The Golden PiG Awards At Bristol HiFi Show 2026
The Golden PiG awards at this year’s Bristol HiFi Show.
ABOUT THE GOLDEN PiG AWARDS
Now, before anyone starts getting all uppity and going on about “It’s all about the sound”, these awards are not about commenting on the sound quality alone. Of course, how a system sounds matters, and it would be a bit weird if we didn’t take that aspect of a system into account. But anyone who has spent time walking around HiFi shows knows that the experience of a room goes far beyond the kit list and the tunes that are playing.
Some rooms just feel right the moment you step inside. The lighting is chilled, the seating is well laid out, the music choices are relevant to the audience, and the whole kit-and-caboodle is set up in a way that feels thought out rather than thrown together. There is a sense that someone has taken a whole load of care when coming up with the concept and how it was put together.
Then there are the people manning the room. The best rooms are run by people who strike the balance of being attentive without hovering, knowledgeable without lecturing, and genuinely interested in whether you are enjoying yourself rather than simply trying to jump into a sales pitch. You can sit, listen, ask a question if you want, and leave feeling you have been welcomed rather than managed. A bit like the feeling you get when you’ve been to a really well-done restaurant, I guess.
That is exactly what the Golden PiG awards are about. They recognise the rooms that create an experience for the show visitors who have paid good money to wander around the event. The award is about the rooms and exhibitors that make you want to stay longer than you planned. The ones you find yourself yaddering about later in the bar, not just because of the sound, but because of how they made you feel. The whole experience.
Given that we essentially had two teams covering the show, and because there were several standout contenders, we decided to present two Golden PiG awards at the show.
As we go through 2026 and travel to HiFi shows around the world, the Golden PiGs will be coming with us. At each event, we will be looking for those rooms that do more than simply play music well. We will be looking for the spaces that welcome, engage, and remind us why we all fell in love with this hobby in the first place.
It’s Stu that’s writing this introduction, and whilst I stand by our choices of both shortlist and final winners, I have to say that the standard of the rooms at this year’s show was pretty much universally very high, and we could have had a whole number of exhibitors on the shortlist. However, like every competition, there have to be winners and losers.
We hope that these little awards might go some way to help improve the experience for visitors and to attract new visitors who might still have the impression that a HiFi show is somehow stuck in the 1950s and “not for them”. That is our aim here!
Anyway, without further ado, here are our selections for the Golden PiG awards at the Bristol HiFi Show 2026, along with the exhibitors that made the shortlist.
LIN ANS STU’S GOLDEN PiG AWARD
Chord Electronics, Wilson Benesch/Trilogy/CAD, and Cyrus/Kerr Acoustics were the shortlist from the rooms Lin and I covered on the lower floors of the show.
In the end, it was a very closely run race, but both Lin and I thought that the Cyrus/Kerr Acoustics room delivered on sound and the way the room had been set up. The main room was nicely lit, and I felt an immediate sense of calm as I sat down to listen. There was ample staff who were attentive to visitors, but not overly so to the point of getting in the way, and the separate area of static displays was dressed really nicely, with space for discussion about products that did not interfere with the listening going on in the main part of the room.
Read Stu and Lin’s Bristol HiFi Show 2026 Report Part One here
Congratulations to the team!
OSCAR AND KELLY’S GOLDEN PiG AWARD
As Lin and Stu have mentioned, this award is not based purely on sound, but on the room and experience as a whole. This award goes to those who really go the extra mile, and it came down to three rooms for us; Neat acoustics, Kii Audio, and Ultrafide.
In the end, it had to go to Ultrafide, not only was it a fantastic sounding room, but Mark and the team were attentive to visitors. The room setup was cosy, and homely, giving you a relaxed and comfortable demo space, congratulations to the whole team!
Read Oscar and Kelly’s Bristol HiFi Show 2026 Report Part Two here
Congratulations to the team!
