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OK. I was at the show today in NYC and I guess I'm the first to comment on it.
First things first. This was a more enjoyable show than the AXPONA 2011 in NYC. The venue was the Waldorf-Astoria. A gorgeous and very upscale hotel. Last years show was in a dingy and dark location with tiny rooms and generally terrible acoustics.
Many of the rooms used for the current show were large with carpeting, high, ceilings, window draperies and various architectural elements which aided diffusion. On the down side, the majority of vendors, other than MBL and Legacy, and a few others, did not have dedicated rooms, but shared space with other vendors, and were often hosted by retail shops like Sound by Singer and Innovative Audio. The total number of high end manufactures that participated was almost as sparse as last years AXPONA NYC show.
Interestingly, while the show was billed as and Audio and AV show. I did not see even one room that hosted video, although I did not get to every one and may have missed a demo or two. The turn out on Saturday was much better than the 2011 show, but still very low when compared to the NYC shows from years past.
I wanted to hear the big YG's but was disappointed they were not being played in one of the better rooms. I also wanted to hear Harbeth speakers, but they were not on demo in the room that was listed for them. There were very few accessory and music vendors selling products at show prices as I've seen in the past.
In general, while I'm glad I went, the current show and the 2011 AXPONA are both mere shadows of the expansive audio shows from several years back that were a regular affair at the NY Hilton. Those shows took place on 3 or 4 different floors with scores of rooms and had a huge vendor participation. Those were the glory days. Sigh.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
Follow Ups:
I also agree with Ozzie that the Sonys (at least the smaller model) had no low bass. One of the tracks I played had very low bass which the Sonys could not even produce a hint. I spoke with the Sony rep afterward, and he told me the smaller model only produce down to the mid 40 hz range.
On the two occasions I was in the Sony room the sound was delightful, very realistic, with no mid-bass overhang. It was one of the top three sounding rooms at the show.
Peter B.
there is no audio or video (preferred) recording of the Meet the Editors program. Those who couldnt make it to NY would love to see or listen to this. I always hoped Stereophile would take the initiative for this in addition to regular reporting with those beautiful pictures of the rooms.
Cheers
Bill
> Wonder why there is no audio or video (preferred) recording of the Meet
> the Editors program.
Had last weekend's NY show been a Stereophile show, we would have video'd
the "Ask the Editors" sessions and streamed the video on our website.
However, as it was not our show and my panel was multidenominational (see
the link below), I didn't think the idea feasible.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
I video'd several panel discussions at Axpona NY last year. The videos are not as popular as the individual show rooms. The seminars I've attended over the years can drone on or get off topic relatively fast. I would estimate that a 30 minute seminar (two cameras would be required) would take five, even ten hours to properly edit and produce.
Peter B.
I attended the last half of the "Meet The Editors" seminar on Sunday and can testify that it didn't go off on tangents. Attendance was unimpressive (maybe 25 - 30) but that wasn't the panelists' fault. I also attended Michael Fremer's "How To Set Up A Turntable" presentation and that stayed focused too. That drew about 50 people I'd guess. Fremer shared a lot of good info in an hour and answered a lot of questions. The audience clearly would have stayed for more if the room wasn't needed for another seminar.
> The seminars I've attended over the years can drone on or get off topic
> relatively fast.
Well, my role as moderator is not to let either of those things happen, Peter.
> I would estimate that a 30 minute seminar (two cameras would be required)
> would take five, even ten hours to properly edit and produce.
Don't disagree, but that's not the issue here. With panelists from 5 different
publications, the question of copyright raises its ugly head.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
The imaging localization was terrible, it sounded like Stephen Mejias' voice was coming from where Art Dudley was seated.
Very disconcerting.
;D
I think I'll wait for the 16 LP single sided 45 RPM clear vinvyl version to be released.
I attended HI-FI 96 at the Waldorf Astoria. That was a great show with lots of excellent sounding rooms, and a few duds. Dr. John played in the ballroom on Saturday night and that was awesome. Great performance. Ahh, the good ole days.....
