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Remember that I am a speaker guy, so I relate to speakers even though I know the sound is the end of a long chain. There was tons of eye candy electronics at the show, I just don’t relate in the same way.First, it really was a fun weekend and I appreciate JA and the gang for putting it on and being available. The SP gang really was "There" and walking around and talking to everyone. I must have run into SP people 30 times over the weekend and talked at least one or two's ear off (and made an idiot of myself at least once). I especially liked talking with Kal Rubinson. He is a former speaker builder and just plain interesting. Stephen Mejias was also nice, Bob Deutch, J Skull, all the group. Wes Philips was working all weekend just to keep the non-attendees happy. Not a sour grape in the bunch and totally available. What you learn from direct contact with this group is that they are simply passionate about what they do and write because they love it. It is not about money or fame, but about passion.
Loved Ken Kessler's Leica. That company has put out beautiful products for what, 90 years? Still miss my old Leica, why oh why did I sell it? How does Leica build a digital camera and still make if have that Leica feel?
The show was smaller than last year in NY. I kept thinking I read something years ago from the last time it was in LA, JA came back with some comment about "never in LA again". So now it is 8 years later and he did LA again, will he say the same thing?
Also, people kept comparing it to CES and how big CES is and blah blah blah. Well, I have not been to CES but I have been to a lot of other big shows, and prefer the smaller ones. CES sounds like a nightmare of crowds and schedules. I pick smaller, more intimate shows.
I don't feel like as much a need to define best or worst as last year. There was a lot of good and some bad, but I think I better understand the struggle of presenting in the field. I think overall the hotel rooms were better suited to music than last year. The rooms were nicer and not a many power problems or odd issues. Most vendors got good results from what they had. Few ran into problems. So, on with the show . . .
Most annoying: I grabbed a small toothpaste tube on the way out of my house and it turned out to be bubblegum flavored. I am too cheap to buy new toothpaste and that was really annoying, bubblegum breath all weekend. Oh, wait, are we still talking about the show? Ok, most annoying: not having Singer Music to kick around and start a fight. Seriously, not much annoying at this event.
Missing: Conrad Johnson, Magico, Sonus Faber, Quad, Boulder, Magnapan, Martin Logan.
Best in show: This year there were a lot of very good demos and I am shying away from a single “best”. At the top of the list is:
Pioneer. They really went for it on this new speaker. They used BelCanto electronics. I think the BelCanto class D amps were not quite up to the task at the show, small, high power amps, not quite able to pull the db needed in the large room. But very very good. I really liked AJ’s music and overall style. I spent more time in this room than any other. Just pleasant to be in the room.
Wilson. Class act with excellent sound. What more can I say? They deserve their reputation.
Joseph Audio. Consistently well done and great sounding. What I really want to know is how Joseph photographs so thin? I stand next to him and think we are similar sizes, but I look huge in pictures and he does not.
McIntosh. I am generally not a Mc fan, I don’t know why. I think it because I associate their gear with the “doctor and lawyer” brand. But wow, what eye candy. Well built, powerful gear. Really nice and excellent sounding. I liked their speakers a lot. I generally don’t like the line array sound, but these sounded great. Something like 200 (Aura) mids with a line of woofers and tweeters. Turned me on to the new western SACD from Telarc, a great test CD. I am becoming a Mc fan, albeit slowly.
Dynaudio. The one in the Origin room with the large Confidence. This is the first time I have heard them and was expecting less. I guess this set me up for a WOW! My main test track is “Duke’s Place” and these speakers really staged well and got the horns and piano right. Not as crisp a high end as some, but excellent!
Coolest looking: Von Gaylord liquid cooled amps.
Onkyo gets kudos for a beautiful small speaker. Sound was OK for size.
Focus Audio sounded very good. I think I liked last year’s two-way better, but good.
Should have been better: These are well received suppliers who just did not do it for me this time. Many times I don’t see the midnight struggles to get the sound right in the rooms, the equipment damaged in shipping, the borrowed cable, whatever. So these guys might be greats, but not for me at this showing:ESP, never got there for me. Beautiful speaker and interesting design. Stage and mids change a lot as you move forward and back, but never sounded right to me. This speaker has been praised in all the mags, so I simply missed something or it was the room, or I am deaf (com’awn Andy!).
Acoustic Zen. Not even close for me. This is another speaker that has been getting great reviews, so I don’t know.
