KLIAV 2009 Highlights, Day 1.

It's late and I am very tired! I've just spent more than eight and a half hours at the KLIAV 2009. With this post, I hope to bring some of the events and demo highlights, which I felt were worth some of your time, if you've not gone to see the show yet, and planing to do so within the next 2 days.

1) The Franck Tchang presentation hosted by CMY on the 4th floor was an entertaining 90 minutes well spent. Franck's presentation is at once humorous, spontaneous and informative about the topic of room treatment and his Acoustic Systems tuning cups!(what else do you think it would be?) It's very informal, workshop like and certainly fun presentation. Well worth you time to check it out, even if you're not convinced or never have an interest in Franck's designs. Whilst you're there, check out the latest Dynaudio and Jeff Rowland gears all strung up with Siltech Emperor cables!

2) The Swedish Statement room sounds awesome! With some very fancy and effective room tune devices supplied by our dear friend, Joamonte! The horrible hotel room acoustics at JW Marriot KL, yes even the larger rooms at the 4th floor all have what my show buddy aptly described, "a certain mid range honk!" Joamonte's effort pays off big time, as there's the least of the said residue "honk" in the overall sound. Kodus to Jomoante, and Swedish Statement.

3) The Ayre, TAD room in the 4th Floor. The sound is at once dynamic, highly transparent and easy on the ear. If you were there this late afternoon, when the hotel's power supply was spiking all the 4th Floor displays, it would've sounded horrible. I heard the system in the morning just before lunch time, it sounded very good indeed.

4) The Bryston & PMC room of AV Designs. Most of the time, the place was dark to accommodate the AV demo, but when the chance crept up, I heard the full Bryston system, consisting of the BCD-1, the BP-26 pre amp and the 7BSST mono blocks, powering the new PMC PB1i speaker, and it sounded very nicely pleasant indeed. The sound had a warmly balanced tonality, was reasonably dynamic sounding and had big sound stage and life sized imaging!

5) The Creek Evolution line electronics powering Epos speakers, all connected by Straightwire cables, demo room by Acoustic Arts on the 8th Floor. For what is a sub budget RM$10k system, it had a certain rightness to it's rich, warm sound. The PRAT factor was very good too. It did not have the dynamic range and sonic transparency of the bigger, more costly systems, but still it's pretty decent sound for a budget system.

I'll have to put in a disclaimer on the above statements, that are purely my preferences, and perhaps due to the erratic and spiking power supply in the hotel, plus poor room acoustics will play a role to determine what you'll hear there and then. Finally, your preferences need not necessarily be the same as mine!

And lastly, there will be no pictures just yet, which will be posted later with our full "KLIAV 2009 Show Reports" later.

I hope you'll enjoy the show as much as I did!