You are not wrong. Here we have an expression for that, to agree on something that the person had not thought of : “ c’est pas faux ! “
It would be interesting to question 1000 different persons in the street and ask them if they find that bunch of black metal boxes as something nice to look at.
Also true
My wife goes like
“What’s this box, is it a stereo?”
- Yes one might call it that
"And this one then? - Same
Hmm and this and this and this? - Well, sort of same. It’s the power feeding the amp so the sound become better"
“Wife leaves room”
Didn’t even have a chance talking about my Entreq wooden boxes
Answers on a postcard …
Is that flash photography or are the boxes/Fraim in direct sunlight
Of course. Just pointing out that even the photos fail to give convey the bulk of these boxes which are far too large for Fraim and weigh 60 Kg (and that’s just the DAC). Makes a NAP500 look svelte…
Not fair - you snapped it while the SNAXO was uncovered. Not at all how that system was designed to look.
FR – it’s fair to say there are many lenses which can be brought to bear on kit, whether it’s about sound (hopefully & primarily), the look, what cabling it needs, how it sits in terms of aesthetic to other kit – and where can you buy the stuff from, which in the case of many uber-brands, is not on a UK High Street, where the likes of Naim and Linn can often be found - although some retailers have moved off high street now for understandable reasons.
I know from experience with businesses that you can make something brilliant but getting it in front of the public via distributors and retailers can be very challenging. And for us Naimites, it is a wonderment how some of the uber-kit actually sells!
Many of the hi-fi mags review kit and identify who the distributor is but getting a home dem is often far from straightforward IME, even for non-uber-kit.
Mine stay away from it. Last time she went to close to it my Koetsu Black disappeared in the vacuum cleaner. She had to pay for the repair.
I live near Paris, where there are a dozen of high end audio shops. I believe that in London there are much much more than in Paris.
I could however listen to , the last 15 years, to Esoteric, Shindo, Aries Cerat, CAT, Air Tight, Ypsilon, Lamm, Boulder, Audio Research, Macintosh, Jeff Rowland, Gryphon, Fm Acoustics , Aesthetics, and probably some others.
Boy’s toys. Look at the audience…
Rich boys at that.
The resemblance in some pieces to car engines is not accidental I think.
Do rich boys attend public shows?
Maybe their butlers? “Right, Smithers…I need something to match my Boogerati mk V, or at least look near enough like my oil wells…”
I reckon that most of them, if not all of them, would say that it looks a damn sight smarter and tidier than most of the other HiFi gear out there, and more realistic too.
So
completing the report…
YG acoustics, they where just in the process of putting their small speakers in place to audition, it sounded well, but also weird to see such a ridiculous over spec amplification with such small speakers.
At a show it’s the gear that’s on display, of course it’s going to stand out.
Then I was pulled into the Backes and Muller room, because they played Child in Time so loud that they fully overpower YG …. Unfortunately they stopped pretty soon on their big speakers with Deep Purple which was a petty at that volume it was great….
Then they also switched to the smaller speaker to continue the show. And they told something about using relatively standard cables as nothing more was needed, and real musicians also didn’t use it. As you can see in my words, I am already convinced that better cables have an effect in positive sense on the sound. Obviously in an active setup as theirs things might be slightly different as most of the magic happens in the speaker, anyhow.
The smaller speakers however gave a clean though not so exciting sound (missed emotion), the bass was however powerful given the size of the speakers.
They played besides Deep Purple on the big speakers earlier:
Hanne Boel - After midnight
Amanda McBroom - Dreaming
Friedrich Gulda - Blues for H.G.
The end of the show was with Grimm Audio. They tried to establish a surround type of setup, which could form an additional dimension, however I found that the exact timing for such a dimension was not totally spot on. Not totally wrong, but a tiny bit off. With the piece they played I was lacking a bit the scaling of the music, seemed a bit overwhelming for the equipment.
They played:
Matthieu Bauer - Things Left Behind
So this was the closure of the show report. I hope you all enjoyed the report and could have a bit the feeling of traveling in my backpack during the show.
I would recommend anybody who is visiting a show to have the intention to write about as it also sharpens the senses.
I hope to be enough back on my feet again by the end of October when another great show is planned in Germany - organized by the leading audio magazines in Germany, with acoustically better established rooms.
Thank you Bert. I have enjoyed seeing what is available but more so I have enjoyed your thoughts on the sound presented. Listing the tracks heard has also enabled me to compare in a small way with how I think my system sounds, as well as experiencing music that is new to me.
Thank you for taking the time.