Oz
Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill
It was a lot smaller than I expected. I love the hotel and am ok if I need to spend $22 on a hamburger once. RMAF is the queen of all shows right now with 10x more rooms and manufacturers.
Overall I felt the "ask the editors" was better then ever before. Not just Stereophile guys and it added some breadth. Good questons and you did get a feel for some of their opinions.
Friday was so bad we almost did not head into the city Saturday. But we did and it was worth it. A lot of the rooms were more dialed in. It was surpising the bass problems in those large rooms. I think (a random theory) that with concrete walls and the padded covering the mids and highs were recessed. But whatever, it is a hotel room and I was happy to be in big rooms.
Best in show was the Gratient. We hardy gave it a second thought on Friday but on Sat the guy was really engaging and playing interesting music. The image was really good and there were a ton of dynamics. All from a tiny speaker. Cool! The Harbeth version was a step down and that helsinki thing was all over the place.
The MBL room was the same as always: Audio porn. We only visited once due to the line. My experience was just ok and but Bob said it was fairly good for him. We were at each side. The guy in the hot seat said it was amazing. So once again, everyone comes out with a different view of MBL. On of the consistent problems with MBL is how important ear hight is to get the right sound and in hotels the ears are almost always too high.
TAD - never went in due to loud and bad music.
Innovative/Wilson - never went - too loud
Legacy - I think they were just ok this time. The bass was boomy and sloppy (reminds me of an old girlfriend).
Lighton - speakers were beautiful but the sound was off in the room for me. I think it has potential and will look again.
Quad - I was really excited to hear these and visited twice. I got nothing out of them. No image, goofy sound and no depth (reminds me of an old girlfriend). I will just assume Art Dudley is deaf (trolling for Art :)
LessLoss was interesting. I never got back for a second listen so I did not get a good listen. I think it interesting but they have one too many drivers on the back. Need another look.
Sony - I just did not get a good listen. We visited once on Fri and it was ok. I was amazed with this speaker at RMAF in the Kimber room so I know what they can do.
YG - show 8 and still no magic at all. I keep thinking this is a lot like the Levinson rooms at other shows. They measure really well (so I hear) and they have all the press but I cannot connect. The true difference between measurements and listening.
Zellaton was ok - never got a good listen but was not impressed at this show.
Sceana room was good. Some people seemed to be wowed by this room but maybe I never got into the right spot. The high end was great as were those nice super subs.
Never made it to the Singer room as I cannot stand the commitment to 15 minutes of sales pitch. On the one hand this is the correct way to sell here, get people into a controlled situation etc. But I don't like it.
I cannot recall the name of those horns or the equip in the room. Visited twice and both times we just could not "get it". The first time I was sure the guy was playing really poor recordings. The second visit was just as poor and I am not sure what was going wrong. Maybe he knew the setup was not working or not but that was a disappointment for me.
That is all I got.
P
As I slowly slip into the dark cesspool of audiophalia neurosis. . . .
My speaker building site
:)
Art,
Your coverage is very nice. Closest thing to video there is :)
I was looking for the bunnies in the carpet outside my room for those good Dudley vibrations. But... who stole my bunnies? They must have hopped off to your doorstep.
The Sony was the least involving speaker I heard all day. Sat in several locations and what I heard was flat and very "hi fi". There was no height and the music sounded like it was coming out of the floor. No depth, width, or height. I presume setup was to blame. At over 20k they definitely not my cup of tea.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
Wow, I heard the exact opposite, Maggie Man. Perhaps what you heard was a flat recording provided by a fellow audiophile. I heard a Marsalis selection on the Sonys that drove the room quite well. I commented after the cut since the room across the hall did not live up to the hype. I believe they were YGs and Solution electronics. I had heard several selections on the YGs before leaving that room. A revisit to both rooms later on and I heard similar results. In the Sony room a local had the guys doing the demos put on an excellent version of Rhapsody in Blue. It imaged like all get out, with depth and space rarely heard. A more appropriate cut for such a venue could not have been chosen. The revisit to the YG room once again, and all I heard was hi fi. This problem was not that of the room. Maybe a 30K cable change could have brought this flat and lifeless sounding 200 or so K system together.
