Postcards from Whittlebury Hall

Like the audio world itself, the UK’s National Audio Show (NAS) – held at every year at the Whittlebury Hall spa hotel near the legendary Silverstone racetrack in Northamptonshire – is undergoing significant change. The NAS still features great traditional audio at all price levels, but the revolution in headphone and in-ear listening has made its mark, and the show’s HeadZone section is growing at an almost exponential rate. Coming so soon after CanJam London, however, there wasn’t a great deal of new equipment shown there that hadn’t been seen a few weeks earlier (with two exciting exceptions), but the energy and excitement of that headphone world is definitely rubbing off on traditional audio.

There remains some reluctance among traditional audio enthusiasts in embracing this sea change in audio, with many of the more curmudgeonly audio enthusiasts avoiding the HeadZone altogether. But they were not disappointed by the sheer variety of two-channel audio on offer. We have tried to focus specifically on what’s new and what’s good here, rather than a complete room-by-room account of the event. There were also several rooms (for example Teddy Pardo, Kralk Audio) where the Audio Fates conspired to fill the room to bursting each time I tried to visit – it took three attempts to get into the Audio Note room, for example.

When I did make it into the room, Audio Note was playing its standalone £5,000 M3 RIAA phono stage. This is usually incorporated into the M3 preamp and left to its own devices helps improve the performance a notch.

Henley Designs showed the completely renovated Pro-Ject RPM line, teased at Munich. The baby of the range RPM5 now costs £899 without a cartridge (up from £650) and sports a better tolerance 9V motor, a carbon-fibre 9cc Evolution arm as standard, a carbon fibre layer on the plinth to aid rigidity, a decoupled motor and better platter.

Roksan showed off a wholly Oxygene 30 new turntable, to match its Oxygene line, which comes bundled with a Pro-Ject 9cc arm. Price is expected to be around the £2,000 mark.

Speaking of Roksan… Inspire Hi-Fi (which is gaining a reputation as a turntable maker of note as well as one of the principle hot-rodders of decks old and new) has announced upgraded 25mm thick MDF top and bottom plinths for the original Xerxes. These can be supplied as a full restore and upgrade by Inspire for £695 or as a £595 kit of parts for DIYers. While some brands might get snippy at third-party upgrades, as Roksan provided Inspire with its new £1,375 Pug tonearm, that’s clearly not the case here.

£7,890Acoustic Signature Thunder turntable, with the new £1,950 Perreaux PP3 phono stage, into a £6,995 C-700 and £6,995 M-700 pre and power from Luxman to a pair of £10,000 Triangle Magellan Cello floorstanders. Other components in the system included digital sources from Aurender and AURALiC and equipment tuning from Vertex AQ and Leading Edge.

Origin Live showed its new £12,900 flagship Voyager turntable, which is built to a very high standard. Mark Baker of Origin Live was typically laconic about the new design: with not even a flyer available, he simply referred people to his website for more details. In fairness, this describes how impressive the player really is far better than any live chat possibly can, but sometimes a little bit of demonstration helps!

New to the UK, DS Audio’s £6,250 DS-W1 cartridge (with matching equaliser) is a truly unique design: an optical design, which detects stylus vibration by laser. It is distributed by Sound Fowndations and was installed in a top Clearaudio turntable.

The company also showed Clearaudio’s £3,250 Double Matrix Professional Sonic record cleaning machine, which automates the entire record cleaning process.

Two of the most impressive demonstrations were more about the vinyl than the equipment, although the equipment helped. Recording supremo Mike Valentine’s direct-to-disc Chasing the Dragon label has just launched its second album – a big band recording of the Syd Lawrence orchestra, which comes with a master-tape recording version too for comparison.

Always a sell-out event, previews of the Queen Studio Collection LP box were cut to be played loud, and through a large PMC monitor speaker system… they did just that.

One of the best high-end demonstrations at the show, dCS showcased its new £18,000 Rossini player, £15,500 DAC, and clock, through D’Agostino amplification, into Wilson Alexias. With a Stillpoints rack and runs of Nordost V2 cable, this was one of the most expensive systems at the event. It was also one of the very best sounding.

Once again dominating the launches even on the digital source side, Roksan announced the new £1,250 K3 DAC, which supports up to DSD 256 and comes supplied with K-Link USB 2.0 wireless dongle with proprietary high-resolution wireless music transmission up to 150m.

Roksan also showed its new Blak range, currently a two-strong line of £2,250 CD player, and £2,500 integrated amplifier. These don’t replace the brand’s high-end M2 series, but add a new level to the line – rather like an M2 with a bit more of a kick to it!

One of the true stars of the show, Chord Electronic’s new £7,995 DAVE (Digital to Analogue Veritas in Extremis) joins HUGO in its use of an FGPA-based conversion system – and a trite name – but raises the performance bar considerably, we’re led to believe.

Wholly new amplifiers were in relatively short supply at the show, but Music First Audio’s prototype headphone amplifier, expected to cost around £2,000 was a rare exception. Curiously, MFA chose to play this from a cassette tape source, and the queue to listen to this headphone amp was significant, but it promises much, and may just deliver…

Pro-Ject was one of the other brands launching an amplifier, in the guise of the MaiA DS £700 integrated amp; an app-controlled (with IR blaster), aptX Bluetooth-driven Class D design with a MM/MC stage and a 24/192 DAC.

Unison Research’s new £4,250 Unico 150 hybrid flagship integrated amplifier was on display; an extension of the Unico 100, with 2x ECC88 and 2x EL84 tubes, and ‘locally grown’ components.

On to loudspeakers now, the forthcoming 5l Leema Xen Elite is expected to cost somewhere between £2,500-£3,000, and uses a machined 20mm aluminium billet for the front and rear panels, a 30mm dome tweeter and a GRP-infused mid-bass driver. A very small speaker, yes, but one that can really deliver.

Opera’s new Prima takes the entry level Mezza to new levels, thanks to a front-firing port and a new crossover, for £1,500 per pair.

Vivid’s new £18,500 per pair B1 Decade pulls in technology and drivers from the up-scale Giya range in the distinctive, 10-year-old oval standmount design.

ME-Gethain is a German pro-audio company that makes some extremely good, and relatively inexpensive active monitors. Prices range from just over £2,000 per pair for the diminutive RL 906 up to £10,050 for the three-way coaxial RL 901 K.

Russell Kauffman of Russell K loudspeakers stands with his first floorstander, the soon-to-be-launched Red 150.

Zeta Zero is a Polish high-end company new to the UK, with a diverse range of loudspeakers that feature ribbon drivers: everything from the relatively conventional looking Venus Piccola (left) to the Orbital 3D 360° ribbon tweeter system. Prices will probably start from around £15,000

Second-hand audio specialist Hi-Fi Hangar is also the supplier of the high-value Class D Atsah 500 mono power amps, based on Hypex cores. Not much to look at, but great value at £799 per channel. Meanwhile, Hi-Fi Hanger is also the importer of Eminent Technology loudspeakers. The LFT-8b floorstanders with Sound Anchor stands cost just £2,650 per pair.

Finally Devialet’s new Phantom speakers were playing in a too-large room, but still had an ability to impress listeners. An upgrade is expected in January that will allow the Phantom to be run from existing ‘Expert’ Devialet amplifiers, through Ethernet.