Hifi Expo 9.-13.9.2015

Keijo Tanskanen

Summary In Finnish (not yet available)


Foreword

Hifimaailma magazine arranged this year’s Hifi Expo event at 9.-13.9.2015. The roots of the event become from the old Finnish Hifi events held in the last decades. Today, the world and time are different, so are the goals and the concept of the event.

This event was arranged in a corner of a typical mass event hall, where all the stands and listening containers were located (Yes, containers, not rooms!?). This kind of solution was predicated by synergy of other events, like Habitare Interior Design. On the one hand this sounds reasonable, especially when the aims are targeted in new contacts. On the other hand, the solution has several risks, not least in the case where demonstrators like to show the excellence of equipment.

I visited the event on Saturday and went through it quite quickly, just because there were quite a few exhibitors and even less containers for listening. So, this report will be short.


Conclusion

The event was definitely not a success in the manner of sonic performances. If the goals were really in having new contacts, the results might be different, even good for some exhibitors. However, delivering proper listening experiences became impossible. In my opinion, there should have been much better rooms for the demoes. I suppose that many of the visitors are thinking now that investing to audio equipment a lot is really wasting money. Well, isn’t this is a problem!

Despite huge acoustical and setting up challenges, there were a couple of containers having quite good sonic results. These were achieved by professionalism, a lot of work and electrical signal processing. Subjectively, the best demoes were done by Highendstudio and Mareksound. On their “rooms”, one could hear at least small parts of the potential of the setups. Also Genelec’s “room” delivered quite good sound to the sweet spot.

What kind of event we’ll have next year is a quite crucial question. Besides the hall exhibition, there should be carefully chosen and more or less acoustically threaded listening rooms somewhere in the fair area, just for the demoes. By help of this, visitors could get more truthful listening experiences. I think this could be a good concept! Now, the fact is that there was plenty of space for improvements! Personally, the most rewarding offerings of the event were the nice talks with a couple of presentators.


Photos

Markus Tomson is explaining features and technology of the equipment. Actually, he is one of the finest men I know on the field of Finnish High-End.


Kef Blade Two speakers was driven by excellent Audionet electronics. The listening results were surprisingly smooth when taking account the circumstances.



Mareksound demoed authoritative JBL Everest DD67000 speakers driven by Mark Levinson amplification. Mareksound told me that a much better demo of JBL Everest DD67000 speakers will be done in their specific listening room in the near future. That’s a right way to go!


Also B&W 802D3 speakers were demoed in Mareksound room. Unfortunately, the speakers were not at all at their best in these circumstances.


Genelec 8351A worked quite well to the sweet spot, but there were plenty of finesses which clearly could have been bettered. This was certainly not the best Genelec demo I have heard, but not the worst either.




Summary In Finnish