Sound and Vision The Bristol Show 2008

[Ashley James]

In ADM9's defence I'd point that the most expensive system that anyone has sold so far to buy them has been £17,500, that the average is about £6.5K and today it was £11K and all these people write to say that they are astounded at the improvement in sound quality they've had.

There's no doubt that we picked the right time to introduce them. There is a mass exodus from Hi FI brought about by the unreliability of CD players and the widespread discovery that iPods, especially the Touch and the Shuffle are at least the equal of the best CD players and better than most hi fi systems, if better headphones are purchased. Computer music libraries are here.

Apple's marketing is staggeringly effective and multi room streaming and control are cheap and easy to use, their products look nice in the home and a big TV, a Mac Mini or Apple TV and a self contained hi fi system like ADM9s is exactly what most want.

Hi Fi as depicted on this Forum is the pursuit of a tiny minority and too small to warrant investment for companies like us who have to keep hungry factories busy. There's also a certain element of snobbery attached to the exotica, which I think unwise. It was obvious that ADM9's have stirred up a hornets nest at Bristol. I had a visit from some Naim bigwig concerned that we had it in for them and saying that numerous dealers were complaining of the damage we're doing, Tony Revelle came to see us looking decidedly unhappy about the prospect of £1000's worth of fit and forget replacing £5K's worth of separates + upgrades, especially as a PS3 will work just as well as a front end, will stream music and play Blu-ray! And Rob Follis also visited to discuss show turnout and the way the market is shifting.

It won't affect you lot but I fancy we'll do rather well over the coming year, but big changes are afoot and I think AVI is in a strong position to capitalise on them.

[Steve Toy]

There is a mass exodus from Hi FI brought about by the unreliability of CD players and the widespread discovery that iPods, especially the Touch and the Shuffle are at least the equal of the best CD players

They are not. A couple of years ago I did a direct comparison between my then Naim CDX and a mate's iPod Shuffle into my system. The Naim won hands down on timing, detail and tonality. The iPod sounded boom 'n tizz in comparison and was relatively poor at holding together the musical performance as a whole.

Ashley,

I genuinely wish you well with the ADM9s but please cut the hype.

[Filterlab]

Strange your opinion on computer based audio has changed in such a short time Steve.

[Steve Toy]

Strange your opinion on computer based audio has changed in such a short time Steve.

Rob,

Can you elaborate? If you are refering to my reactions to the Robson demo at the Manchester show I was impressed with the amps and speakers. I also thought that the computer/Benchmark DAC running lossless FLAC sounded nicer than the £2k NAD CD player. MP3 sucks big time through proper hi-fi though.

I heard the GamuT CD3 at Bristol and thought that was an incredibly tough act to follow. Ideally I'll run both a CD player and a music server of some description. I think we could be a long way from getting computer audio to outperform top-notch disc spinners. I could be wrong and will find out in due course.

Apart from that how have my views changed?

[Ashley James]

Steve, you must come and visit us. I'll play you a few DAC's supplied by the manufacturers themselves, then one of ours and then a Shuffle.

www.daisy-laser.com for the CDX2 and www.daisy-laser.nl for the 555 or whatever.

Timing and detailed tonality etc mean nothing to me but we can measure audible artefacts and compare with an established standard, or even set up a double blind listening test.

We had a license to manufacturer CD players years before Naim and Mart was working with Burr Brown 8 bit DACs for military applications years before CD players existed. Don't forget it's our chums that are designing Head for the Bentley radio too.

[Filterlab]

Indeed, MP3 does sound dreadful through hi-fi, but the Touch and the Shuffle both run lossless (or as near as) files. Remove the mechanical interface noise and you've got something that can essentially outperform a of players, although a proper digital output would remove a vast amount of the qualitative 'hold back'.

I agree with you in that top notch disc players are unlikely to be outperformed by an iPod, but direct from a computer is another matter. Personally I thought the sound from the Robson room at Manc was clearly better than the sound in the Audioworks room and the Robson system was a fraction of the cost.

As for your views, I read it wrong, apologies mate.

[shane]

Timing and detailed tonality etc mean nothing to me

Do you mean that you can't hear a difference between a system that does these things well and one that doesn't, or that you don't think they're important, or that because you can't measure them, they don't exist?

[Ashley James]

As far as I'm concerned a hi fi system can only molest music, the better the system, the less molestation (distortion) occurs and more the music wins through.

That's why we have professional recording engineers and musicians using our stuff, they can tell us if a violin sounds like a violin or whatever. Misha Scora or Eric Clapton being examples. there are many others too, like Geoffrey Burgon. We're a choice of those committed to accurate or faithful to the recording, sound reproduction.

[shane]

Yes, but if timing and detailed tonality mean nothing to you, how do you work out what is good sound reproduction?

[Ashley James]

Timing and tonality come from the music, hi fi can only spoil it if it isn't designed properly.