Story courtesy of Jez Ford editor of Sound+Image magazine.

We blasted some vintage and late Bowie through this system and thoroughly enjoyed the way it brought 'Hunky Dory' into a new level of clarity, while managing to deliver both the immersive swirl of Blackstar and its slightly bonkers drum'n'bass beatiness simultaneously.

The speakers are the latest 'Evo' iteration of Focal's Utopia III Maestro, while the teaming with Naim electronics is, of course, de rigeur given the co-ownership of the two companies. Their design teams are in regular contact, we gather, so complementarities should continue to blossom.

Story courtesy of Jez Ford editor Sound+Image magazine.

We have a review ready to publish in Sound+Image on 1MORE's over-ear triple driver headphones, and here's a quick spoiler -- we really like them. They are at the Show available to audition, alongside a brand-new launch for the 1MORE dual-driver LTNG in-ears with active noise-cancellation (pictured above), priced at $189. The LTNG name indicates that they have a Lightning cable rather than minijack, so they take the signal digitally from iPhone or iPad, applying their own DAC and audio stage for the dual in-ear drivers.

Story courtesy of Jez Ford.

While there are systems at the Show that push over half a million dollars, and esoteric brands a-plenty, QualiFi's room, with its stunning views to Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, delivered sweet sound from a relatively simple combination of Marantz electronics and Jamo loudspeakers.

With the SA14S1SE CD player at $4990, and the PM14S1SE amplifier at $5490 as electronics, and the Jamo Concert C109 (below) on loudspeaker duties, listeners were proclaiming the well-matched combination as delightful a listen as many of the higher-priced systems at the show.

Story courtesy of Jez Ford.

Synergy Audio's room at the Australian Hi-FI & AV Show glows in the reflected light from the superb finish on Sonus faber's latest Serafino loudspeakers from the Homage Tradition series, the main speakers in the image above, flanked by the smaller colour-coordinatable Chameleons.

Electronics include Audio Research LS28 preamplifier and VT80 valve power amplifiers from the Foundation series, plus the Rega Saturn R CD player and multi-award-winning Rega Elex-R 72W per channel stereo amplifier, but for analogue playback in addition to a Rega turntable we were interested to find one of the American MoFi turntables on show (below).

Story courtesy of Jez Ford

The bright light from the 21st floor Harbour views made photography a little tricky in Convoy International's room at the Show, but distracted us only briefly from the rack of NAD Masters equipment centred between chunky but gorgeous JBL 4367 Studio Monitor speakers, and PSB's Imagine T3 speakers.

The PSB Imagine T3s are slim towers with their three 7-inch woofers arranged in PSB's three-woofer transitional array, with a specially developed 5¼" midrange driver tuned and isolated in its own sealed chamber. and a hand-selected version of PSB's famous titanium dome tweeter. .

Story courtesy of Jez Ford.

A feast of Australian sound emerged from the system in Room 2122, with Redgum Audio pairing with Legend Acoustics - and with the designers of both brands on hand to answer questions and ensure the system was singing at its best.

The amplifier on dem is one of the big prizes available to visitors at the Show, the $4000 Redgum RGi120ENR in its Black Signature edition (pictured below) -- 175W per channel into 8 ohms, 265W into 4 ohms, 500W into 2 ohms... indeed it's purpose-designed to power ultra-low speaker impedances. Visitors to the Show receive a competition card... get it stamped in the Redgum/Legend room for your chance to win this powerful proud Aussie.

Story courtesy of Jez Ford.

Not only are the Kii THREE speakers lookers with a beautiful sound, they allow the simplest of system set-ups while delivering true hi-fi performance. In Boardroom 1 at the Australian Hi-Fi & AV show, Warwick Freemantle from Pure Music Group has added only the Antipodean DX Server full of music files, plus the neat Kii Control (see below) and the active Kii THREEs do the rest.

Each speaker has four (yes, four, side-mounted as well as front) 165mm diameter bass drivers, a 127mm midrange driver and a 25mm tweeter with waveguide, each one of which is driven by its own 250W Hypex Ncore Class-D amplifier. The speakers have both analogue and digital inputs, with both D/A and A/D converters on-board; all the digital inputs are up-sampled and re-clocked using Kii Audio’s own jitter rejection algorithm.

Story courtesy of Jez Ford.

Talking during a hi-fi listening session is very much verboten - except in room 2121 at the Show, where happy visitors are listening to the selection of quality headwear being demonstrated by Addicted to Audio and BusiSoft AV.

Among the treasures on dem are the new Grado Labs flagship, the PS2000e - "simply the best headphone we have ever produced and, perhaps, the best in the world" as Grado so modestly puts it, with redesigned diaphragm geometry and a hand-carved maple inner chamber clad with a new Smoked Chrome finish. Frequency response is quoted up to 50kHz. "We used all our best stuff", says the Brooklyn-based company, with three generations of Grado expertise encapsulated within the design.