I visited the Stockholm HighEnd Fair that took place in Stockholm 16-17th of February 2013.
This is a reoccurring event that always gathers some interesting designers, distributors and people from many well-known HigEnd manufacturers and Hifi shops.
As always it’s hard to cover it all and I tried to focus mainly on the loudspeakers. Still it was very hard to get enough time to seriously evaluate the different loudspeaker designs in this crowded show.
Yes, it’s always hard to evaluate a loudspeaker design at a Hifi show, but you can often get a general impression of its performance and get a glimpse of some beautiful creations. 🙂
Here is a short show report with pictures and some short reflections and comments from me!
I begin with the MM De Capo stand-mount loudspeaker from Reference 3A
My first impression was….. There is something wrong here…. bad electronics or a lousy set-up? But no, they just sounded nasal in the mid-range, edgy, colored and with poor imaging and grainy resolution in the highs.
The MM De Capo uses a 7” woofer together with a 1” tweeter in a backwards tilted baffle that made me think a shallow sloped cross-over and if it would work with a 7”, a low cross-over point.
Oh boy was I wrong! When I came home I googled the web and found this Stereophile review: Stereophile MM De Capo Review Crazy enough it got a good review, but when looking at the measurements I see why I didn’t like it.
The measurements show a mid-range hump of 5dB between 500-1000Hz and a cross-over frequency in the 4-5kHz region. The loudspeaker doesn’t have a “baffle step compensation” and in fact it doesn’t even have cross-over for the mid-woofer, which is running full-range. The tweeter uses a single cap as a cross-over.
Ok, I like a simple cross-over, but this is only a bad design choice in my opinion and it can be heard.
The requested price of the loudspeaker is 45000 Skr (7100 US$). I don’t like to disparage other peoples designs, but you can get a lot of high performing loudspeakers for this kind of money……
Her’s the active monitor setup from GENELEC
The new G Three and G Four sounded nice. Not cheap, but not super expensive either.
The Confidence C1 from Dynaudio
The C1 sounded very nice, but the monster sub from REL was connected and it wasn’t possible to evaluate the C1 performance stand-alone.
I think the baffle design is kind of ugly “cool” looking. Perhaps I will use it in a future design!
The new R11 Arreté from AUDIOVECTOR.
They look very nice, but unfortunately I hadn’t a chance to listen to them. I like the concept with the eight small rear-firing woofers. It gives me some idea´s……… 🙂
The new moderate priced X3 series from AUDIOVECTOR sounded promissing with good tight fast bass.
Finally the HD3D12 wall-mount loudspeaker from Bremen has begun serie production.
This is an awesome loudspeaker that sounds great and very few loudspeakers has the same 3D-realism and the sense of a live performance presentation as these.
This time it struggled a bit when it was used in a too large room, but it still sounded quite nice.
The HD3D12 loudspeaker is the creation of the famous Swedish designer Peter Steindel.
This cool looking loudspeaker is the Scorpio from EBTB.
Unfortunately it didn’t sound as cool as it looked. It played bass, bass, and bass and nothing more!
The Scorpio would probably performed better in a larger room.
Left: A small d’appolito style loudspeaker using SEAS drivers from the Finnish Amphion. I didn’t catch the name of this loudspeaker, but it sounded good.
Right: The Reference 2.2 DC and 9.2 DC from Canton Reference Series. I don’t know if I like the design look, but the Canton Reference loudspeakers sound quite nice.
The Definition DC10A from Tannoy together with super expensive tube-amps from the The Lars.
How did it sound? Well….. Not that great, but to be honest this isn’t my kind of loudspeaker. Still, it beats me how anyone can pay this amount of money for this kind of performance.
The new Django L and the new super expensive Coltrane Tenor from Marten.
Both these loudspeakers sound great. The Coltrane Tenor uses newly developed woofers and diamond tweeters and the price is insane. I think the light bulb shaped woofers looks very odd, but there is nothing wrong with the sonic performance!
Playing for the birds in the sky?
The Enigma from Heed using Morel drivers.
It sounded ok, but nothing special compared to a good conventional stand-mount loudspeaker.
Nice sounding loudspeakers from ELAC.
Interesting on-wall lifestyle products from opalum. It was hard to evaluate the sound since they had huge problems with standing waves in the demo room, but the concept is fun.
Another lifestyle product from DAVESON using a Jordan JX92 full-range driver. These loudspeakers where only on display and I couldn’t evaluate its sonic qualities.
Left: The super expensive Pharaoh loudspeaker from Trenner & Friedl. A very square box that should be placed near the wall. It sounded ok, but I expected more at this price range.
Right: The Indra from Avalon together with electronics from Boulder. In my opinion one of the best sounding setups at the show.
The M105 and F206 from Revel. I listenend to the larger floor-stander F208 and it sounded very nice with great tight bass.
I wonder if Revel OEM their driver units from SB Acoustics in this loudspeaker series. The driver chassis looks exactly the same as SB acoustics, but with other cones.
The Concert Grand series from Vienna-Acoustics I listened to the Beethoven Concert Grand and Mozart Grand and they booth sounded great.