today is first day of the annual ISSE..... usual spot @ le meridian.... haha did they sign a long term deal with shi ting yi shu (a local hifi magazine in chinese)???
wanted to take the bus (direct bus ... no need to look for parking) but ended up driving as i was running late...... alas took me 30 mins to find a parking lot along killiney road... sigh.....
haha sorry for keeping my fren waiting..... anyway visited the ballrooms first...... pioneer stuff: their range of plasma KURO...... nice but super expensive BD player in cool slippery glossy black...... and how about the super nice but super expensive EX range of speakers...... the centre speaker alone is a monster.... didnt stay long in the dark room cos my pocket is not deep enough haha
local boys creative is also onto the scene..... with a new active loudspeaker and preamp equipped with an ipod dock.... not bad at all.... sound is pretty good too...... under show condition, i consider it as a good start..... i didnt pay notice to their computer speakers.... hehe.... not that i am snobbish but i dun give much damn about computer speakers in the first place....
had a brief look at the thiel 3.7 and bel canto stuff..... but the set up was so narrow ....such that not "inviting" to listen at all..... they are more keen to show their JVC dila projectors which i didnt go in to see..... wanna listen to thiel? better to visit the showroom .......
there were many setups selling CDs and LPs... almost like the a wetmarket ...... i heard someone saying that this is a CD show not a hifi show haha...... well what is hifi without good music right? both goes together....... just how good wine should be shared among good friends......
high end research showed off top level ARC source/preamp and power amps...... all their reference series products.... the speakers used are sonus faber stradivari homage....oops shd be sonus faber elipsa (thanks to an alert extremeplace guy rc5al for pointing this out).. a pair at S$30k (IIRC)...... these mighty components look delicious enough to kill for haha..... too bad the music was boring..... so i didnt stay long...... i was back towards the end and it was much better when they played the hong shao xuan LE CD..... my fren bought a copy and surely will ask him if it's good.......
next room saw boulder equipment...... which is another line of out-of-this-world-prices marque....... however i saw a halcro preamp on the table....... is halcro coming back??? that will be good news ..... also burmester stuff.... big big loudspeakers......
ong radio shut their door ....... full house for their HT demo.....there were static displays outside the room though so saw the mc1000 preamp and the new mc2300 tube preamp too......... tubes are illuminated with a soft green light..... nice touch but the key attraction are the blue meters... :)
lexicon/mark levinson/revel joint up to present "transformers" the movie...... dunno why didnt like the setup.... maybe they were playing too loud...... i am not deaf and loud is not more impressive or better.....
surprisingly, absolute sound came out in full force this year...... they used to be kinda reticent .... a big room was showing meridian, magnepan, naim, roksan, esoteric...... yeah room is big but not conducive to listening...... end up like pasar malam........ one setup was interfering with another.... everyone is a loser here.... haha.....
ok let me take a rest before continuing.... :)
No comments:
Post a Comment