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This is our 3rd year at the “Bristol Show“ as it is known in the hi-fi trade. MCRU have an open stand in the conservatory level with this year Max Townsend next to us. The real story of the show for us was the shared room on the 4th floor between Longdog Audio and Music First Audio.
The 2 companies are both specialists in their chosen fields and as expected combining some of their products resulted in a truly stunning hi-fi system, enjoyed by many of the 100’s of show visitors to their room. The show featured 2 new products designed and built by Nick Gorham especially for the show. A new 2 box MM phono amplifier and a rather special sounding pair of 300b monoblock amplifiers.
The main source was a Clearaudio Innovation Turntable with the matching 12″ carbon fibre tonearm and a clearaudio stradivari cartridge. German engineering at its very best and a truly superb example of analogue art. The turntable was running through a newly designed Longdog 2 box MM phono pre-amplifier used in conjunction with the Music First MC step up transformer, a sonic match made in heaven.
Not wanting to let “digital ” visitors to the room down, the multi award winning Longdog Audio VDt1 DAC was running with 2 sources, a Teac VRDS1 CD transport and a Squeezebox Touch with dedicated LDA Linear PSU. Red book CD and 24/192 music files were played alongside each other and truly showcased what this exciting new DAC is capable of.
Amplification was provided by a new pair of Longdog 300B monoblock amplifiers. Designed by Nick Gorham and fitted with PS Vane 300B’s, the amplifiers were controlled by a Music First Classic Silver Wound Pre-Amp, one of the very best pre-amps ever made according to many audiophiles who visited the room.
The final component in the system was the newly designed, UK built MCRU No. 127 loudspeakers. A 2 way floorstanding design with a rather unique design (the front baffles features 4 main drivers) and a rear firing additional tweeter with controllable L pad. The speakers are bi-wireable and available in a variety of finishes. Sounding superb throughout the 3 days of the show.
No hi-fi system can be considered complete without treatment to the “mains supply” often considered as an afterthought by many audiophiles but essentially the most important part of any system, hotel rooms being notoriously difficult for achieving good sound quality, IsoTek Systems, world leaders in mains conditioning and filtering provided some of their class leading products to clean up the mains supply and provide those essential “plug sockets” so often there are never enough when it comes to exhibiting lots of kit. The multi award winning IsoTek Aquarius was utilized to power the 2 monoblocks only with a Vision used to power the rest of the system, all cabling was provided my MCRU and was a mixture of Tellurium Q and Black Rhodium.
This blogs author visited the room many times and together with most of the show visitors agreed, it was a superb effort from both companies and sounded simply astonishing.
