I away from it, in case we scared off the potential Musical Fidelity converts. There's only so much opera I can take, so I didn't spend much time in there. Maybe if Jawed had warmed up the cross-overs on the SL2s with some electronic noise Richard, you might have got a better reception.

Elsewhere I heard quite a funky Rega system powering some smallish speakers that was doing everything right in the toe-tapping department, if sounding a little crude. I was also quite impressed by the B&W 800s, even though I generally hate B&W speakers, which were sounding almost DBL like in their bass extension and dynamics.

The thing that concerned me most however was how nerdy the Heathrow show is compared with say, Bristol. Far too many rooms were filled with beardy men listening to audiophool jazz. I just looked at them and thought, I bet you've got only 20 CDs and a 20 grand system. This attitude was best summed up in the Quad room where the guy refused to play any CDs belonging to the general public claiming that modern recordings aren't very good! And there was I thinking the idea of a good hifi was...ah well.
John

quote:

---

Originally posted by John Channing:
The big system sounded ok, but Richard Dane was keen to keep Dev and I away from it, in case we scared off the potential Musical Fidelity converts. There's only so much opera I can take, so I didn't spend much time in there. Maybe if Jawed had __warmed up__ the cross-overs on the SL2s with some electronic noise Richard, you might have got a better reception.

The thing that concerned me most however was how _nerdy_ the Heathrow show is compared with say, Bristol. This attitude was best summed up in the Quad room where the guy _refused_ to play any CDs belonging to the general public claiming that modern recordings _aren't very good!_ And there was I thinking the idea of a good hifi was...ah well.
John

---

Quad Rep ejecting a classical CD,

Me (aloud): That sounded pretty decent!
John C: Nah, that's music for wankers
Me: That was alright
Tony L: Yeah that's not bad
Me to Quad Rep: Have you got something a bit more funky
Quad Rep: What could be more funky than Willie Nelson
Me: Well quite a bit really, here's Fabric Live No 17
Quad Rep: (looking bemused) modern recordings are not very good.
Me and the Gang: right we're off!

Quote:-

but I really do think the SL2s are a poor speaker
------------------------------------------------------

There not poor they just lack any kind of clout!

They are a remarkably informative pair of speakers that allow you to get closer to the music than any other speaker I have heard.

Sadly they lack the size and scale of similarly priced speakers. Now if Naim could combine the best of the SL2's with the size of the NBL's then they would have a serious speaker!

Regards


NB

J.A. Toon said "I suspect that 99% of the people who read this post have never even heard of these bands"

I reckon its less of a sin to have never have heard of the likes of Slayer than to have heard of them and not immediately concluded they were shite.

Matthew
"K-R-O-K-U-S, Krokus know my home address...."

I have heard the SL2's at the show and dealers and they sounded the same uninformative and boring. For £5K your jaw shoud be on the floor not yawning.
The CDS3/252/300 sounds great with other speakers and cable also other makes made their speakers work with the same setup problems.IMO.

Colin

quote:

---

Originally posted by J. A. Toon:

[0] I suspect that 99% of the people who read this post have never even heard of these bands. Nevermind

----
_E-mail: john.toon@btinternet.com_

---

John, If it was that crap that you were playing room to room at Bristol, it is shite and I am not surprised no-ones heard of it. I thought my music was a minority taste but yours is just.....

quote:

---

Originally posted by J. A. Toon:
[QUOTE]
(Try _Discordance Axis_ ).

John.

----
_E-mail: john.toon@btinternet.com_

[0] Well okay, a few types I don't like, such as gangsta rap and dance music...

[This message was edited by J. A. Toon on WEDNESDAY 01 October 2003 at 09:34.]

---

John,

It's nice to have you back!

And you can write all the seven page essays you want but it's still shite. Musically all that thrash metal is outside the scope of bloody PA systems let alone hifis.

Dev

Spiral Architect? That's a Sabbath song!
Tool's album Schism is quite good.

Paul Rowlands

quote:

---

Most people don't seem to be able to cope with "noisy/intense/energetic" music ... I'm so open-minded ... I listen to all different kinds of music ...

---

<sound of my forehead hitting the desk as I fall asleep>

John, in a way I can relate to what you're saying, but remember that this is all very relative and to some people, even *you* may seem to be a musical meat-and-two-veg guy.

The thing that bothers me most about heavy metal is the immense capacity for inanity: frizzy hair, stretch jeans, il cornuto, t-shirts depicting flesh-eating monsters, one-leg-up-on-the-monitor speaker, "Are you ready to rock and rooooooll?". The band and album names alone are a cornucopia of silliness ("The Seven Pinnacles of Shnozgarazz"). How do you keep yourself from rolling on the floor?

About 15 years ago I tried to find "heavy" music that appealed to me, but in addition to the silliness I found that nothing I listened to was rhythmically interesting (no, unmotivated time changes are not interesting – they would have to try harder than that). Out of desperation I even wrote and recorded my own – I'm not that hot a musician, but I managed to pull of a good parody that sounded very authentic, which in turn made me laugh more than anything else.

