By Bjorn Bengtsson
As far as Scandinavian hifi dealers go, no one boasts a larger representation of high-end hifi manufacturers, or offers a more knowledgeable staff than Oslo HiFi Center. In fact, the personnel at OHC are always ready to serve their customers with a skillset as large as their smile – eager to deliver the ultimate hifi experience at any budget, to any room size.
One of OHC’s slogans roughly translates to “You’ll never get closer to a concert hall”, an arguable statement when discussing the quality of any hifi set-up. However, as many of their customers recently discovered, in the case of Oslo HiFi Center, which literally includes a concert hall on the premises, it rings true.
OHC treats its clients bi-annually, every spring and fall, with a special hifi event. This fall’s event happened to occur at the same time as the shop’s 40th year anniversary! As one of OHC’s main suppliers, Nordost was invited to work and participate. In attendance on the Nordost crew, led by president, Joe Reynolds, was V.P. of sales, Johann Graham and myself, product and sales trainer.
Founder and president of OHC, Geir Tømmervik, saw his store’s 40th Anniversary as the perfect opportunity to flex his hifi muscles, and we were all blown away by his musical might. With great care and skill, Geir transformed the actual concert hall into a demonstration room, featuring the ultimate super system: Kef Muon speakers, Burmester amplification and multiple digital sources, IsoTek power products, an Avid analog turntable, and of course, the soon to be legendary Odin 2 was used throughout the whole system! With a retail value of close to 1.5 million USD, visitors were in for a very rare experience! Which was, very rightfully so, highly appreciated!
Apart from the main attraction in the concert hall, Oslo HiFi Center’s 10+ demo rooms in their shop were designated for use by us manufacturers to demonstrate our products. In the Nordost room, we chose to focus on some demos of our power cords, digital USB transports and our unique QV2/QK1 technology.
– For power cords, we specifically focused on the sonic differences when using different conductor solutions. In this case, multi-strand vs solid core, silver-plated copper— as well as exploring what happens when you double the conductor area.
– We highlighted the extremely low capacitance and tight characteristic impedance tolerance of our digital USB cables and showed how they actually improve the live PCM streaming through the USB protocol.
– The QV2 and QK1, designed to be used in pairs, were also demonstrated by showing both their individual characteristics and their cumulative possibilities.
Even the weather gods seemed to support this event! Oslo was covered in an exceptionally good Scandinavian autumn sunshine, clear blue sky and cold temperatures. The sunshine and clear blue skies were appreciated by all; however, the colder temperatures did not receive the same unanimous appreciation …
The Nordost crew left this event smiling a lot, tired, but with a head full of extreme HiFi experiences and, let me say it again: smiling…
Thank you so much Geir, Mette, Henning, Øystein, Didrik, Arnfinn, Paul, Kim, Tormod and Ida for the great experience! What a wonderful team you are!
Photo credit: The Audio Beat