Bristol Sound and Vision Show 2016

[Confused]

Going down to the show tomorrow but must see/listen to this - wow!
http://www.bristolshow.co.uk/news_detail...tBuwvDfWrV

https://mobile.twitter.com/kudosaudio/st...2410941440

I visited the Bristol show on Saturday, I had a great time there with much to report, but first things first.  Like Jwg911 I had spotted the Kudos / Devialet active set up in the Bristol Show Guide, so it was on my must see (listen) list of things to audition yesterday.

I did hear the Kudos Titan 808's at last years show, and quite liked them as I recall.  So what would they sound like with 3 Devialet 400's in an active set up?  In a word, dreadful.  OK - I know you have to be careful with forming opinions at shows, unfamiliar kit playing unfamiliar music in unfamiliar rooms.  However, this was a set up that would cost you north of £60k and it sounded just plain bad.  It did have the level of clarity and detail that you might expect, so I suppose there is a limit to how bad you can get with a £60k set up, but this system was not something I would want to listen to for that long, overall it sounded very lean, you could hear down to the lowest octaves, it was all there, but the bass was quiet and sounded very disconnected to the rest of the music.  I just plain didn't like it!  I'm sure that done well a fully active mulita-Devialet system could sound spectacular, but this for me was a demonstration of how a complicated set up done 'not quite right' could be a shocker.  So what was so wrong with this system?  It is hard to describe, but I'll put it like this, a little while later I was listening to the Harbeth P3ESR's (1.7k), the little mini monitors, and this set up again was a little lean perhaps but the little Harbeth's somehow sounded just right.  OK you would never want the Harbeth's for banging out hard core dance tracks, they are small minitor style speakers, but I could have sat listening to them for a very long time, terrific little things, but the Kudos / Devialet system was starting to drive me bonkers after 10 minutes.