Stormont Show

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Big News  Naim Rega Focal Chord

A Naim Audio audiofest is on at the Stormont hotel on the 7th and 8th September. This unique event will have Naim staff demonstrating different performance levels, explaining their take on the future of hifi via streaming, and available for any queries you have.

Uniti series, 5 series, and NDX will all be demonstrated.

To complement this Lyric will be there running a Rega room. This will feature comparative demonstrations of great vinyl played on the range of Rega turntables. Starting with the RP1 (£230) through the RP3 (£475-549), on to the RP6 (£ 799-999) and the new amazing RP8 luxury top of the line, showing in Ireland for the first time (£1598-2198). I will have an eclectic mix of brilliant music, if I do say so myself, showcasing some of the best recordings available.

This will also be the Irish debut for the new Rega Elicit-R integrated amplifier at £ 1598. This was just announced in June, and already it has had brilliant 5* reviews and is hotly tipped to win an amplifier of the year award. Anyone interested in a sub £2000 amp should check this out

Partnering these will be the latest Rega RS7 loudspeakers. Slim floorstanders with side-firing bass units these have a full and detailed sound from slim boxes.

And the new high gloss black finish is simply stunning! Well worth the extra £ 200 at £ 1999.

Focal, Naim's parent company, will also be displaying their latest wares, and I hope they will be able to bring their latest Utopia speakers from their highest range as they are outrageously large with fantastic finishes and bring an amazing scale to all genres of music. It's also something you don't see every day!

Focal also have several ranges of more normal loudspeakers to look at.

Chord Company have been synonymous with high performance interconnect and speaker cables for 30 years now. At their base in Salisbury Chord manufacture a coherent range of cables across a wide range of prices. This is unusual, as many cable manufacturers dont see m to have any order or sense to their ranges!

Chord Co's Alan Gibb will be showing their cable range and he has a fascinating demonstration where you can actually hear what you get for your money . He can explain the difference electrically, in copper purity, crystal shapes, shielding, dielectrics, etc but the important part is the difference in how it sounds! And that is obvious to the ears.

All these rooms will have points of interest, and to make it even more interesting Lyric will be offering tempting offers for purchases from any of these manufacturers made at the show. Go on, treat yourself to a day out, listen to some great music, learn something new, and save money on an upgrade.

This will apply to all products at the show, so I can talk to you nicely about a new cable, turntable, amplifier, streamer, speakers, cd player, lots of nice things to let you go home with a smile on your face!

Display Refit

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With the arrival of the Kef Blades and their new E, T, R, and M series it was time to change our displays to make it easier to see all these products.

Kef engineers have been busy, and everything they have done recently has won awards. Every series listed above has had a clean sweep of 5* awards so we needed to show you why

A new wall has 5 types of installation speakers all hooked up and running to let you hear the differences.

From the tiny 5 " Ci100QR at £ 199 per pair through 7.5" Ci130, 8.5" Ci 160 and then the 11" £ 600 Ci 200Q you can hear the difference in sound and work out what's the right speaker for each of your rooms

Pictured beside this is the new T series in white. These super flat speakers have been get ting great reviews and awards. With full 5 speaker and subwoofer packages from only £ 1200 to £ 1700 these outperform many more expensive systems and are excellent value for money

The Kef Blades in the foreground are amazing, however in the distance the LS50 speaker of the year at £ 800 and the £ 2000 R700 floorstanders are more affordable!

The M series are the first headphones from Kef. Two models, in ear M200 at £ 150, on-ear M500 at £ 250. Both are beautifully made from alumini um alloy and sound amazing. And that's from me who doesn't usually rate headphones at all! The design looks like something from the Porsche catalogue and they are both really comfortable. The little demo rig pictured also allows you to check them out before purchase, M500s only.

Completing the layout is the new E series, the latest version of the multi-award winning 'Egg' series.

Already a 5* review winner these must be a certainty for System of the Year come October.