That's MaggieLover ;-)
We were only in the SONY room for a short time but I'm guessing it must have been the the album we were listening to. What we heard was very hifi. Lots of bass, lots of highs, very dynamic, but no life. We heard a fairly flat soundstage between the speakers with no height. I felt like I was sitting in a balcony of a theater looking down onto the stage. My son is a professional jazz musician as well as a budding audiophile and he felt the same.
I also was unimpressed with the YGs in both rooms. I'm sure they were capable of so much more but they didn't impress me when I heard them.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
"Lots of bass, lots of highs, very dynamic, but no life. We heard a fairly flat soundstage between the speakers with no height. I felt like I was sitting in a balcony of a theater looking down onto the stage."
That must have been the recording as that description is exactly the opposite of what I heard. If anything there was rather limited bass out of the Sonys. I honestly was surprised that they could drive that room without some obvious woofer doubling. I believe we can credit that to the iron grip off 600 watts of Pass power. The highs were what they needed to be. Smooth and extended. On Marsalis' trumpet, they flew with no response peaks. Even far off axis listening provided a good stereo image. I do tend to walk around the rooms to hear different presentations.
"I also was unimpressed with the YGs in both rooms. I'm sure they were capable of so much more but they didn't impress me when I heard them."
The YGs across the hall had the ideal speaker choice for the room size. If anything the room length should have been beneficial to the low end, yet the lows were rather wooly sounding. What I really did not like though was the highs. No room excuses there either as the side walls were easily 7 feet ouside the side edges. What I, and others commented on were serious high frequency abberations, especially on cymbals. I'd have to guess that one of the tweeters was damaged or replaced and inadvertantly wired out of phase. Even then, the levels in comparison to the mids was noticably tilted up. Sorry, from the editorials of the components in that room I expected nothing less than a collection plate shortly after hearing them.
Is it possible they changed speakers in the SONY room or changed the setup? Its hard to believe that everyone else liked what they heard there. I'm not sure where the disconnect is.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
I only heard the smaller Sonys, but was in the room all three days. I have to agree with Ozzie. Each time they played a selection that I've brought and I thought the tonality was excellent, especially with one of the live recordings I played. Very life like.
There were many more "involving" demos but most of them involved my bewilderment as to "what were they thinking" when they set up the room/system. The Sony was one of the few where I heard believable musical reproduction unmarred by excessive boom.
The Gradient room was another.
Kal
Buy the way, with regard to music in the round, there wasn't any that I saw. Did that surprise you or is that par for the course? And as I indicated in my original post, although this was advertised as an audio/AV show, I saw no AV at all. Not really an issue for me, but if I was a home theater aficionado,I would have felt ripped off.
One other thing I noted when comparing this show to the 2011 Axpona NYC show was that vinyl seemed to be used as the source for most of the demos at the Waldorf. I don't recall seeing nearly as many analog front ends last year. I saw Michael Fremer on Saturday in the room where the Hansens were playing. I wonder it if it was just my imagination or if you, and he noted it aa well.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
Vow, an apparition of Michael Fremer in every room because more TTs were being played? I must attend next year.
Bill
And I expected that. The smaller the show, the more traditional it is, imho. OTOH, there seemed to be as many MacBooks as CD players.
