{"id":6288,"date":"2017-03-02T18:22:42","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T18:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/?page_id=6288"},"modified":"2017-03-04T16:25:43","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T16:25:43","slug":"highend-stockholm-2017","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/?page_id=6288","title":{"rendered":"HighEnd Stockholm 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I visited the Stockholm HighEnd Hifi show which took place in Stockholm 18-19th of February 2017.<\/p>\n

This is a reoccurring event that always gathers some interesting designers, distributors and people from many well-known HigEnd manufacturers and Hifi shops.<\/p>\n

I focus mainly on the loudspeakers and as always, it\u2019s hard to evaluate a loudspeaker design at a Hifi show, but you can at least get a general impression on how they perform and sounds like.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s some short comments and photos from the show:<\/p>\n

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The new Divine Alpha<\/a> from XTZ\u00a0 <\/a>Nicely built cabinet with a massive aluminum front baffle.\u00a0 Mid-range and tweeter from Accuton and dual 10″ woofers from SEAS.<\/p>\n

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The extremely small floor-stander IOTA ALPHA<\/a> from Neat Acoustics. <\/a>The larger speaker to the left sounded quite nice.<\/p>\n

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To the left the gigantic Heco Direkt Dreiklang<\/a> from Heco. <\/a>A lot of bass, but in my opinion they didn’t sound good in this setup.<\/p>\n

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The A.C.T One Evolution<\/a> from Wilson Benesch.<\/a> I’m sorry to say, but this speaker didn’t impressed me in this setup.<\/p>\n

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The Radialstrahler mbl 101 E MK II<\/a> from MBL. <\/a>One of the best sounding speakers of the show, even though the bass was a bit problematic in this very large listening room.<\/p>\n

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The Expression ESL13a<\/a> from Martin Logan. <\/a>Nice sounding Electrostatic speaker.<\/p>\n

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The Lawrence Audio Violin<\/a> from Lawrence Audio<\/a> and RED 100<\/a> from Russel K <\/a>playing on a nice sounding and normal priced tube amplifier from Fezz Audio <\/a>and the combination did sound nice. Also, a very nice touch playing some live Cello music between the listening sessions.<\/p>\n

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The new Homage Tradition<\/a> series from Sonus Faber.<\/a><\/p>\n

Nice loudspeaker craftsmanship, but a bit overdone for my taste. I’m sorry to say, but the sound in this setup didn’t impress me. It would be interesting to listen to them in other circumstances.<\/p>\n

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The XS-85<\/a> from Gold Note.<\/a><\/p>\n

Super expensive loudspeaker. I only had a brief listening session and I can’t really tell if the sound quality match the price of this large loudspeaker.<\/p>\n

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The Reference 5 K<\/a> and Reference 9 K<\/a> from Canton <\/a>Solid performers, but in this price range there might be better alternatives, like the new Dynaudio speakers below.<\/p>\n

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The new Contour Series<\/a> from Dynaudio<\/a><\/p>\n

In my opinion, one of the most interesting speakers of the show. Not only do they sound very good, they are also very well built and beautiful looking. I had a chat with one of the manager of Dynaudio and I\u2019m very impressed by the work and commitment Dynaudio dedicate to development and making their own drivers and cabinets in house.<\/p>\n

Some loudspeaker driver \u201cporno\u201d.<\/p>\n

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I would die to get my hands on a pair of these very competent drivers!<\/p>\n

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WBT Nextgen terminals and Aluminium baffles seems to be the “fashion” among speaker Manufakturers today.<\/p>\n

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To the left Monitor Audio PL500II<\/a> and QRS Sky High. The Monitor Audios offered a wall of sound, quite impressive, but requires a very large room. To the right Mingus Quintet<\/a> from Marten. <\/a>To be honest, I\u2019ve never been a fan of Marten speakers, but the Quintet sounded ok in this setup. 45.000\u20ac, crazy amount of money. If I had this kind of money, I would probably buy something else.<\/p>\n

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The Blade Two<\/a> from KEF <\/a>running on electronics from Hegel<\/a>. I just love Hegel. No nonsense High-End with a moderate pricing.<\/p>\n

The KEF Blad Two sounded very nice in this large room together with Hegel equipment. The Hegel equipment demo and presentation was also very interesting.<\/p>\n

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The Element Earth<\/a> from Totem Acoustic<\/a>. Using this mid-woofer configuration paired with a cross-over “free” mid-woofer section made me suspicious, but I have to admit that they sounded nicer than I thought possible. It would be interesting to see some measurements of this loudspeaker.<\/p>\n

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To the left a new co-axial speaker from Technics<\/a>. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to listen to this speaker.<\/p>\n

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The Reference 5<\/a> and LS50<\/a> from KEF<\/a>. I love the KEF co-axial drivers. The best Hifi co-axial drivers in the world.<\/p>\n

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The very large GIYA<\/a> speaker from Vivid Audio<\/a>. The design is not for everyone. Interesting drivers, but unfortunately the sound didn’t really caught on to me. Perhaps another listening session would change the first impression.<\/p>\n

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The new FM-50 2.5-way speaker from Gato Audio <\/a>using drivers from SBAcoustics. The short listening test showed great potential and a taste for more.<\/p>\n

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The Sasha<\/a> from Wilson Audio <\/a>running on a tube amp. Not so sexy loudspeaker feet, but not so shabby sounding! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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The Duo XD<\/a> from Avantgarde<\/a>. Exotic looks with a low WAF factor. Fun, but not really my type of loudspeaker sound.<\/p>\n

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The Dynamis<\/a> from Diapason <\/a>running on a nice tube amp from Line Magnetic<\/a>. Nice, but misused drivers from SEAS and ScanSpeak. A cross-over point of 4.6kHz between the 7\u201d mid-woofer and tweeter is a good recipe for disaster and it didn’t sound good in this setup. The\u00a0 Dynamis<\/a> loudspeaker costs 45.000\u20ac.<\/p>\n

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Open baffle speakers from PureAudioProject<\/a>. I really like the idea with this semi DIY loudspeaker approach. The aluminium frames can be bought separately for DIY experimenting. Even though convenient, 1300\u20ac + VAT is way too expensive for the frames.<\/p>\n

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Full-range hard cone drivers from the Swedish EAD <\/a>in DIY setups. The left pictures show the E100, a 5″ full-range driver in a wide enclosure. I’m not a fan of full-range speakers, but this speaker sounded nice. In the future, I might\u00a0 pick up some EAD drivers and test it myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I visited the Stockholm HighEnd Hifi show which took place in Stockholm 18-19th of February 2017. This is a reoccurring event that always gathers some interesting designers, distributors and people from many well-known HigEnd manufacturers and Hifi shops. I focus mainly on the loudspeakers and as always, it\u2019s hard to evaluate a loudspeaker design […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6288","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6288"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6371,"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6288\/revisions\/6371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audioexcite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}