The Milano Hi End 2003 has gone; the impressions of your two reporters about the number of showgoers are, as a matter of fact, different.Igor was there on Saturday, and particularly in the morning, the show seemed to be an outstanding success, almost like the main Italian Top Audio and Video 2002 show, the absence of video exhibits and of the international big names notwithstanding: crowded rooms, lots of people at the stands, people queuing at the bar even at two P.M.Giuliano was there on Sunday, and there seemed to be far less people around, mainly because of a railroad workers strike and of the closure of Milan

It's probable that many audiophiles planned their visit on Saturday because, on Sunday, it would have been difficult to reach the show's venue. The overall sensation was that of a good success, imponderable difficulties notwithstanding.As for the venue, rooms were scattered around a kind of labyrinth on three floors of the Jolly Hotel Congress Center. To get to the fourth floor rooms it was necessary to walk across the whole third floor and to get on the lifts of just one side of the building; if you got all the way down to the first floor on those same lifts, you would just find yourself amidst the convention of a famous diet products company,,,

The third and fourth-floor rooms, even if larger than those of the Quark hotel where the Top Audio and Video takes place, thus more suited as listening rooms, were plagued by acoustical problems and by the fact that they annoyed one another with sound.As for the exhibits, there were two or three contrasting ideas of an audio fair clashing: some had brought accomplished, refined systems, some others brought one or two statement products which stole their show, some others were just testing the reactions of the public to their prototypes. It's thus difficult to express a fair judgement on the sound of the rooms, or to make a ranking, best to worst, we think that shows are more a way to meet industry professionals and to see what's moving in our field than real ways to judge the potential of a system or of a product. We will, all the same, give some impressions during our following virtual visit.

First Floor

Ianda A Room: The Sound of the Valve

Our host and show’s landlord, Sergio Zaini, was showing a dipolar system made of an array of six full range drivers, the central pair making use of a phase plug, plus two side drivers, driven by a system composed by a Forsell turntable, equipped with a Clearaudio cartridge and his own amplification products, the main star being the “Incantation of the PX25” amp. This latter uses a KR PX25 valve and outputs 10W/ch. The outcome was interesting. Some colorations were probably due to the room, which didn’t seem to be particularly suited to dipole speakers.

As a reminder of the company's other specialty, Lowther equipped loudspeaker systems, there was this section of a back-horn speaker. Our host is an authorized Lowther OEM.

Ianda B room: Hohner/Relco Audio

Relco was showing their well known, at least here in Italy, hybrid ribbon speakers, driven by the Chinese-German Vincent/TAC products. Three loudspeaker systems were used (obviously, one pair at a time…), different in price and size, all of them sharing the hybrid technology. Vincent products seemed to be really interesting, with a great price/perceived quality ratio. It was also possible to listen to a pair of small Usher speakers, which are manufactured in the Far East and designed by Joe D’Appolito or with his input, but we didn’t have a chance to listen to them. Of what we heard, only the biggest Relcos were able to drive the (big) room. We didn’t care for the choice of musical fare.

Ianda C room: CorFac2/Quad GmbH

In this room it was possible to listen to, alternatively, Amphion speakers (interesting Finnish speakers which are gaining an international following an which we are happy to see distributed down here) and the newly built Braun LEI/Quad ESL 57 electrostatics, manufactured in Germany using Quad UK's original tools. They were driven by a recent Quad (UK) CD player and by Brinkmann electronic products, real beauties , even their innards are wonderful, and the manufacturer seems to know that, as their top panels are transparent to let the voyeurish audiophiles enjoy the build quality and the boutique components used. The newly built grandmas of all commercial electrostatic speakers were sounding in a really interesting way.

Third floor

Room 1: Kiom

Luca Chiomenti’s Kiom is a one man operation, Luca being one of the most respected names in the Italian underground scene. His production numbers are small, and his products are labours of love. He was showing his new 300B-based amp, driven by a special version of his already known (to some fortunate few) C2 preamp. The speakers were an evolution of his SII system, the source was a German Symphonic Line CD Player, cables were Fadel Art, racks were Luca’s, helped by Japanese TAOC devices under the CD player. Luca used a magic tissue of Japanese origin on CDs. The result was extremely correct, well balanced and enjoyable, even if often disturbed by the neighbouring room subwoofer, also because of the low volume levels preferred by Luca.

On one of the tables there was this Sovtek 6A3 based integrated amplifier.

Room 2 : Telcar/Audiovision

A real parade of speakers and a showcase for the excellent Eton drivers, were filling all of the front wall in this room. Notice how the tweeter is mounted in this photograph.

Room 3: Crea Audio Elite

Here were his new statement products, in what might be a temporary chassis. Bad news for DIYers: Bartolomeo has given up kits production for good, it seems. His products will be, from now on, available only in ready built form. They will be manufactured under the supervision of Crea Audio Elite, the current line-up composed of the VTPA The Last preamp, the evolution of a project which was conceived as a DIY kit, a two (huge) chassis product, one of which for the PSU the size of a 3 KVA UPS, and the mono, hybrid ST2001 Renaissance power amps, 70 cm high, 45 Kg each, 9 magnetic components per side; their input/driver stage strongly resembling the preamp's circuit. Their 100W per channel (in the worst condition) were driving Klimo Glomen speakers. Sources were a Rega P9 and a Philips 963 SA as.

…Fone’s Giulio Cesare Ricci took advantage of this room to demonstrate his SACDs. The main ingredient was the Audiophile Trip sampler (with Giulo Cesare’s big, jovial face on the cover) and his latest record, Oblivion, the first one in a three records series of Piazzolla’s music performed by Salvatore Accardo and the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana. Fone’ was also introducing the first three SACD operas, Sapho by Massenet, Alessandro Stradella by Flotow and Jakobin by Dvorak, recorded at the Wexford Opera Festival with the help of PolyHymnia’s engineers in multichannel DSD. Igor can proudly show a signed certificate as the first buyer of the first three operas in SACD. An interesting news was that Fone’ will be issuing vinyl LPs again, with 33 and 45 RPM, 200g and more pressings, as Ricci has finally found a factory which assures a quality standard good enough to him. As for the sound of the room, someone was criticizing it as too solid state sounding; our opinion is that, at their high prices (8800 Euro for the preamp, 12400 Euro for the pair of power amps) Bartolomeo's products are going to confirm his fame (notice that theres no relationship with the products sold under the Aloia name today, which were designed by Bartolomeo and will continue to be built and sold; it might well be possible that the ones portrayed here will change their name due to commercial reasons). Their shape seems to limit the ability to place them in a civilian's room, but these are probably not their final aesthetics.