Our shows this month started in Italy at the Milano Hi-Fidelity Show. Luca Parlato, our Italian distributor - far left above - has never been a man to do things by halves. This year he decided to demonstrate one of our larger loudspeakers, the PQS-402. Loudspeakers of this quality needs some appropriately high-end equipment to drive them, which Luca provided:

• Viola Audio Laboratories Sonata preamplifier

• Viola Audio Laboratories Cadence power amplifier

• TW-Acustic Raven AC turntable

• TW-Acustic Raven 10.5 tonearm

• MOON by Simaudio 780 streamer

• Shunyata Research cables

Each PQS-402 uses:

• 2 x carbon fibre DDD drivers

• 2 x 10-inch woofers

• 4 x 8-inch passive radiators

This allows them to produce sound levels up to 118dB and bass down to below 24Hz. The excellent system Luca provided, combined with a generously sized room allowed the PQS-402s to stretch their legs and produce some very good sounds.

A system of this size takes a lot of hard work to assemble, set-up and then break down after the show, so we offer our sincere thanks to Luca and his colleagues for their hard work. Going from left to right after Luca in the picture above these are: Giovanni from Extrasound in Cesena, Fabio from Dimensione in Bergamo and Walter from also LP Audio. Our special thanks to Fabio who loaned the PQS-402s from his showroom.

Visit the PQS-402 web page

Visit the LP Audio web site

Visit the Dimensione HiFi web site

We first met Tibor Szegedi of Ultimate AV KFT, our new distributor in Hungary, at the High End Show in Munich earlier this year. Shortly afterwards we shipped the first set of HRS-130 loudspeakers to him. It was quickly clear that he was someone who valued getting to grips with fine detail, as a slew of emails quickly followed requesting information about the loudspeakers and the DDD driver. The objective of this was to be prepared for their first major public demonstration at the Budapest HiFi Show, which finished on October 15th.

The system driving the HRS-130s was:

• Ultimate AV Computer with Audirvana and Qobuz

• Plixir DC power supplies + Netgear Router

• Ayon Audio S 10 II Transport

• Ayon Audio Kronos DAC

• Ascendo DNA 1600.2 HE power amplifier

• Esprit cables

Ultimate AV’s large room at the Budapest HiFi Show

Tibor booked one of the larger rooms at the show. This was 11m x 19m. At 250 sq m this is much larger than we would normally recommend for the HRS-130 and to be honest we were not sure how well they would work in such a large room. The maximum size room we normally recommend for this loudspeaker is 75 sq m.

Tibor’s preparation paid off. After the show he gleefully told us:

“Everybody told us , that we had the best sound of the show (no joke). There were speakers at ten times the price of the HRS-130, but this small loudspeaker in this large room… They gave us the best sound of the show!

In our big room, the HRS-130 produced a sound , that was unbelievably large and dynamic, even in the lowest octaves.”

This alone was more than enough to make us very happy, but he went on to say:

“Our setup was , by far the least expensive. The rooms beside us used systems that were five to seven time more expensive, but produced less sound quality.”

Apparently, since the show, he has been receiving calls every day from from people who heard the HRS-130 at the show, wanting more information. Bearing in mind that we had had no presence in Hungary for many years, this is a very impressive result, so our thanks to Tibor and his colleagues.

If this is what Tibor can achieve with the HRS-130s, we cannot wait to see his reaction when he gets the next model up, the Borderland Mk IV.

Visit the HRS-130 web page

Visit the Borderland Mk IV web page

Visit the Ultimate AV KFT web site

The last show this month was the Audio Video Show in Warsaw, Poland. The loudspeakers were again our HRS-130, but this time, Andrzej Mackiewicz and his team at Audio Anatomy, our Polish distributor, put them in a rather unusual system. The server and D/A converter were relatively new brands:

• Rockna Audio Wavelight server

• DAC CEN.Grand DSDAC 1.0 D/A converter

Whilst relative newcomers to the market, they sounded very good none-the-less. Most unusual was the choice of amplification: a KR Audio KV 950 tube amplifier. This uses two KT150 tubes per channel in push-pull configuration to produce 100W. This KR Audio amplifier worked exceptionally well with the HRS-130s and we are told that visitors were coming back for second and third listens. As an exhibitor this is always very pleasing to see.

Our thanks to Andrzej and his team at Audio Anatomy for their hard work.

Visit the HRS-130 web page

Visit the Audio Anatomy web site