Bristol show UK

[Harry O]

Devialet are at Bristol this year and will show the Astra. I will definitely look in on room 206 to have a look and hopefully a listen!

[ogs]

@Harry O Did you get a chance to listen?

[wiresandmore]

@Harry O  Did you get a chance to listen?

It’s in 2 weeks time I think, starts 21st Feb. Interested to hear from anyone who attends.

[ogs]

Oh! I didn't check the shows web site...

[Harry O]

   
We had a good day at the Bristol show which was well attended and busy! Some notable brands were missing unfortunately, such as KEF and B & W, but otherwise many solid names from the industry were there. Devialet were indeed present, albeit with a fairly small presence. They took a smallish room and presented a simple display of the Astra amplifier. When we entered the room, the basic model was playing a Billie Holiday track, Strange Fruit. A great song and wonderful performance but maybe not the best music to show off the full capabilities of a high end amp? The call went out from the Devialet chap for requests and we bravely suggested six blade knife by Dire Straits, which we had already heard twice at the show! It was close, but we thought the sound just about shaded that from the (much cheaper) Lygdorf system we heard earlier. Devialet were using YG Acoustics Carmel 3 speakers (£31,900pr) and these were clearly top notch!

We were a little underwhelmed by the appearance of the Astra. It is not really a standout piece of equipment and the brushed metal (aluminium?) is not that striking. We feel that the original expert casing is more attractive and interesting.

HiFi shows are wonderful but probably not the best place to fully assess high end HiFi. The acoustics are awful and you can generally hear some other music leaking in from the next room to mess the sound up. You can only hope to get a general appreciation of a specific item. We thought the Astra was good but in SQ terms no better than the D440 we are used to listening to. A home trial may or may not decide that.

The best sound of the day we thought, was in the Tannoy room where they had a very beefy pair of Canterbury (probably) speakers with a very expensive looking stack of Esoteric electronics. Truly captivating!

[Confused]

I visited the Bristol show Saturday. The show was a lot busier than previous years. (certainly busier than 2023 when I last visited) This perhaps bodes well for the hifi industry and the economy in general, but it did mean that some rooms were "standing room only", and for some rooms you needed to employ rugby skills just to get in at all.

I did get to sit and listen to the Devialet Astra / YG Acoustics system for a while. I am not sure that I gleaned much insight into the Astra from this session, for my ears it was more of a case of establishing that I did not like the YG Acoustics speakers much. They are great looking speakers, beautifully constructed and finished, but they do sound a little on the lean side tonally, combined with being very detailed with a slightly edgy and etched sound. Maybe not the best match for a Devialet amp? Certainly not a good match for my ears and personal preferences.

It does go to show how misleading audio shows can be. Had I visited the show knowing nothing about Devialet amps or how they sound, the Devialet Astra demo on the day would have made little impression on me. By contrast, the Devialet Astra demonstration at the Oxford Audio launch was far more impressive, and left me wondering if the Astra is indeed a sonic step-up from the Expert Pro. Another good example of this, I was listening to the demonstration of the new Quad ESL 2912X electrostatic speakers. I sat in the room, and my immediate reaction was very positive, the they sounded simply sublime. I was sat there thinking about just how good they sounded, and also thinking that they are not massively expensive, at least in comparative hifi terms. The demo moved to the next track, and they sounded terrible. Oh well ....

Also, and somewhat curiously, I did not think the Astra looked quite as good as I remembered it looking at the Oxford Audio event. A different day, different lighting perhaps?

What else sounded good at the show? I'm going to agree with @Harry O here, the Tannoy room was definitely one of the sonic highlights of the show. In contrast to the Devialet / YG Acoustics system, which I found a little irritating, I could happily have sat listening to the Tannoy system for hours. Although the very best sound of the day for me was the REL room, which was very impressive. That said, apparently they had £300k's worth of kit in the room, and you would probably need about six times that amount of money to buy a house with a room large enough to accommodate such a system. Also, I think it is fair to say that this system had perhaps a little too much bass, and I am perhaps one who seems to like bass more than most, but I think this can be forgiven as this was a REL demo, and you could "dial down" the bass in your own system if you wanted to.

Back in the real world, there were a couple of pleasant surprises for me at the show. JBL had a room where they were demonstrating their Authentics 500 retro styled all in one music streaming thing. (I have no idea what the correct term is for such a device) Anyway, for what it is, it sounded very good. It is interesting to listen to such a device, gain a first impression, and then later find out the cost. In this case it retails at £559, it is fair to say that I was expecting it to be more expensive. So a nice looking and good value product if you are looking for such a device. (I am tempted to check out the smaller / cheaper 300 model, which can be battery powered, as a summer BBQ / garden sound system)

Another surprise was the Kanto speakers demonstration. Kanto have a range of powered desktop type speakers, the kind of things you might rig up to your PC. They were demonstrating the Kanto REN200w model when I visited the room, a £559 product, again surprisingly good for what they are.

So for me, perhaps the highlights of the hifi show were not really the hifi products.

Oh, and as an aside, there was a woman who sat down in the Devialet room, looked at the massive ASTRA branding on display and said "did they nick that name from Vauxhall?" A little unfortunate I thought.....


Enough sub woofers for your sir?

   

[Pim]

Thanks for the write up @Confused.

So Vauxhall it is then. Great find!