If you are into HiFi gear, and live anywhere near the friendly West Country city of Bristol, the Marriot City Centre Hotel was the place to be on the 22nd,23rd and 24th February 2008.  The HiFi Headphones team made there way to the show on the weekend to have a play with the latest offerings from the headphone manufacturers exhibiting at the What HiFi? Sound & Vision ‘Bristol Show’.  The show features a broad range of HiFi and home cinema equipement, but as you can imagine we were only really interested in the headphones and earphones.

Being located at a hotel means there are effectivley lots of individual demo suites for each manufacturer to showcase their products.  This creates a very relaxed atmosphere where you get chance to chat with the sales reps and see first hand what the products are capable of.  The experience is a stark contrast to the to a large shows located in a vast arena such as Earls Court in London or the NEC in Birmingham.

Let The Show Begin

Arriving on the Saturday morning we were confronted with a lengthy queue outside the Marriot hotel, but the show organisers had plenty of staff working the queue and visitors were soon through the doors checking out the goodies inside.

The headphone manufacturers represented at the show included Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, Grado, Goldring and Denon.  Sony and Pioneer both had a presence at the how, but were showing off their big screen TV’s and had no headphones on display.  Audio-Technica had a mobile crew walking around the show demonstrating the ATH-ANC7 Quietpoint noise cancelling headphones to anyone who fancies a listen.

Our Mission

The main objective for the HiFi Headphones team was to meet our suppliers and to hook up with some new partners.  Grado and Goldring were top of our list as we are looking to offer these high quality headphone brands on the HiFi Headphones website in the coming months.  We also wanted to meet Audio-Technica’s newly appointed UK distributor, as we have been purchasing direct from the manufacturer in the past (there was no UK distributor previously).  Of course we also took the opportunity to try out some headphone models that we do not currently stock from Sennheiser.

There are also some other very interesting products we had the opportunity to look at that we can’t talk about right now.  Keep your eyes on the HiFi Headphones blog and the HiFi Headphones online shop for news of these developments as they occur in the very near future.

Summary

While only a small scale show in comparison to the national HiFi shows held in London the Bristol Show is a great place to see the latest gear in a relaxed,  informal atmosphere and maybe even pick up a show bargain or two.

We had a great time at the show and really appreciated the friendly atmosphere created by the show visitors, organisers and the exhibitors.