Time for this great show once more!! I jut wanted to see who is coming this year? It would be great to meet a few more of you. I'll mainly be in the Watt room (and the bar) both days. I posted below about what I'll be showing which should be of interest to some of you speaker building DIYers.
I'm going to shake things up a bit this year to make it a little more exciting. We've got talks and demos in our room on both days. Of course there will still be plenty of time to have a sit down and listen to some tunes and ask questions. We'll keep the talks and demos down to about 15 mins so they won't take to much time out of your schedule.
There will be new product releases as well. I'll have the prototype for the much anticipated N-core based amplifier I've been designing and we will have new drivers from the Markaudio stable to show as well, these haven't been released or even left the factory yet so you guys will literally be the first to see them. As always Mark has pushed the boundaries of what is possible with a wide-band driver even further.
This is the best show in the UK calendar, free entry, free parking, loads of great exhibitors, there is even a new mobile app to help plan your day, just search for 'audio show 2018' on your mobile device.
Well worth a trip. I might even have some discounts to hand out!!
Saturday
11:00 Speaker kit build demo
12:30 Scott Lindgren talks speaker cabinet design
2:00 Speaker kit build demo
3:30 Mark Fenlon - Driver designer - talks driver design
4:45 Speaker kit build demo
Sunday
11:00 Speaker kit build demo
12:30 Mark Fenlon - Driver designer - talks driver design
2:00 Speaker kit build demo
3:30 Scott Lindgren talks speaker cabinet design
I'm going to shake things up a bit this year to make it a little more exciting. We've got talks and demos in our room on both days. Of course there will still be plenty of time to have a sit down and listen to some tunes and ask questions. We'll keep the talks and demos down to about 15 mins so they won't take to much time out of your schedule.
There will be new product releases as well. I'll have the prototype for the much anticipated N-core based amplifier I've been designing and we will have new drivers from the Markaudio stable to show as well, these haven't been released or even left the factory yet so you guys will literally be the first to see them. As always Mark has pushed the boundaries of what is possible with a wide-band driver even further.
This is the best show in the UK calendar, free entry, free parking, loads of great exhibitors, there is even a new mobile app to help plan your day, just search for 'audio show 2018' on your mobile device.
Well worth a trip. I might even have some discounts to hand out!!
Saturday
11:00 Speaker kit build demo
12:30 Scott Lindgren talks speaker cabinet design
2:00 Speaker kit build demo
3:30 Mark Fenlon - Driver designer - talks driver design
4:45 Speaker kit build demo
Sunday
11:00 Speaker kit build demo
12:30 Mark Fenlon - Driver designer - talks driver design
2:00 Speaker kit build demo
3:30 Scott Lindgren talks speaker cabinet design
Next time then. 
It all went very well; Stefan, Mark & even my 'short' talks seemed to be well-received, Stefan's pensil & Frugel Horns kits were liked & the commercial MA-S room next door went down well too. Cheers to everyone who came by to both rooms to say hello; hope you liked them & if you didn't, that's fine too. The North West Audio Show is well worth a visit; nice atmosphere, a lot more relaxed than some of the others & it's great that they're happy to have kit speaker producers exhibiting, having talks etc. I always enjoy it. Hard work, but well worth it.
I had the opportunity of a brief womble around to listen to some of the other rooms; as usual with shows there were some very good systems & some shockingly bad setups too. I won't mention any names in the latter category as that isn't fair given that I wasn't a purely neutral attendee. It does make you wonder what the comparative basis was though. One room I did like was MCRU's about 3 doors up; nice big TLs, very well balanced system that didn't draw attention to itself & got out of the way of what it was playing. Big thanks owed to Dave of MCRU anyway for the loan of his Longdog Audio monoblocks. There were some nice setups elsewhere too of course. Looking forward to next year.
It all went very well; Stefan, Mark & even my 'short' talks seemed to be well-received, Stefan's pensil & Frugel Horns kits were liked & the commercial MA-S room next door went down well too. Cheers to everyone who came by to both rooms to say hello; hope you liked them & if you didn't, that's fine too. The North West Audio Show is well worth a visit; nice atmosphere, a lot more relaxed than some of the others & it's great that they're happy to have kit speaker producers exhibiting, having talks etc. I always enjoy it. Hard work, but well worth it.