Edits: 04/17/12
I certainly respect your opinion as a long time reader, but I can't agree on the SONYs unless they modified the setup or changed the model demoed from when I was there. There were no emotional connection with the music at all for me. And it wasn't as if I didn't care for the music they were playing. I closed my eyes and really tried to be transported by it, but wasn't. It didn't work. I was in the Zellaton room and while I don't know squat about that brand, or whether they're generally well received, but when they played a recording of Johnny Hartman followed by Ella Fitzgerald, I had that strong emotional connection that both I and my jazz musician son immediately felt. We were drawn in to the music and sat there for quite a while. For me that the single most important criteria for a good sounding system. Everything else is technology, not music, IMHO. The SONY's failed to do that.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
I found the Zellaton utterly lifeless and unengaging but with the caveat that, on both visits to that room, the program content was uninteresting and poor sounding. I did not have that issue at the Sony room. OTOH, the sound, regardless of the program, was immediately engaging in the Gradient room.
Of course, program choice is always an issue and I did hear, at least, 4 selections in each room but there was little in common.
the choice of music selection is obviously a factor which is no doubt why the majority of rooms at shows play the same tired Diana Krall albums over and over. Many rooms simply play what their speakers are good at reproducing.
Some rooms will play music no matter how terrible the recording is because they like the music - the rooms that do this put themselves at a disadvantage on a walk in. This is why I am amused to read comments of speakers I know well and the comments are in polar opposition to what the speaker or system can actually do when given different source material. Or put better room A may use a terrible recording room B uses a great one and even though room A is much better than room B on that specific comparison room B will come out on top. Some recordings also seem to have a kind of boominess built into the recording (perhaps to compensate for car audio or for headphones to add some weight) The high-fi system gets blamed for being boomy when in fact it's the recording and the stereo is telling it like it is. What is more of a problem is when there is this boom on the recording and the stereo can't reproduce it - then while it may sound better on that recording - it is not a very good stereo system.
Speakers that lack bass and dynamics tend to sound cleaner - well of course - when you hack 3 octaves out and you don't move any air - of course it will sound "clear" but you threw away significant amounts of the recordings in order to do it.
"when you hack 3 octaves out and you don't move any air"
Which three octaves would that be? Do you have any examples?
Rick
The 'rooms' at the Waldorf=Astoria in many cases were made of movable and padded partitions. From an acoustics perspective, that's an almost perfect lose-lose (big, wobbly boomy bass, with walls that act as inconsistent mid/high absorbers). Some were making the best of a bad job with a lot of room treatment, experimenting with equipment/listener positioning, even making careful choices of music used.
This almost always happens at the first year in a new venue (even if the new venue isn't that new, and has been used for audio shows a decade or more ago). Even if you have visited the rooms, they are unknown properties until you have set up in them. Next year, you have a better understanding of the room and know what best suits it.
Interestingly, the rooms that consistently get high praise used speakers not renown for their bass response. In other words, the best way of dealing with room nodes is not to trigger them!
-
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus magazine, Lun-duhnn, Ingerland, innit
Thanks for the great explanation!
I do have at least a vague understanding of the room/speaker interaction problems and for that matter the listener/speaker interaction ones. I think most of us have enough experience at home and at shows to appreciate the difficulties even if perhaps not enough to predictively avoid them.
What engendered my question was really just the silly exaggerations. Must have been one of those days...
Regards, Rick
That's the biggest problem with judging the big bass speakers and why I suspect many people have a negative view of dynamic driven speakers. Bass causes the most problems in rooms and the speaker is blamed due to the room.
I am now living in Hong Kong - the Apartment is solid concrete. There is more slap echo and I am buying various room conditioning at the moment - bass traps next. But the walls are terrific!
Well, in all fairness, dipoles excite fewer bass modes than dynamics do. So those big dynamics do deserve some blame for exciting room modes.
But that's because the bass on most panels is anaemic and is therefore incapable of exciting room modes - or the listener - in all fairness.
Edits: 04/27/12
What Tony said.
Check out this web page -- it compares monopole, dipole, and cardioid woofers. Note in particular the graph of the impulse response, all modes considered, near the bottom of the page. The benefits of the dipole diminish as you toe it in until at 45 degrees, it isn't much better than the omni, but I've found that in practice, with the moderate toe-in usually used, dipole bass is significantly smoother than monopole bass.