The only band that really stuck (and will for life) is Bon-Scott-era AC/DC. They knew how to make a riff work, they were tight and they were groovy, they were plain dressers and they admitted they were dim. But then their music wasn't heavy metal – more like blues with attitude.

quote:

---

not only is it some of the most technical, musically complex, and incredibly difficult material etc.

---

I'm falling asleep just reading that!

Thomas

I said: "About 15 years ago ..."

Actually it was ten, but I concede things may have moved on since then. The few bars I get to hear from time to time don't do it for me, though.

Thomas

we're ready to rock

quote:

---

Originally posted by Thomas K:
Out of desperation I even wrote and recorded my own – I'm not that hot a musician, but I managed to pull of a good parody that sounded very authentic, which in turn made me laugh more than anything else.

---

Thomas, you owe it to us. Many forumites will want to hear your effort. Can you post a realaudio link? And please post ze lyrics in advance for my delectation. (Any "baby" in it?)

Herman

John,

quote:

---

sorry that Spiral Architect sound boring to you

---

It's your description that sounds boring, but I'll try and have a listen to the music sometime!

Herman,

Hmmmm ... I think I still have the cassette somewhere. I'll see what I can do, but I imagine the process of getting the music from an old cassette onto my hard drive is more than I am capable of.

For the lyrics, I just kept shouting things like "Demon!", "Slaughter!" and "Megakill!" (I think the latter was the title). No "baby" -- you see, it wasn't a ballad. More serious/deep thoughts/philosophical thinking stuff like when late at night when you get thinking real deep like, ya know. About life and death and, like, the universe.

Thomas

Spiral Architect are everything I feared they would be -- a Norwegian "Technical Metal" band.

A reviewer from amazon.com: "There's no denying how different they are. Listen to the sound clips." Yes, listen: Spinning

From the same reviewer: "Spinning - A song that is quite a thinker to start it. Thoughts of man, and lies. It's hard to explain yet I understand what the lyrics are meaning. You have to think deep to understand."

The lyrics (excerpt):

Inner sense lost in a stream
Another day faking control
Alone, still living an introspective lie
Cut adrift, in constant motion
Roaming never ending oceans

Bleeding poets cry, hands to the sky
Their quest was one of futility
I know man's lost in cosmic settings of coincidence
Just spinning, twisting, circling on...

Manipulate my mind, I don't mind
the kind of lie to subdivide, petrify, dehumanize

I could use more laughs but I need to get back to work. Sorry, John, maybe it's an age thing.

Thomas

quote:

---

Originally posted by J. A. Toon:
.

Sorry that Spiral Architect sound boring to you; as it happens I think that their sophisticated time signatures and jazz influenced rhythms/melody might actually be what you searched for in vain last time you listened to the genre looking for something interesting.

John.

----
_E-mail: john.toon@btinternet.com_

---

John,

You tend to talk in absolutes in HiFi discussions and most if the time your opinions/reasoning are 'interesting' but I am curious to see whether your peculiar brand of objectivity extends to music and therefore will go and buy something by 'Spiral Architect' and will see whether their 'sophisticated time signatures and jazz influenced rhrythms' are true or just J.A.Toons imagination. Please tell me which album to buy and I will do so on my way home from work tomorrow. I will also publish my findings on this forum.

Looking forward to your guidance,

Dev

Bloody Hell

How come a thread headed 'Heathrow HiFi Show' has turned into a slanging match about Spiral Architect (obscure/ cult status Norwegian Tech Metal progressive jazz merchants) and a discussion regarding differing levels of swearing / bad language in metal (Ice-T sounds as if he means it, Eminem just makes me laugh).

I know most of the dem music at Heathrow was awful but come on guys.

quote:

---

Originally posted by J. A. Toon:

quote:

---

Please tell me which album to buy and I will do so on my way home from work tomorrow. I will also publish my findings on this forum.

---

Are you sure? If you buy the album and hate it...

I think you might have some difficulty just buying in from a typical high street store like HMV, even if you live in London. It's available from Amazon.co.uk though.


They only really have one full length album, "A Sceptic's Universe".

If you want I could burn you a CDR copy for evaluation purposes, as long as you promise to give it a fair listen, even if you don't like it

(And maybe you could send me a evaluation CDR of one of your favourite CDs in return, if you've got a CD burner).

John.

----
_E-mail: john.toon@btinternet.com_

---

John,

That's a very kind offer. Thank you. I'll send you a private message with my address. I will of course give SPIRAL ARCHITECT a fair listen. I would send you something I liked but I don't have a CD-R. I do have a £5 Boots Facial Skin Care range money off voucher that you can have.

Thanks again,

Dev

ps. Adan K : It's about time Spiral Architect got a bit more press, I suggest you get less nerdy and more muscially diverse.

<< I do have a £5 Boots Facial Skin Care range money off voucher that you can have. >> Dev, don't tell me you've given up.

Alex

wondering how you managed to ascertain that ESC amps were not to your liking