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The National Audio Show, 2014

The National Audio Show, 2014

The National Audio Show on September 20th and September 21st at Whittlebury Hall, Northamptonshire, UK, is not the largest show around. Where once the UK had the premier audio show in Europe, that baton has passed on to Munich. Nevertheless, the size of the National Audio Show does work in its favour, as it allows some of the smaller brands a degree of exposure and the oxygen they would be denied in a big show. Although this means the larger brands stayed away, this year they were in attendance of sorts, because of an increased number of dealers at the event. These added a much-needed air of professionalism to the show (which, in recent years, had become somewhat ‘tweaky’ and left-field). It was also the first event of its kind to include closer ties with The Clarity Alliance, an industry association that is attempting to try and raise the quality of the audio industry, through training front-line sales staff. The Clarity Alliance announced its “Best of Show” awards to recognise the efforts put in to the show by the exhibiting companies, and presented an exclusive live concert from Marillion front man Steve Hogarth.

Judges from Clarity visited every room at the show in order to select those companies they felt should be recognised for their outstanding contribution. The winners were presented with their awards on the Saturday evening, at a packed awards ceremony, which was followed by a two hour intimate concert for show visitors and exhibitors.

After very careful consideration by the judges the following awards were presented:

“Best Demonstration’                –         dCS

“Best Pre Show Marketing”      –         Henley Designs

“Best Presented Room”            –         The Vinyl Frontier

“Most Innovative Room”            –        Audio Cabinet

“Best Stand in Open Areas”     –         Townshend

“Overall Best of Show”            –          dCS

, The National Audio Show, 2014

Laurence Armstrong, chairman of The Clarity Alliance, presenting the awards to the winners, said, “It is fantastic to see the efforts put in by the exhibitors to make their presentations as good as possible. Recognising and rewarding the hard work that goes into staging a show like this is important and the board of The Clarity Alliance would like to offer its congratulations to all the worthy winners.” He continued, “We were also particularly pleased this year to be able to put the ‘show’ back into a hi-fi show with a superb live set from Steve Hogarth. For two hours we were enthralled by his musicianship and incredible voice and it helped reinforce the message that hi-fi, at the end of the day, is all about the music.”

Hi-Fi+ also ran a room at the show, which combined a magazine area where we had back issues and subscription deals, a headphone zone of some of the finest headphones, headphone amplifiers and DACs on the planet. We ran a pair of Stax SR-009 with the SRM-007tII ‘Kimik’ modified energizer, played through a Chord Hugo, a pair of Abyss AB-1266 through a Cavalli Liquid Glass amplifier, and both the Oppo PM1 and HiFiMAN HE-560 headphones played through a AURALiC VEGA DAC and TAURUS Mk II headphone amp. Meanwhile, our main system comprised BMC Audio’s BDCD1.1 CD player as transport into the matching DAC1 and either the CS2 stereo or M2 mono amplifiers. These drove a pair of Usher BE20 DMD loudspeakers. In addition, the system featured Chord Sarum cable, Audio 1 equipment support by Creaktiv, Vertex Pico grounding blocks and Jaya power filters, and a lot of GIK Acoustics room treatment panels, including the latest 244 ‘FlexRange’ absorption panels. These are all high-performance products we have reviewed in recent issues, or will be reviewing in upcoming issues.

A more thorough show report of the main stereo systems in the show will be in issue 117 of the magazine (manning a room at a show means you don’t get away from the room enough, so our colleague Steve Dickinson took over that task), so stay tuned.

Tags: FEATURED

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