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Caxton Audio
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Located in the inner Brisbane suburb of Paddington this shop has to be one of the more pleasant discoveries in the retail audio world in the past few years, for me at least. You know the story - seen it in the phone book - 'The Audio Alternative' - blah, blah, and (you know) I'll get around to visiting it sometime since I'm not in the market for any audio gear right this minute. If I'd been paying a little more attention generally to my local audio scene then I would have visited sooner - my loss - don't let it be yours as well. Caxton Audio is at 18 LaTrobe Terrace, just along the road from Caxton Street in fact(!) and is located in a Nineteenth Century workers cottage style shop which may in fact have been a nineteenth century workers cottage - how's that for original writing? "Small, friendly and intimate" is how one would describe the setting and "knowledgeable, welcoming and accommodating" is how one would describe the proprietor. You might add "brave" to that last phrase as well. I honestly think it takes a brave person to offer the quality and style that David Neilen is offering at his premises in an age of brash, noisy, pushy Home Theatre sales people who are more interested in showing you out the door with an unopened box immediately after divesting your plastic card of several thousand credits of one type or the other, than they are in establishing an idea of what you may actually want, or require. David runs a business where the word service has meaning in all senses of the word - before and after sales, and more besides. A short visit is enough to convince even the casual observer that David knows his products literally inside and out, and is able to actually fix them when they break. Even the best quality product will occassionally have a problem and if you're not of the die-hard DIY breed then you will perhaps be in need of some highly knowledgeable technical backup at some time. Perhaps we've become used to having this backup in Tokyo or Outer Swaziland, but we should not have to be accustomed to such a set of circumstances and Caxton Audio is certainly well placed to service the sophisticated equipment that is sold there. "The Audio Alternative" - in today's world means High End Audio on your doorstep if you live in Brisbane. I was frankly surprised to see so many marques of quality audio equipment under the one roof. Scarcely a sight to be seen outside of Sydney or Melbourne in this day and age. An age where the audio landscape is littered with retailers purveying "quality challenged" gear that I colloquially prefer to call "crap". I'm completely biassed in my audio preferences and so naturally any shop that stocks a large range of Quad equipment is high on my list of universally "good things". However, if Quad and ESLs are not your thing then there's plenty more to draw the eye and interest the ear - Audiolabs, Conrad-Johnson, Sonic Landscapes, Mission, NAD, Naim....I do believe I may have seen a Rega RB250 tonearm lurking in the corner somewhere, but this may have been a part of the range of quality used components that David has on offer - you don't have to spend squillions to have a high quality gramophone! We spent a very pleasant hour one afternoon listening to some C-J amplifiers and a C-J CD unit driving a pair of the new Quad 2805s. As precise and accurate a sound stage as I have heard in spite of my well known bias for the original Quad ESL. I'd have to give the new Quads top marks for styling, build quality and bass accuracy. Bass viols sound like actual stringed instruments when playing en masse and not like a low flying squadron of WW2 four engined bombers(!) as one hears on some equipment. The C-J amplifier chain made no complaints at any time while driving the Quads to adequate listening levels. Certainly the 70W per channel delivered by this 6550 based C-J design can be properly called "man-sized" watts, indicating a high quality power supply with properly specified transformers. Certainly no lack of iron as the effort on David's face demonstrated when he had to move one! I hope this does not sound like a bit of a boys club where you drop in to audition $50000 worth of gear as a likely buyer and you are rather well received! Relax. Nothing of the kind. I rang in the morning indicating that I was definitely not in the market for any audio gear right now but David was only too happy to arrange a bit of a listen that same afternoon. During that session several customers came and went with one gentleman dropping off a small gift apparently in gratitude for some routine piece of equipment servicing for which David had not seen fit to issue an account - seems like a bit of the old Quad service ethos, right there. In the mercenary, plastic card driven world we live in today, this is probably the highest recommendation that Caxton Audio needs. If, like me, you've been tardy in visiting this top establishment don't delay and re-discover real, high-end audio in Brisbane. Gary Jacobson |
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