The Bristol Sound & Vision Show may not be the place to find the new launches, but it’s one of the key places where the public get to see new products for the first time. Instead of the glitzy trade shows like CES, the Bristol Sound & Vision is the show where people can not only see what’s new, but buy it too. This is why it’s so successful and why it’s celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

A lot has changed since 1987, but the show remains similar at its core. Five floors of manufacturers demonstrating their wares in hotel rooms, bigger, packed timed seminars in the basement and a bar full of salespeople doing lots of business and lots of drinking.

Two of the traditional British hi-fi stalwarts both chose Bristol to show their latest. Linn Products were demonstrating the single largest change to its evergreen LP12 turntable since its inception more than 30 years ago. These include a new arm, subchassis and changes to almost every nut, bolt and spring in the deck, and comprise the change from LP12 to LP12 SE. Naturally, existing LP12 owners can upgrade… but it isn’t cheap!

Another evergreen product is the Naim Audio Nait integrated amplifier, which has gone through several changes in more than 20 years of production. But Naim never built a high-end integrated amplifier… until now. The new SUPERNAIT amplifier is priced to compete with the best stereo integrated and pre/power amplifiers at any price. It even comes with a digital to analogue converter for those wanting to get good performance out of PC music sources.

The PC and compressed music sources like iTunes have traditionally been anathema to hi-fi companies, but not all of them. Avi announced its AVM9 monitor loudspeaker, with built in amplification and digital conversion. It even comes with a USB port for computer connection. Playing with just an Apple Mac Mini as source, it was making sounds that challenge the traditional hi-fi enthusiast’s need for separate components and CD sources.

This was very much the hi-fi enthusiast’s show. Although there were many home cinema demonstrations and displays, new products and interest in multichannel sound was low compared to two channel. The exception was the seminar floor, where both Meridian and KEF managed to produce stunning multichannel demonstrations to impressed audiences. The most notable launch in home cinema was the first public viewing of the Arcam Solo Movie 5.1, the new Cyrus Discmaster 8.0 and AV Master 8.0, and two new Yamaha DVD players – the DVD-S1700 and the DVD-S2700, which were demonstrated alongside the new Soavo 1 loudspeakers. There were also plenty of forthcoming home cinema products on show by NAD. It looks like an exciting year of new products from that company.

Excellent demonstrations were put on by SIM2 and projectiondesign on the DLP projector side (ProjectionDesign’s excellent M20 showed what one chip DLP is capable of – impressive stuff), both concentrating on the middle range of the market. Meanwhile, there was some mild format-fighting between the screen makers. Fujitsu was highlighting the joys of SDTV and HDTV without needing to go as mad as 1080p, Pioneer was demonstrating just how good HDTV can be with its plasma screen showing 24fps replay system (using an American Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player and Sharp was showing off the superiority of LCD in its own demonstration.

But the focus of the show was distinctly stereo. Rega Research showed an advanced prototype of its striking new phono stage that allows infinite adjustment for different cartridge loadings. ProAc demonstrated a tall, slim new floorstander called the Hexa tower , designed to match existing Hexa home cinema system. And companies like PMC and Definitive Audio announced large scale speakers (at a large scale price) that deliver an even larger scale sound.

With all this two channel kit on show, it seems a shame to suggest the best room in the show was one of the home cinema ones. Regardless, Focal once again re-built a room to make it look less like a hotel room, more like a living room. The company did this last year, and KEF produced a very similar ‘skinned’ room. But, Focal pushed out all the stops this year, with its own slate floor and more. It felt like home… except for the big Focal banner. Still, you can’t have everything.