The downside of dipole bass is that you get backwave cancellation, so need more excursion and amplification for a given SPL. You also need large baffles, although they can be folded for a compact unit.
Another interesting possibility mentioned at the end of the page is to put the omni subs right behind the listener. He says that the variations that then occur are minimum phase, which means response irregularities can be equalized out. This would be effective only for a single listener, though.
I was able to cancel my worst room mode with my reflex loaded Focals in my system setup. This involved messing around with the cross-over settings and positioning of the speakers. I suspected this would be possible after several weeks of listening and tweaking, but I wasn't able to figure out how to make it work until I got a calibrated microphone and RTA and could see how the controls and speaker positioning interacted. Also, it was necessary to read some of the literature on the web on room modes, dipoles, sub setup, etc. which helped me make sense of what was happening. I can't say I really understood what I was doing, but I did get an intuitive understanding of how the response curve was related to my tweaking which helped get differing response curves. With a little listening of reference recordings it was then possible to fine tune the process and choose the most satisfactory compromise.
I suspect it would be possible to cancel an additional room mode if I got another sub, but apart from the cost I'm not sure I would be able to put it where I wouldn't trip over it without rearranging lots of stuff, and I'm happy with what I'm presently getting, both in sound and in measurements. It's hard to complain about a resolving system that reveals what's on each recording still making the mediocre recordings enjoyable if the musical performance is good.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Yeah, you can cancel more modes if you have two or even four subs, but only if you feed them a mono bass signal. With four, you might be able to use a stereo signal and cancel some of the depth axial modes.
I'm surprised at how few people use test equipment to help out with the bass. I'm as guilty as the next guy, I have a measurement mic and REW but never get around to using them. It's more fun to listen. Fortunately, my dismal almost-square room is broken up with about half of one wall opening on a hall, and between that and dipoles the bass is fairly good. (I've been wrestling with imaging instead -- a fireplace mantle that makes it impossible to use the speakers in the location that makes the most sense for the room.)
I agree that it's more fun to listen, but in December after doing that for several weeks and not progressing I ordered a mesurement microphone and real time analyzer and waited impatiently for them to arrive. My satellites have good response down to 40 Hz, so there was a lot of potential overlap between them and the sub.
The end result is +- 6 dB from 30 to 500 Hz measured 1/12 octave at the listening position so I don't think these is much to be gained with a second sub. Adding a second sub would undoubtedly involve moving all of my computer equipment out of the office and into a closet, which I may do anyhow for noise reasons but I would have to get a KVM extender system as my computers are presently tethered by their VGA cables.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I hooked up my amp and projector to the computer in my home office, using a 50' HDMI cable from Monoprice for the video and USB repeater cables strung together for a second keyboard and mouse. While the setup was temporary, it was so nice to be without fan noise that I decided to put my new HTPC in the listening room closet. So I put in some conduit and a false molding so I don't trip over the cables, and also conduit and a hollowed-out baseboard in the hall so I could put a second keyboard and monitor in my office and eliminate the fan noise there as well.
I also found that I enjoyed surfing while I listened, I could read about the piece I was listening to, or check out a newspaper or magazine. And it occurred to me that since most of my work no longer involves paper, I could do most of my office work in my listening room, where I could enjoy the big speakers. The only downside I've found so far is that it robs me of an excuse to get a pair of Mini Maggies for my office . . .
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
So explain why with bass heavy music in an average room positioned per manufacturer rating do they sound so utterly unconvincing in the bottom end? They being the 20.1.
This is not aided with websites with calculus lessons.
It is real in room response and in the several rooms I've heard them in they've all sounded abysmal dynamically. Loud yes - some deepish bass yes.
Don't give me amplifier power. I have heard them always with appropriate amplifier power. Which is why it's funny that the completely inappropriate amplifier power was the only one that made them sound good.
Flagship - Class, Bryston, Meridian, Sim Audio, McIntosh, Anthem, Arcam, Rotel, Got some big beastly 1Kw amps here.
