Let's go to the HiFi show! The 8th São Paulo HiFi Show included an international seminar on audio & video technologies which took place at 9:00 AM, with official show hours from 2:00 - 10:00PM. After a 7:00AM Brazilian breakfast at the hostel, I rushed to the metrô for an hour's trip requiring two train changes to reach the show location.

Did I say there were lots of people in São Paulo? Welcome to the Meliá WTC where the show was carried out on floors 1 thru 3. Note the Pinheiros river in the background. During the seminar, several companies made presentations of their newest technological introductions. Here one learned about plasma screens, projectors, new connectivity, new lasers, trends in audio, development of wooden cones from JVC and other interesting themes.
Fernando Andrette, director of show organizer Audio & Video magazine, presented a moving vision of the Brazilian HighEnd audio market by placing emphasis on customer satisfaction and the differentiation of value-added services with regard to the big discount chains selling HighEnd audio products in their stores. His colleague Victor Mirol from the magazine explained how important electrical & acoustical considerations should be for the serious audiophile, presenting his ongoing project of building a dedicated listening studio and measurements laboratory, a project of Pharaonic ambition. It will be described in the next part. Oops! Where am I? The motor show! Well no. Look at the faceplate and recognize the Alpine brand. The importer ATW from São Paulo presented this Audi as well as a BMW equipped with Alpine audio/video mobile gear.
Audio & Video is the main audiophile publication in Brazil and the only one which covers the HighEnd market to have become the de facto reference for this topic. Director Fernando Andrette is a very nice guy who helped me a lot in my show-coverage efforts. His Argentinean side kick Victor Mirol is a doctor who took up residence in Brazil many years ago and provides the magazine with excellent technical articles. His essay on audition physiology is a classic must read. Organized on three floors, with the first one the VIP, its central hall housed the mammoth companies Sony, LG, Philco & JVC, all focused on the home theater market. Flat panel displays proves ubiquitous as these entertainment
elements together with the home theater stuff are moving fast in this country to create strong competition for the HighEnd audio industry. In the foyer next to the hall, Toshiba, Philips, Epson & Samsung completed the home entertainment panorama. Let's Samba - after the image tour, it's time now to hear some music. I started with the Krell, Wilson Audio & Transparent Audio room. Ferrari Consulting is the distributor for these
products in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay & Uruguay. One of the best-sounding rooms at the show, this exhibit featured the Krell SACD standard, Krell KCT preamp, Krell FPB600C amplifier, Wilson Audio Maxx Series II and Transparent cables. Every 15 minutes, they presented a compilation of short passages of very well-recorded music. The soundstage was wide, with well-placed and separated instruments. Human voices were sweet but located a bit too high in front of the listener. The bitter taste in the mouth? The music chosen for this occasion, while impactful, was not the music I would have liked to listen to. Since the exhibitors were on a tight schedule of 15 minutes per session, I could not enjoy my own favorite CD. Som Maior is a distributor and representative of a bunch of renowned brands like B&W, Rotel, Classé, Oracle, Avalon, Wadia and 20 others located some 70km south of São Paulo in Joinville. Unfortunately, this was a static display, with the new Classé gear looking outstanding with magnificent design and construction quality. I wish I had listened to them.
Another megabuck outfit was playing on the same floor. The CD Shop room was nicely filled with great sound coming from a complete Gamut installation: Gamut CD1 MKII, Gamut D-3 preamp, Gamut D-200 MKIII amp, Avance Super Magnum loudspeakers and Siltech cables. We again listened to selected CDs that made impressive presentations. Feminine voice from a Celine Dion record, although very clear and detailed, lacked emotion.
Orchestral recordings showed powerful bass and detailed highs but were a bit too forward, something a controlled environment would probably have much improved upon. I now began asking myself where the excellent Brazilian music was. Being a country of great artists like Tom Jobim, Dorival Caymmi, Milton Nascimento, Maria Creuza and hundreds more, with Gilberto Gil today's Minister of Culture, it was a shame that almost all the music heard during the show originated from foreign countries. Perhaps Brazilian music isn't HighEnd? I strongly disagree. In the next room, we found a fellow very well known to all 6mooners: Eduardo de Lima with his excellent Audiopax gear.
Eduardo was showing his standard Model 88 monoblocks and launched his finalized model 5 preamplifier at this show. The chain was completed with the big Ref100 loudspeakers. This room was the only one I returned to all three days of the show. There was something about the sound here that made me come back. Eduardo had a nice collection of CDs in different musical styles so one could choose the music more freely here than in other showrooms, a definite point in favor of Eduardo. We had a long conversation about his history, his development and how he was "no prophet in his own land". It was not until recently and after global recognition that the Brazilian consumers give credit to him and his Audiopax products. It was a pleasure to discuss these topics tête a tête with such a nice guy. I wish him all the success he deserves. We left an open appointment for the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver to continue our chat. The sound here was
rich, open and powerful, with the midrange perhaps a bit too intense, making voices appear in the frontal plane and instruments in the back. Talking to Eduardo about the sound, we both agreed that the room needed some acoustic treatment for a full expression of these jewels.


