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The Bristol Show

Author	Edward Chester
Published	26th Feb 2008

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Every year Bristol plays host to one of the largest Audio/Visual consumer & trade shows in the UK. Aptly titled The Bristol Show, it is one of the best opportunities for home cinema and Hi-Fi enthusiasts to gather and exchange views on current technology, meet the people behind the brands, and of course see, hear, and play with, some seriously neat kit! So, with press invite in hand TrustedReviews headed over to the show to see what wonders we could find.

Now it goes without saying that a lot of the equipment on show was at the extreme high end of the scale both in terms of budget and capability and for most of our readers spending £10,000 on a pair of speakers isn't really an option. So, rather than concentrate on all the super high-end audio equipment and home cinema setups we've tried to pick out the more technically interesting, innovative, and more affordable products at the show. That said, everyone loves a bit of eye-candy so we'll dedicate the rest of this first page to showing you just what you can get if money is no object (or if you're really serious about your hobby!).

Naim had by far the largest presence at the show with four rooms dedicated to its equipment (most companies had just one) and accordingly it was demonstrating the most expensive speakers at the show. Unfortunately to maintain its brand recognition and create a sense of continuity from room to room it also chose to bath all its demo rooms in green light so photographing these enormous speakers was a tad difficult, to say the least. Still, I think this picture does the circa £15k speakers ample justice - these truly are monsters!

Another big name speaker company with equally big speakers on show was Dynaudio who was not only demonstrating its superb Sapphire speakers but also had one of its built-to-order Consequence speakers on show. Ok, it wasn't plugged in but as one of the first things we saw when entering the show it has to go down as one of the highlights. And, no, the man in the background wasn't a midget, these speakers really are that big.

Click to enlarge