Most of the rooms I’ve been in have sounded pretty good to be honest. Will post more later.
Enjoying this Atoll streamer/amp with Neat speakers.
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One thing that does strike me about the show is that most of the company reps seem more interested in talking amongst themselves rather than to any punters.
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And chatting in the middle of the hallway,
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It’s a tricky one. The opening day of shows used to be just for “trade”, that way manufacturers could meet and talk with dealers and distributors (and other manufacturers), as well as the press. That way, greater time could be spent on the other days with the public. However over the years the concept of a trade day has been gradually diluted to the point where the opening day is usually open to all, and a trade-only day hardly exists anymore. To further complicate things, the Bristol show has always been backed by Audio T (a dealer) and What Hifi (press), so less of a trade show overall and more one for all, but of course any show is a chance for manufacturers, dealers, distributors and the press to catch up on business, but particularly the Friday is still seen by many as the day for trade, so…
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I use to go to CES (Vegas), Mobile World Congress, Barcelona and IFA in Berlin, on press days. A lot of the time the show was still being built, and we use to dodge fork-lifts and giant rolls of carpet being laid to get to the vendors. Fun times 
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Nothing new from naim then, shame.
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Just spent 3 hours there. Very busy so difficult to get to listen to what you want without queuing. Was pretty underwhelmed to be honest in comparison to previous years. Save for the Dynaudio room which is usually the best, nothing sounded particularly memorable. ATC demonstrating their new EL50s - grand scale. Naim had no big system demo as it is apparently very difficult to get it to sound acceptable to them in the environment there. Plus no new products to show. The Naim / Focal headphone section was decent and the Utopias sounded very impressive with the Atom HE. I understand that to get the best out of them you’d need a balanced connection which means that you couldn’t also run active speakers without having to swap out the XLR cables every time.
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It was ever thus! Even more irritating is the volume at which these reps are sounding off, often right next to the punters who, amazing though it may appear, have turned up to listen to systems playing music, rather than reps gabbing.
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The Atom HE has separate outputs for xlr headphone and preamp out, sono cable swapping needed.
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That’s good to know. Thanks
Had a lovely chat with Rega though.
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@Steeve did they have any new amplification?
They were supposed to showcase a new turntable as well?
Is there an AOS MM?
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Hi Yep, Rega had the new Aos MC only phono stage on display (though not on demo).
Will be priced at £1500 and apparently is a noticeable step up in performance from the Aria. From some other manufacturers you may take that with a pinch of salt but am confident Rega are not hyping.
There will be a MM version soon apparently but not on display at the show.
The new Rega turntable is a P6 RS with super lightweight but full size plinth.
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From another Forum
New P6 RS looks very tasty - metallic finish, RB880 tonearm from the P8, double pulley motor set up from P8 and Nd9 cart - £2000. And the new MC phono stage - the Aos. There wasn’t a chance to listen to the Aos - but £1500 buys you some of the tech and innards of the Aura, apparently. Both out in the next 6 weeks.
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Innous Stream 3 with Phoenix DAC into Chord Última integrated amplifier and ATC SCM100 PSL Classic speakers sounded excellent.
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£3250 for a network switch 
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Yes Stream 3 with DAC is probably better value. Be interesting to compare it against a Naim NSS333. Or maybe someone already has?
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