Valves? This was one out of only two rooms to use tubed equipment at the show. I was told that the local market is not fond of valves, with consumers preferring instead solid-state as a matter of reliability and convenience. Is that the truth? Or do the dealers simply prefer to sell solid-state because they don't know how to sell valves? If I add this thought to some of the concepts covered by Fernando Andrette's seminar, I think we can come to a clear conclusion.
Gramophone eletrônica is another player in the Brazilian big leagues. Lucinei de Lima Luizwas presented the brand-new SACD player from Van der Hul. He matched it with a Bryston amp and preamp, Dynaudio loudspeakers and Van der Hul cables in a very small room - what a pity. The listening sessions were focused on comparing traditional two-channel stereo with the new 5.1-surround SACD capabilities. With the recordings reviewed, we could hear a very well-defined soundstage, with instruments filling all the space in front of you without the hole between the loudspeakers that is commonly found in bad stereo setups. I enjoyed the session very much and left with a few questions: How would this 5.1 system perform in long listening sessions? Would it maintain its glow or would it fatigue the listener? Fireworks are very nice but only in small portions. Will SACD survive? This depends on the recording companies. With DVD-A entering he race, it is not feasible that all formats will

remain in the market 5 years hence. Too many mice for one cheese. Remember the Phillips digital cassette and Sony's MiniDisc? They died in and of ignorance. 5.1 channels are a lot of channels to play with.


However, recording engineers can produce very good recordings like the ones I heard here. They can make terrible things too, like a BB. King concert I saw on DVD in another room. I had to ask the presentor to switch the concert video to 2 channel stereo because I felt like being drowned in the middle of a storm, with BB's guitar 30cm in front of me and the other instruments all around me! What a terrifying experience. It seems that some sound engineers are like children in a toy store. There's too many things to play with and they want all of them at once.
Paulo and Sandro were from Audio Uno, a store located in Curitiba that presented a whole lineup from the Hungarian Etalo company. The Musicante Medio monitors had very nice design and craftsmanship and were driven by the Kreadisk CD player, the Exemplissimo integrated amplifier and Ecosse cables. These little monitors delivered a powerful, well-detailed and enjoyable sound which suffered nonetheless from bad room acoustics and a bass resonance at about 100Hz. What a shame, I wish I could have listened a lot longer here. I think this brand has a nice future in the audio world and it deserves a serious audition. On my next trip to Curitiba, I will be sure to visit Audio Uno for more.
Moyses Tenenblat runs Soundstage, a store in the capital of Brazil, Brasilia. He was in a small room too but equipped it with little monitors. And Moyses had something here, with an EL34 PP valve amp with 12AX7s from Prima Luna, a Chinese manufacturer with top craftsmanship and the only tube component apart from Audiopax at the show. All the electronics here were in the affordable sector yet with first-class sound quality. Moyses carries a lot of
brands including Creek/Epos, Exposure, Odyssey, ProAc, Ah!Njoeb and others. Hello, what's this? B&O? Yes, Bang & Olufsen is at a HiFi Show. This is a first in Brazil. They brought the Beolab5 loudspeakers and their Beovision plasma television, a very beautiful design for the home theater lover of the fat wallet. There were also several Brazilian designers/ manufacturers presenting products which deserves its own upcoming chapter. In the meantime, back to the hostel for a nice cool beer.