Sorry it's not a great pic, dont let that put you off how good they sound!! 

Arcam's new DACs and AV amps

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Those of you paying attention will know that we reall y rate Arcam's new A19 stereo amplifier. A welcome return to the top of the recommendations from a fresh design from their original guru and designer, John Dawson. Well that has been the first fruit of major investment in other new products and platforms.

The new platform is their av amplifier range. It is no secret that the fast moving market in av can be tricky for a specialis t company that thrives on a performance advantage. Keeping ahead of the major players such as Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo is easy in terms of sound quality, but the switching and formats move so fast that you have to be sure that the investment in a new platform will keep you ahead of the pack for a few years. HDMI is already up to 1.4a, 3D added, and the next technology on the horizon is 4k video. What is 4k will be a future Reference subject and video so I'm not going further just now. Suffice to say that by next year every new amplifier will need to have it.

Arcam have a new range of 3 amplifiers which tick every known box, and the upgradeable platform means that unknown boxes can also be ticked in the future.

AVR750, AVR450, and AVR380 are the new models. All feature 7.1 DTSHD and DolbyHD processing, 7 HDMI inputs, 2 HDMI outputs, 6 analogue inputs, 4 digital inputs, 2 optical inputs, FM tuner, DAB on top 2 models, streaming music support, free Songbook App, and 4K HD ultra video scaling. That should be enough for anyone!

AVR 750 has arrived first and is currently playing as I type. It's £ 4000, top-of-the-range, and sounds superb. I have it driving a pair of Kef R700s and it really makes music. This is one of Arcam's strengths, that an av amp is also great on music. Some would also enquire if an amp isnt good on music how can it be any good on movies? And that is a good point! The best amps must be able to do both, and in my experience there are few that do both really well.

To follow in August is the AVR450. Lower power than the 750 but using the same switching platform the 450 will sell for £ 2200. Completing the line up at £ 1500 will be the AVR380 in September.

So how do we summarise this?

Put simply, Arcam's new range will be the market leader and the first choice for anyone looking at facilities, high performance, and future-proofing.

It puts Arcam back on top!

DAC INFO TO FOLLOW

Kef Blades at Lyric

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Have you heard of the Kef Blades?

They are the research project that became a prototype and then made it to production. The drive unit technology that they showcased is the reason the LS50 became speaker of the year worldwide and why the Kef R series are the hottest range in hifi just now.

Firstly these are stunningly beautiful. Standing at just over 5' tall(1.6m by 360mm) and 14" wide the shape is amazing. And just when you get over the proportions you hear them, and they are equally wonderful.

The front drive unit is classic Kef Uni-Q, but taken to the nth degree with improved mapping, edge diffraction, much larger capacity magnet and a highly developed crossover. This is Apparent Source technology at it's finest. The 4 9" bass units are force cancelling, and tied toget her for rigidity. Their all round dispersion is seamless.

Despite the size and number of drive units these are remarkably easy to drive as the impedance is stable at 4 Ohms and sensitivity is 90dB. All this counts for nothing without a sound to die for. Projected out to fill any room the narrow front gives a huge sound with incredible delicacy. These don't sound like any normal domestic speaker as they are pure design without constraints. At a recent Kef Conference they were used by day for hifi and by night as p.a for a keyboard player. The Blades are capable of those kinds of levels without distortion or muddle of any kind.

While the photographs and the background is all great, the proof of the pudding is coming really soon.

Blades will be on demonstration from Thursday 4th July, and to really show off we will be playing them loudish on Saturday mornings from 11-12 featuring classic albums of the best music. Starting on Saturday 6th with Pink Floyd, Dark side of the Moon and Wish you were Here. Others I fancy doing include the Beatles, Dire Straits, Van, and a great jazz selection of Miles Davis, Ben Webster, Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. 

With one of the world's finest speakers in town you really must make a point of getting to experience them.

Do you want to know the price as well?

Only 20,000 of your earth pounds for a sound that's out of this world!