I will give it another try - next week or the following i will try the 3.7 or 1.7 again. They have a nice normal sized room and have them well away from all room boundaries. I liked the sound of the 1.7 with the AN gear but AN gear is too costly in the sense that the combined price for the system and the results don't make the endeavor worth the money and of course you can't play it loud.
I went to hear it today but they were closed for Buddha's Birthday and when they finally opened they were doing inventory. I would love to like them more because they're thinness makes them a rather dream space saver in Hong Kong where you can just shove them up against the walls when not in use. And of course the price is affordable. But they always sound "affected" and have some major off-putting attributes that I have never been able to get past. I keep trying them because there is something to them I like as well.
But if it can't be run with a SET - it is being fed inferior sound quality so it has a strike against. Fortunately the store did carry some tubes - we shall hear. 1-2 weeks.
I don't find them unconvincing in the low end. I love planar bass because it doesn't sound mushy and bloated like dynamic bass so often does. There's real detail in the notes. It sounds like real instruments.Of course, bass is very room sensitive and whether there's enough of it -- or too much -- depends on the room. Manufacturers can only design to an average room. It also depends on the specific model. The smaller ones are bass shy and pretty much want a sub. But I heard some wonderful bass from the 3.7's a couple of weeks ago. Not subterranean, they're good to maybe 40 Hz. But clean as a whistle and beautifully controlled. And the Tympanis still have the best midbass I've ever heard. Full-height line source planars are even better than you'd expect from that web page (you don't need the math for that, BTW, just look at the pictures at the bottom) because if you arrange them and your seating correctly, they act as a single bass array and *completely eliminate* room modes below a certain frequency. You can do the same thing with dynamic drivers, but it requires multiple drivers and electronic trickery. I hit on this trick years ago when I used Tympani 1-D's but had only a partial understanding of the theory behind it. Now I understand that below the spatial Nyquist frequency of the speakers and their reflected images, you get a plane wave, and with proper seating the reflected rear wave cancels even the depth axial mode for bass that's smooth as a baby's bottom.
Here's an interesting thread on the double bass array. Most people don't realize that line source planars can do the same thing without any electronics or rear speakers, if you get the setup right.
Edits: 04/28/12 04/28/12
No. That's not the reason.
Theoretically, a perfect dipole does not excite modes that are orthogonal to the dipole's alignment. Practically, these modes will be excited at greatly reduced levels since the radiation pattern won't be perfectly symmetric and the dipole won't necessarily be perfectly aligned with the walls.
These effects are real and can be measured at low levels, for example by equalizing the dipoles to that they have flat on-axis response at the frequencies involved. If this is done with "wimpy" speakers the resulting low bass may be inaudible due to poor bass hearing at low volumes, but the room modes will still be there, nulls and peaks.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I have a vague recollection that some audio shows used an "official" demo CD-R which is issued to to all participants. Although one can use other demo materials, visitors can request something that they will also be able to hear in other rooms. I don't know how the choices are selected but it would be great if each manufacturer could submit a cut for it.
That's a good idea. I like it for a few reasons - mainly that the visitors may not be familiar with the cuts and won't be making mental notes on the way they are "used to" hearing it on their own system.
My first show experience at CES I tried to cover too much gear - and so I didn't get the time in each room they probably deserved. I would rather have covered half the rooms and made sure to listen to wider selections of music.
Not everyone listens to a wide variety of music. I do and I value systems that are "all-rounders" that can do it all from trance/house to classical. So a CD that every room has with a sampling of cuts from a variety of genres (well recorded ones) is a really good idea. I don't listen to rap - but if you have a Tupac track and it would be interesting to hear the "kind of" dynamic bass punch/slam the speaker has that you don't hear in any classical music. It's a different kind of sound. (More is not necessarily better either).
copies could be sold or included in the entry fee so that visitors could take it home for reflection.