I had the opportunity of a brief womble around to listen to some of the other rooms; as usual with shows there were some very good systems & some shockingly bad setups too. I won't mention any names in the latter category as that isn't fair given that I wasn't a purely neutral attendee. It does make you wonder what the comparative basis was though. One room I did like was MCRU's about 3 doors up; nice big TLs, very well balanced system that didn't draw attention to itself & got out of the way of what it was playing. Big thanks owed to Dave of MCRU anyway for the loan of his Longdog Audio monoblocks. There were some nice setups elsewhere too of course. Looking forward to next year.
Oh yes. Very interesting indeed. More to follow on that front. I'm a bit limited in what I can say as they're putting the data pdfs etc. together & I can't preempt that. However, there's two units, the latest Alpair 7 and a new Alpair 11. Both are long-throw single-suspension designs with negative camber cones.
Mark, Stefan & I spent a long time listening to the 11 on the Saturday night, after the show finished for the day. As in a good few hours. It's very good. And I don't say that lightly; I might work with Mark on the commercial speakers, but I also tell him straight when there's something I don't like in terms of the drivers (not the same company BTW). One interesting visual observation -we had them side-by-side with the Pluvia 11 & they're a much more advanced looking driver. Which they are anyway, but they also look it. Nice open basket -obviously no spider in the way so very free breathing, although that also means some shaping of the motor is needed; it's subtle but what's needed is there. We had them to the limit of mechanical travel a number of times because we were physically trying to break them. They didn't. I wouldn't recommend making a practice of that, but they stood up to it, and the behaviour remained consistent which is a good sign. I've had the data for a while as I was asked to do a couple of boxes for them & check the units for FH3, FHXL (straight in). Some interesting features; I'll see if I can get permission to say a little more.
Mark, Stefan & I spent a long time listening to the 11 on the Saturday night, after the show finished for the day. As in a good few hours. It's very good. And I don't say that lightly; I might work with Mark on the commercial speakers, but I also tell him straight when there's something I don't like in terms of the drivers (not the same company BTW). One interesting visual observation -we had them side-by-side with the Pluvia 11 & they're a much more advanced looking driver. Which they are anyway, but they also look it. Nice open basket -obviously no spider in the way so very free breathing, although that also means some shaping of the motor is needed; it's subtle but what's needed is there. We had them to the limit of mechanical travel a number of times because we were physically trying to break them. They didn't. I wouldn't recommend making a practice of that, but they stood up to it, and the behaviour remained consistent which is a good sign. I've had the data for a while as I was asked to do a couple of boxes for them & check the units for FH3, FHXL (straight in). Some interesting features; I'll see if I can get permission to say a little more.
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Scott,
Thanks for the updates and good to know that the talks from Mark, Stefan and yourself were well received (as they should be). Hope Mark is doing better health wise.
IIRC there were some Youtube videos of an earlier meet that Stefan had arranged. It would be great if this year's videos could be shared too (I am assuming that the sessions have been recorded.)
Look forward to some pics from the event too. And of course some more details on the new SOTA MA speakers and new drivers.
Thanks for the updates and good to know that the talks from Mark, Stefan and yourself were well received (as they should be). Hope Mark is doing better health wise.
IIRC there were some Youtube videos of an earlier meet that Stefan had arranged. It would be great if this year's videos could be shared too (I am assuming that the sessions have been recorded.
)Look forward to some pics from the event too. And of course some more details on the new SOTA MA speakers and new drivers.
They will be (videos) once they're edited down. Mark and I had 15 minute slots apiece. I decided I better shut up after an hour, Mark was still in progress after 95 minutes. Nobody walked out though, so presumably whatever we said had a degree of interest. Nothing profound in my case; it was geared up to be relatively simple. Will see if we can get some pictures up; I took a few, but I'm lousy with a camera & they haven't come out too well.
As far as the commercial finished product is concered, for the sake of interest, this is the Viotti Tower, which was launched at the show. Plenty of other products from other companies launched there too. Probably quite a bit of wire; I have a perverse interest in the subject & there were some spectacular carpet-pythons around, along with some more subtle stuff, which I quite fancied just because (non-believer here, but live & let live, & who wouldn't secretly like some of these monsters for their fantasy audio-cave? If we don't have a bit of fun, life would be a very miserable thing).
Nobody walked out though, so presumably whatever we said had a degree of interest. Nothing profound in my case; it was geared up to be relatively simple. Will see if we can get some pictures up; I took a few, but I'm lousy with a camera & they haven't come out too well. As far as the commercial finished product is concered, for the sake of interest, this is the Viotti Tower, which was launched at the show. Plenty of other products from other companies launched there too. Probably quite a bit of wire; I have a perverse interest in the subject & there were some spectacular carpet-pythons around, along with some more subtle stuff, which I quite fancied just because (non-believer here, but live & let live, & who wouldn't secretly like some of these monsters for their fantasy audio-cave? If we don't have a bit of fun, life would be a very miserable thing).
