MiBO 2016 Photos, Videos and Comments

[rmcin626]

Great photos of what looks to have been a great day

[Floyddroid]

Justin's pictures are a hard act to follow so i will post but a couple. thanks again Macca for organising a fantastic day. There was a lot of laughing and mirth which made the day such a joy. and the gear? absolutely tremendous. I couldn't begin to say which sytems were my favourite as the standard was so high. The JBL speakers with the Luxkit power and rather sweet little pre amp were gorgeous. Listening to some jazz via Macca's Akai speakers driven by a Leben integrated amp and a Sony turntable that was simply to die form. The tartan carpet had quite obviously been rolled out for Ali Tait and his rather splendid open baffle speakers. Ali's system incorporated the new Firebottle Vitali valve phono stage fed by Ali's 401/Mission arm and Benz MC cartridge. I fell in love with Benz cartridges during the day, Barrington's Benz wood was stunning in his rebuilt turntable based on a Rega. Later in the day we humped my Proton power amp in and connected it to Rich B's system. As people started to leave or go to their beds i connected my old military looking Tascam R2R. I subjected the remainers to my specialist music which had us singing along and yet again having a chuckle.
One suggestion i feel would help in the case of further Mibo's is that some kind of crowd funding should be set up as unlike the venues used for the NEBO meetings, cities and large town pubs charge premium rates to rent out their facilities for the day. I for one would be only too pleased to pay upfront before attending. The spirit and friendships that have grown with NEBO were here in spades thanks the Macca. I doth my cap sir. Well done.

This gorgeous Sony Turntable would have been safer bolted to the table as i would have been out of the window with this beauty.


Last men (and woman ) standing. Bake Off die hard's sending a signal to those who may wish any ill to what has become a great hi-Fi family.

[jollyfix]

Great, looks like John B behind Ali.

[Marco]

Just like to say a big thanks to Macca for all his input in making this great event happen and be such a success!

It's testament to both his enthusiasm to grow the community aspect of AOS and his popularity and respect amongst the membership, that a) people turned up in decent numbers to MiBO, and b) that it worked so well, so congrats, mate.

I'd also like to thank everyone who attended the event, especially folks who travelled long distances to be there. Once again it was great meeting existing friends and putting some faces to previously only forum names, such as (amongst others) Justin (User211) - glad you enjoyed your trip in the Brabster, mate - Nial (ff1d1l) and Peter (petrat), not to mention Barry's charming girlfriend, Happy.

As others have said, there were some great sounds heard on both days (Friday and Saturday), but the top highlights for me were Barrington's excellent (heavily) modified Rega P3/OL Encounter/Benz Wood SL cartridge, which was testament to what can be achieved with some intelligence and lateral thinking. The performance this T/T produced was up there with anything I've heard from ones costing ten times the price! A truly excellent achievement.

Alan (Firebottle), as usual exhibited a plethora of superb kit, which I enjoyed listening to very much, but joining the top performers was the (heavily) modded Thorens TD-160/Rega arm and (amazing Philips GP390 ceramic cartridge, played through a (heavily) modified Quad preamp, (forget the phono stage) and Nial's superb Vincent amp, through JBL standmount speakers.

The performance that this system produced, particularly the T/T (once I'd played some good recordings on it, lol) was simply breathtaking, and redefined my benchmark both for kit at this level, and especially, what belt-drive T/Ts are capable of!

Ali also produced some mesmerising sounds from his Garrard 401-fronted system with huge OBs at the end.

The sound produced by this system was both visceral and highly enjoyable, and most importantly (considering that the whole point of building a system like that is to convincingly replicate real voices and instruments), very musically believable. Well done, mate. After a shaky start, where things weren't sounding so good (as can easily happen at shows), your system went on to really sing!

There were also other notable sounds I heard, which if I can recall the correct details I'll mention later. However, like Rich, this is another of them:

Certain things stay with you after these events and the system of Martin's Akais, Luckily amp and that Sony TT playing Miles Davis made an impression!

That was gob-smackingly good! And shows just what, aside from anything else, those speakers are capable of when placed on proper stands... Although I realise why Martin can't do that at his place. The spooky sense of realism with the 45 rpm audiophile pressing of Kind of Blue, and the Sonny Rollins album played after it was palpable

Just one point of note, the preamp/phono stage on duty there was my Croft, together with the little (almost stock) Lentek head amp. Thanks for asking me to demo the Croft in that system, Rich, as if you hadn't, it would've been packed up in the car and off home!

More later, but got to pop out now to church.

Marco.

[Firebottle]

Nice one Marco, I feel in many ways honoured that I can lift the performance of associated kit so that everyone can hear what great performance is ultimately achievable with different sources and speakers.

More bake offs to come for sure

[Mickyricky]

Thanks to everyone involved in making this a remarkable day ...I had a great time...

[Floyddroid]

Thanks to everyone involved in making this a remarkable day ...I had a great time...

Great as always to see you Mick. Thank you again for my gift. You are very kind.

[mikeyb]

Great, looks like John B behind Ali.

where's HIS finger ?

[ff1d1l]

You could try this if you really need to see the vids, but if you Google you will find loads of other options.

#5. How to Watch Restricted Video in YouTube

Suppose If the blocked YouTube URL is *http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEwD36Dk1jw

Then just replace /watch?v= with /v/

After modifies the YouTube URL, It should look something like this *http://www.youtube.com/v/yEwD36Dk1jw

Point your browser to the above URL, Wow you have played video in the full-screen mode even it is blocked in your country.

Tried a variety of workarounds including this...I pretended to be in north America, Canada, Germany and France, no dice, no vid, I thought 12" was about the reach of an SME, I didn't realise they had international tentacles...Other vid works OK though.

On to the day... surprising standout sounds for me, in approximately the order they came up in, were the Thorens with the Phillips ceramic cartridge, then the Goodmans Mezzo speakers...WTF?!?!?...I will say I was pretty surprised by the open baffles - excellent sound with massive headroom and scale, the Syd Lawrence Big Band was in particular stunning, the Proton power amp I thought noticeably from the other end of the room transformed the Croft system, Barringtons beautiful turntable which sounded as good as it looked, the Lebens 12w synergistic magic with the JBLs and the final surprise was the Akais hung off my Luxkit and Marco's Croft with vinyl from the Sony/Lentek. There was so much "wrong" with the Akais...loads of drivers crowded onto the baffle, not mirror imaged, not ported, huge flange around the speaker grille so sound was effectively emerging from a tunnel...until you heard them. Just beautiful...rules were made to be broken...

Thanks to Martin for organising, for being so welcoming, and for buying me some flu caps so I wasn't running a headache all day, great to meet friends old and new.

[southall-1998]

Any video clip of the Leben?

S.