After having reviewed the international actors present at the 8th HiFi Show in São Paulo, I've reserved this final page for the Brazilian designers/manufacturers that were showing their products. The intention is to show a panoramic view of the Brazilian market not only in the High End sector.


Home Theater
In the home theater sector, there were the guys from GAIA and Kreische both based out of Porto Alegre, an industrial city in the south of Brazil. Both firms offer a complete line of home cinema flat-panels and accessories like projectors lifts, supports, acoustic treatments etc. They sport very high quality of features and construction to compete with brands anywhere. This particular market niche in Brazil is growing very rapidly.
Loudspeakers
In loudspeakers, there were three designers with their products. The old Lando brand was started by Hubert Milbers, owner of the German Canton marquee who founded this company 27 years ago. Seven years ago, his sons bought it and are now giving it a new look.


The line of Lando products had been focused on the Mid-Fi, Lo-Fi and outright cheap segments of the market. This show launched a new line of loudspeakers intended for the High-End user on a tight budget. The 703 is a 2-way bass reflex speaker with first-rate lacquer or laminated wood finishes plus custom finish options, a feature important to custom installers and interior decorators. This model sells for US $700/pr but eluded listening due to heavy crowds when I walked in.


Next, I found the people of Sunrise Laboratories, Ulisses Faggi and Ricardo de Marino. Ulisses has ten years experience of offering
modifications, upgrades, tuning and electronic equipment design. Ricardo does contract work with room tuning and has designed and built silver cables for High End companies. In São Paulo, these two were presenting their new loudspeaker, the OWL Model 1. This box combines two 7" ScanSpeak woofers with a Morel tweeter. Finished in automotive lacquer, the design is very attractive and presented a fairly clear and powerful sound with a detailed midrange during a brief audition and was one of only a few loudspeakers that truly disappeared during the demonstration. The electronic used included Sphinx amplifiers modified by Ulisses to obtain a valve sound. Keep a watch out for these guys if they ever leave Brazil. They are on to something.
Plinio Tissi is another designer who has a very interesting product on his hands. We had a long and nice conversation about it. He is a 73-year old engineer who works in the Instituto de investigaçoes e pesquisas
espaciales or Space Research Institute. He has pursued parallel audio research as a part-time hobby for many years and invented a new crossover algorithm that he is confident will enjoy acceptance in the market place. This invention is the result of several years' worth of prototypes and endless modifications and trials. Some 18 months ago, he finalized the design and deemed it ready to go public. He submitted his loudspeakers to the magazine Audio e Video and received excellent expert feedback. He's now looking for investment capital for his company Autis. The prototype loudspeakers shown used drivers from Vifa, Audax, Seas and Morel and incorporated his novel crossover [below].

Electronics
On the electronics side, Eduardo de Lima of Audiopax occupies the top tier of the market in terms of success and unique inventions. Eduardo has a very clear view and perspective of the market and rolled out an international distribution scheme that is paying dividends with sales in Europe, Singapore and North America. Another manufacturer who is playing in the High-End game is Sankya. Ivo Hans Rieder (the one with the long hair below) is the designer of these stoutly constructed amplifiers which were on passive display only.

As is the case elsewhere, this company is focused on the professional consumer market as well as sound distribution for commercial installations. The High End products aren't paying for themselves but are just a distraction - a divertimento. The same room housed the only SET amp of the entire show. The Exaudi is a monoblock with the Svetlana 572 output valve and a toroidal output transformer that deserves a careful audition, with an excellent review already in Audio e Video. These amps sell for U$S4900/pr and are designed by Luiz Salvatore, a well-known Brazilian engineer who runs a company called LAS & Associados. Unfortunately, his Exaudi monoblocks weren't part of an active display either and I was unable to form my own brief impressions.
Cables
The show had brought together a few Brazilian manufacturers of cables dedicated to audio and video use. Logical Cables has a complete line for audio and home theater while Absolute Acoustics is a relatively new brand in the field that produces cables for general entertainment use and launched a new High-End line at the show. They also produce in-wall & in-ceiling motorized loudspeakers for ambient soundfields as you'd find them in corporate installations [left]. Roberto Molnar with his brand Projekt plays in a similar field with motorized loudspeakers and all-weather products for marine application.


