The Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2019 was its usual melee of noise, sweat and traffic this year with a queue around the block (above) when I arrived at the Bristol Marriot Hotel.  I said I would point out a few favourites and others so I will show you in the following directions, depending on your preference.

Favourite Room

Rega, Room 223/4.  Not because Rob from Rega played Colfax Avenue by Delines on the Planar 8 but because it was a well proportioned, not too loud, comfortable space that was a pleasure to be in (compared to many!).  In the other Rega room was their new 125W pch Aetheos integrated amplifier (right), a block buster at £2,999 due in the summer, watch this space, it will be special.

Find of the Day

If you are on the second floor go to the Escape Speakers Room 218.  In there was a portable Bluetooth outdoor battery powered (8 hours) speaker that was very well thought out.  The speaker can be used on its own or in a stereo pair and I thought the design and concept, with a weather proof cover was brilliant.  They’re looking for a distributor in the UK, but the product was brilliant.

Best Room

One of the cleverest rooms was the IsoAcoustics room that featured a switch to demonstrate the effectiveness of their Gaia speaker isolation feet between two pairs of Focal Aria speakers.  I have set of the Gaia III isolators for my KEF R700s that I will be reviewing in the coming week or so.

Other rooms of note included the Fyne Audio room (304) with their brilliant sounding 702 speakers.

I also really liked the very carefully constructed Atlas Cables room with their fabulous Mark Levinson electronics placed backwards!  With some beautiful PMC twenty 26 loudspeakers (I think) Atlas were demonstrating the huge custom Luxe cables and the Atlas Grun earthing technology.

Quietest Room

My other favourite room, and easily the quietest room (by definition), had the new closed backed Focal Stellia headphones, in tandem with the new Focal Arche headphone amplifier.

Noisiest Room

All the AV rooms!  Nightmare.