Agree completely. But beyond the recordings used, I did find that some of the rooms where I was able to connect with the sound were generally the bigger ones where the speakers had plenty of room to the sides and behind and with high enough ceilings. In those rooms the seating positions were also well away from room boundaries and as a result the soundstage wasn't constricted to a two dimensional image between the speakers. I think the room the big YGs were in did not do them justice at all. I was very disappointed. In the Innovative Audio room I got only a sense of what the Sashas could do. They were too far apart, too close to the wall behind and 99 percent of the seating locations were poor. I'm sure that most of the speakers that left me cold would have blown me away if they were dialed in in and in better rooms. Worst in show (for me) were the very expensive KEF Blades. I'm guessing they sound incredible when setup correctly in an appropriate room but I heard nothing from them on Saturday which would encourage me to go back for a second listen and that's unfortunate.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
Hmmm. Interesting. Mind you I didn't didn't think the Zellatons were to die for, but that we were able to connect with the source material being played at the time. I found few rooms, regardless of how much I played musical chairs, that did that for me. I was hoping the room with the big YG's would do it, but I was disappointed. Perhaps if I had heard the same material as you in the SONY room my opinion of those speakers would have been different.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
Maggie Man, while in the city I trust you attended a jazz gig with your musician son? Kathie and I only did one gig in the entire weekend since all the good gigs were two weeks ago or this week and next. While the sound of the Tom Harrell gig at the Vanguard was very good, the performance was kind of lame. Sorry if I offended any Herrell fans, but I have to have me some standards. We did our usual Patsie's (for Frank but just ok, fine Manhattans and bottle of Brunello though), Basta Pasta (excellent and reasonable as always - also very highly recomended for you locals) and Thalia's (a new poseur place, very good service). Drinks at Sir Harry's at the hotel were primo.
We actually live in Central NJ, a short distance from NYC. He often goes into the city to listen and occasionally gigs there himself. The last city gig he did was a recent benefit and art auction at the CedarLake ballet company on the west side of town. He performs mostly in NJ. He's on payroll as a musician with the Mason Gross School of the Arts, the Arts conservatory of Rutgers University, and plays a lot of Rutgers and local jazz gigs.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
We can inhabit on the same planet but live in different worlds.
I wish I could have been there to compare!
Thanks for the fun give and take.
It was surprising that in a place that would seem a natural for this type of event that so many people were having trouble. But we were not the one's setting up so we don't know what they were up against.
I think more than any other show there were more "what were they thinking" moments here. Music choices, volume, boominess.
Sorry I missed you Kal.
P
As I slowly slip into the dark cesspool of audiophalia neurosis. . . .
My speaker building site
Yes, the volume was too loud in many of the rooms, but that's standard practice at every audio show I've attended for the past five years.
Best sound for me was the original Quad ESL-57 driven by tubes with vinyl source. Never heard the original Quad before and, I must say, I was blown away. What they say is true! I have now heard the voice of god: and it is the Quad ESL-57.
There were some mid-sized Harbeths sounding glorious in a room. For me, that was, maybe, the second best sound at the show.
I was very impressed by the big YG speakers. Huge, but controlled, neutral, sound. I wish I could afford them!
Also, heard impressive sound from a new speaker company: Robert Lighton Audio (RLA). Very natural, rhythmic, organic sound. Very nice.
I liked that I was able to audition so many headphones like the Stax and highend Senn's and Grado's. Overall, a good show1
I regretfully missed the room with the Quads. I also wanted to hear the Harbeths but couldn't find the room. The one listed for them, 1510, had other speakers in it. While I was generally impressed with the big YG's I wish they had been in one of the bigger rooms. I think the potential for their imaaging/sounstaging and bass were not fulfilled in that room. I sat in various locations but I never got that emotional attachment to the music.Yes I too enjoyed listening to the various phones in the two Woo headphone amplifier rooms. Their tube head phone amps seemed very listenable, looked like they were built well, and were not outrageously priced. I think the pricing reflects that they can only be purchased directly from Woo, no middleman.
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
Edits: 04/15/12
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