Power Delivery
Several Brazilian makers attend to power conditioning since the domestic power utility companies make it necessary not just for sonic but also safety reasons. Without exception, every room at the show used power conditioning by various makes. I would like to mention AC Organizer [below] who were demonstrating a very simple setup of Rega Planet CDP, Audio Analogue Puccini integrated amp and Acoustic Energy loudspeakers. Their demonstration was not focused on the components themselves but on showing how the power conditioner affected the music in an A/B test. The difference was drastic. The AC conditioner removed the mud around the instruments mainly in the treble and deep bass. It is surprising how much garbage can ride on the AC lines.
Music
Brazil is a very big market for its own musicians. For a long time, quality recordings however were not a strength of this industry, with no "audiophile" studios or records. I discovered the new label Delira Musica of
Luciana & Marcelo who started this business less than a year ago and concentrate on classic and instrumental Brazilian music. It was interesting to learn that the main foreign market for their records is Japan.

Another label with audiophile recordings is owned by the magazine Audio e Video, the show organizer. They have already released four album which Fernando Andrette was kind enough to gift me with. I am listening to them right now and my favorite is Genuinamente Brasileiro Vol.2. with the music of Tom Jobim.

Afterthoughts.
Placing the show into perspective, I have certain pros and cons to share.
Pros: The organization was very professional, with all the services working, all exhibitors on time and ready from the first day. The folks from Audio e Video did a bang-up job! Everyone I interviewed was very kind and generous with their information which really made my work very easy. There was a large quantity of entertainment electronics, perhaps more so in the home theater than 2-channel sectors but that is the reality of the market. While I was able to listen to bona fide High End products like Audiopax, Gamut and Krell among others, I left wanting for more. For the consumer, this is the sole Brazilian expo that combines this many products under one roof. After 8 years of successful installations, the São Paulo HiFi Show has truly become a de-rigeur attendance for the Brazilian audiophile. The morning seminar was simply an added value that provided informative and professional presentations.


Cons: The 2nd/3rd-floor rooms were too small. Add the crowds and actual listening was often impossible. I believe many dealers simply use the show to capture attention and then send interested parties directly to their show rooms for superior installations, a full line of products and proper demonstrations.
Market and globalization
I would like to now express my opinions with regard to this Brazilian market and its home-grown products. Everybody I talked to called this High-End audio market rather small. Ditto for the domestic designers and manufacturers. My next question thus was: "Do you intend to export your products?" I found it very strange that all but two designers (Plinio Tissi and Eduardo de Lima) regard the world market as "impossible", "very distant", "not achievable", "too expensive to go to". And somebody even told me that he never thought that exporting was even a within the realm of the possible.
I think that Brazilian designers and manufacturers should compete in the major leagues. They have the technical knowledge to do so. Once again I have to cite the example of Eduardo de Lima who had the vision of going for an international audience and is well on his way. It seems that Brazilian audio companies in general suffer gigantism syndrome. Brazil as a country is so big to embrace that they lack any strength to go abroad. But they must look outside or lose both their technological and commercial reference. The global market is
quickly becoming one big entity. If you're absent, you will be nowhere fast in the near future. Somebody argued that this mentality is simply a consequence of decades' worth of protectionism and frontiers that were closed to foreign import products. The country grew up looking at its own navel and this is the mentality that persists today. Another problem is that Brazilians discredit Brazilian products. The same thing happened to Audiopax in its first years. Audiopax is only now gaining domestic acceptance and acclaim once global responses indicated beyond a doubt that it was okay to do so.

Final walk through the streets of São Paulo
During my last walk through this giant city's streets, I went to Praça de Sé close to the financial heart of São Paulo. What was that - some form of strike or protest? Not at all. These guys are selling cellular phones and buying gold and jewelry at the mêtro exit.


In Praça de Sé, you can take a nap, read the news or have your shoes shined.

A funny guy here talked and talked all the time and I did not understand a word. But he was so funny that I kept watching him for a while. Who needs the classifieds in the Sunday newspaper? Here you can search for a job, rent an apartment, find a tarot pitonisa and more among these live announcers. In such a big city, green spots are a necessity for the living. Praça da República seems to be a little piece of the Amazon rain forest in the middle of the city. Parque Ibirapuera is a rather big park with all kind of vegetation, ponds, fish and another funny guy who calls himself Picasso II. For a couple of reais, he'll draw your portrait in a minute.


And that's all I got for now. Thanks to Srajan for letting me write this report for 6moons. I enjoyed it all lot - the show, travelling through Brazil and meeting so many nice people...