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Hello all, sorry I haven't also replied. I've tried really hard to give myself a day off, as I'm sure Scott will attest, we were all knackered!
Just to echo what Scott said, this is a great show and one well worth visiting for the enthusiast. I use the word enthusiast to describe the type of person on this sort of forum, rather than the 'audiophile'. There are quite a few engineering types demoing stuff at this show, who know far more about what they are flogging, than other shows with a more salesy type approach - well worth coming along.
When I suggested to the organisers (Kris) that we were going to do this type of hands on approach he was really happy to let us do whatever we wanted. In fact I've spent a lot of time this year talking to known industry figures who are itching to appeal more to us enthusiasts as well as to the audiophile. In fact this month Paul Messenger has written a column about my FHXL kits in his HiFi Critic magazine. It the first time in a long while there has been some some content that isn't mainstream gear. Hats off to Stuart at HiFi pig as well who has published 2 reviews of full builds, one of the FHlite and one of the Pensil 11. No money ever changed hands.
Anyway back to the show. I kept my kit building demos to 15 minutes, as advertised, with some spill over for Q&A. The same cannot be said for Mark and Scott!! For those of you that saw my previous videos from my last little event, some of the stuff is similar, I will definitely be posting something up on you tube hopefully within the next week or so. I've got loads of other videos to post as well.
The new Alpair 11 sounded stunning, the way it loaded the room bought an extra dimension to the music. The 3 of us spent ages putting on track after track. After I scratched the cone with a screw on one of the drivers we decided to have a go at killing them for a while but I couldn't quite bring myself to give them the full 400 watts available!
I've got a few photos (just with the phone) on the day and I'll post them later in the week. The factory have also sent me some photos and although they haven't been officially sanctioned yet, look likely to be the official photos. Today they were also busy working up the design drawing for the simplified dims for the PDF. All in all I SHOULD be able to put together at least a teaser for mass consumption by the end of the week.
Stefan
Just to echo what Scott said, this is a great show and one well worth visiting for the enthusiast. I use the word enthusiast to describe the type of person on this sort of forum, rather than the 'audiophile'. There are quite a few engineering types demoing stuff at this show, who know far more about what they are flogging, than other shows with a more salesy type approach - well worth coming along.
When I suggested to the organisers (Kris) that we were going to do this type of hands on approach he was really happy to let us do whatever we wanted. In fact I've spent a lot of time this year talking to known industry figures who are itching to appeal more to us enthusiasts as well as to the audiophile. In fact this month Paul Messenger has written a column about my FHXL kits in his HiFi Critic magazine. It the first time in a long while there has been some some content that isn't mainstream gear. Hats off to Stuart at HiFi pig as well who has published 2 reviews of full builds, one of the FHlite and one of the Pensil 11. No money ever changed hands.
Anyway back to the show. I kept my kit building demos to 15 minutes, as advertised, with some spill over for Q&A. The same cannot be said for Mark and Scott!! For those of you that saw my previous videos from my last little event, some of the stuff is similar, I will definitely be posting something up on you tube hopefully within the next week or so. I've got loads of other videos to post as well.
The new Alpair 11 sounded stunning, the way it loaded the room bought an extra dimension to the music. The 3 of us spent ages putting on track after track. After I scratched the cone with a screw on one of the drivers we decided to have a go at killing them for a while but I couldn't quite bring myself to give them the full 400 watts available!
I've got a few photos (just with the phone) on the day and I'll post them later in the week. The factory have also sent me some photos and although they haven't been officially sanctioned yet, look likely to be the official photos. Today they were also busy working up the design drawing for the simplified dims for the PDF. All in all I SHOULD be able to put together at least a teaser for mass consumption by the end of the week.
Stefan
As soon as I get some!
I have a shipment coming at the moment which normally takes about 3 weeks to arrive in the port here. I've only got a limited amount coming with that as obviously all the distributors wanted some and we had to share the initial production run.
Hopefully the factory are busy making loads more and I'll be able to get more later in the year.
I have a shipment coming at the moment which normally takes about 3 weeks to arrive in the port here. I've only got a limited amount coming with that as obviously all the distributors wanted some and we had to share the initial production run.
Hopefully the factory are busy making loads more and I'll be able to get more later in the year.
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