HFN 2006

On display in the ballroom at the Hi-Fi News Show: an original early-'50s Corner Ribbon speaker from the Acoustical Company, later to change its name to Quad.

Exceptionally tall speaker engineer Karl-Heinz Fink, and his more diminutive partner Lampos Ferekedis, stand each side of their remarkable prototype BMR technology demonstrator (balanced-mode radiator; see the December 2005 Stereophile). These two, forming a "gang of four" with original inventor Dr Graham Bank and marketing man John Vizor, have licensed the BMR technology from NXT, and the prototype, using a 3.4" BMR unit upwards from 400Hz, via an active crossover, clearly showed the considerable potential of this radical driver, which in effect automatically reduces the radiating diameter as frequency rises.

Finn Anssi Hyronen (left) and Swede Leif Mårten Olofsson (right), stand with their respective new babies at the Roy Bird Show. The tiny Amphion Ion (left) not only sounded remarkable for its size, but has also won a valuable design award back in Finland. At ten times the price of the Ion, Mårten's elegant new Miles III floorstander has tapered cabinetwork and costly Accuton ceramic-diaphragm drivers.

Steve Elford's background in aerospace ultrasonic testing has helped him develop the various Vertex AQ devices. Special support platforms help remove vibrations from components, while the various cables incorporate damping blocks to prevent vibration being passed around the system, as do mains blocks which incorporate parallel RF noise filtering. Vertex were demonstrating their products at the Roy Bird Show.

Peeking out from the edge of this gigantic 14ft² panel at the Roy Bird Show, veteran retailer and audio writer Howard Popeck has taken on this distribution of the Podium 1, and told me that its inventors and makers wished to remain anonymous. Further investigation unearthed the information that Paul Burton (responsible for the early-‘90s Sumo speaker and in part the Cyrus NXT-hybrid design) is involved, and close inspection suggests that a very large NXT panel lies at the core. The good news is that it's only around ½" deep around the edge (with a bulging rib, presumably covering the actuators, down the spine); it will cost a relatively modest £3000–4000/pair with a money-back-if-not-satisfied guarantee; and it delivers a sound with a very generous and convincing sense of scale. Bass might have been tauter (but the room was really much too small for such large panels), and imaging seemed a bit vague (as one might expect), but its ability to generate impressive dynamics was both intriguing and very persuasive indeed.

Vivid Audio's stylish speaker range, made in South Africa and engineered by ex-B&W designer Laurence Dickie, is expanding. A compact stand-mount (right), available in two sizes with bass alignment for either boundary or free space siting, has now joined the original B1 (left) and larger K1 models. Vivid speakers were demmed at the Roy Bird Show and are distributed in the US by Musical Surroundings.