22-Feb-2025, 01:02
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!
