Sunday morning began with a bit of a surprise. After I boarded the lift to head down for breakfast, it stopped on the next floor so a group of six beautiful young women could enter. Audio shows attract a certain demographic, and let’s just say this posse broke the mold. So I felt compelled to ask them, “Are you here for the hi-fi show?” This resulted in much laughter. Apparently, these young ladies had gone away to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday and had booked into a hotel that was packed to the rafters with balding, middle-aged men. They probably wondered if they had blundered into a sales convention for incontinence products or stairlifts.
Morning had broken, and so had my head! After a truly sublime dinner with a couple of Naim friends at the end of the first day of the Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2025, we had unwisely decided to return to the hotel bar for a nightcap, only to find that the party was still in full swing. This industry might give the impression of being full of boffins debating the merits of different power-supply architectures, but we can party as well as any touring rock band! Catching up with industry friends over some single malts, it struck me how much I adore the British hi-fi industry and the people in it.
I have attended the Bristol Hi-Fi Show for more than 30 years, and it remains one of my favorite weekends of the audio calendar. Other shows have their merits, but there’s a real energy to the Bristol Hi-Fi Show, with its crowded rooms and corridors and the expansive bar where the public rub shoulders with manufacturers over a steady stream of ale. At the close of play on the Friday night, it seems that every single exhibitor, customer rep, journalist, and PR person who’s ever worked in hi-fi descends on the bar, creating a glorious cacophony of conversation that rises like the instrumental crescendo in “A Day in the Life.”
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