October is the month of audio exhibitions in Hungary
Koscso Media Engineering Kft and its My Reel Club® were exhibitors at this year’s Audio Expo for the first time, and thanks to ADM Audio, they will be part of the XXIII HIFI Show this weekend.
At the Audio Expo, we presented innovative local prototypes that are not yet products but have every chance of becoming successful products. KME Kft paid the cost of the room to help the innovators show their products in the right environment. Most designers have decades of international experience in pro audio and in hifi.
My Reel Club® recordings were also presented, as visitors could listen to a few unreleased recordings from tape.
The following equipment was available to listen to in Room 602 of the Audio Expo:
- ADM Audio: new generation R2R DAC
- Attila Bese (Alisca Orange): RIAA Corrector with Tetrode tube phono amplifier
- Canever Audio (Italy): ZeroUno PLUS ULTRA Triode/JFET hybrid tube DAC and preamplifier
- Hi-Mod Audio: 3-way active speaker with unique, fully balanced internal architecture, using multiple bridged Class D amplifiers and multiple AKM DAC chips (ADC is AKM too), with and without their own DSP
- KME: Roon Core, Audirvana to serve Advanced Audio platforms using a customized Linux operating system
- Ultrafide U4Pre: a problem solver, all-in-one “Swiss army knife” preamp
- Malfox Analogue: Silver 2B pickup prototype, Mini turntable, and MC transformer
- Máthé Kálmán of Natural Distortion: Silver USB cable
- Pillartech: isolation feet
- Sabo Audio: custom-made silver USB and XLR cables from the Galactic and Solar cable series
- Djabe, the Hungarian progressive rock band, introduced their not-yet-released tapes and the DSD256 version of their live tape recording from 2003.
The numbers show strong exhibitor interest, and a kind of logic could be realized regarding exhibitors:
- Budapest Audio Expo attracted the most interest from Hungarian manufacturers,
- while this weekend’s Hifi Show is more for the importers.
There were 49 exhibitors at the Budapest Audio Expo, a quarter of which were importers. The rest were local manufacturers or direct manufacturer’s representatives.
If we discount the overlaps (a few companies exhibited at both places), we realize that about 60 exhibitors took the trouble to show themselves at the two shows of about 100 local companies involved in this field. This is a great thing to be happy about. This is the first time we have had something like this in the past 15 years. The two exhibitions are expected to attract about 4–5000 people from a potential domestic customer base of one to two tens of thousands (there will be overlaps, of course). This is when local sales of new hi-fi equipment may be at their lowest point in the country in a decade. This could be important in boosting potential end-of-year buyer interest.
My company and My Reel Club® will be present at this weekend’s show, courtesy of ADM Audio, whose rooms will feature some of the local prototypes we had at the previous show, only this time in a much larger space. We also plan to showcase 4-channel (quadraphonic ) recordings presented by István Kishonti. We plan to show the new generation single-way speaker, the “Blue”, in an active version with a sub.
It is a distinct honour to be part of their demos using the excellent ADM R2R DAC as one of the sources. On both days, we will have a chance to express our thoughts with István Kishonti; István will discuss his book “The Art Of Sound In Space,” and I will give a short lecture on “Paradoxes in Audiophilia.”
These are exciting times for audiophiles in Hungary.