Vivid Audio – odd looking and just not there. “How do you think you did tonight, dawg?” :)
Lipinski – These are future speakers. They had the amps incorporated into the base. I think this is the future of speaker design as we move to wireless, electronic crossovers, DSP room balancing. These didn’t do it for me, but the direction is right. They were trying to do surround in too small a space.
Esoteric – They were good, not great. Part of the problem with them was the music. I never got to play my CD and their music choices kept me out. Every time I walked in, I did not feel like sitting.
Totem - Totem has some great products at great prices. They like to promote the weird angle and play a lot of strange “music”. This kept me out of the room for the whole show. Heard them last year and they were great.
Thiel – These must have been beta units. They look great and I like people who take chances. But I thought these were all over the place in sound. So let’s assume they will “get there” and I just showed up too early. I know some reviewers are already singing their praise, but they must have been a different unit than I heard, or I am deaf.
General comments, not best or worst or anything -Gammut – Ex Scan-Speak engineers take to speaker building. This one was on the edge of being moved to the “best” section. The clearly had a room issue with one speaker in a completely different space then the other as the room was at odd angles. Stage shifted left for me and gain was not consistent. But beautiful and well executed by a high-knowledge group. Talked with Lars at length about speakers and he was really nice to give me time. I would like to hear these again.
Vandersteen – This one also might be in the “best” category. They had two rooms and both were very good. I liked the smaller one better as it had better balance and stage in the smaller room. I can see why so many people like these, they seemed “safe” speakers to me. I felt like they were trying (and succeeding) to be very good but not excellent. Why did I think that? I have no idea. This is why I will never be a great reviewer. I have deprived cognitive superlative deficiency.
Reference Recordings. OK, they are back. I really felt bad for them as all they did all day was talk about how “they are back”. I bought a couple of nice CDs from them. One was John Marks' “Beaded Room”. Great group of people, I see why everyone wants them to make it, they are so nice and passionate about what they do.
Telarc was another fun group of people. I really liked being able to listen to all the CDs at the show on the big CD server. But I had trouble since I simply wanted every one I listened to. I’ll take that, and that, oooh, and that one. On and on.
Roy Hall gets my “staying in business while getting all kinds of crap from foreign suppliers” award. I don’t know how he stands it, dealing with huge hurdles in language, protocol and culture. His room looked great with all the goods. He spent time with me and laughed at my jokes (another hurdle, being pleasant to everyone). Keep it up, Roy!
vonSchwigert – Before I die I want to spell that right just once. These guys are great every year. Not in the top rung this year for me only because I never got a good listen, but what I heard was excellent.
The SP “ask the editors” session was good. At least is did not get stuck on one topic like last year. Everyone seemed less tense than last year.
Zu speakers were interesting. These guys went back to the theory from the 70s, large paper cone woofers running full range, using the natural roll off. Then filling in the highs with a tweeter on low order crossover. I thought they were OK. Extra points for a couple of people going for it and building a beautiful product. Takes balls to quit your day job for this.
Bolzano – Beautiful speakers, with opposing drivers did not do it for me. I don’t understand the theory of listening to drivers at 90o off axis.
The Nagra room was cool. I like the look of the electronics. The speakers were OK. The Verity speaker guys noted right up front they have been having a bad weekend and they were still trying to nail down a sound problem. So no comment on the sound, Looked great. I poked in late on Saturday and they sounded better.
Acsendo – Looked great, the highs sounded off to me and poor blend to the woofer. Maybe another off day or I was tired.
Accapella – Cain – Rethm - all the single driver people – I have yet to hear a single driver system I liked. Sorry to dump y’all I the room together, but there were five or six rooms with single driver units, some very expensive and beautiful, but none sounded good to me.
Flying Mole – I could not get into the room far enough to sit. The tweeters were killing me. I don’t know if I had bad luck and hit bad music a couple of times in a row, but ouch.
JAS Audio – beautiful, just never got a good listen. Music never drew me in.
Gershman – Only got a short listen. Seemed unbalanced to me.
KEF – These were very good. It took three visits to really get to hear them. The fourth visit, they were blasting some drum tracks. This was one of those demos where you really get into the pounding and music. Then they turn it off and your ears ring. To hell with that. Can play loud, like ‘em better soft. Look a lot like B&W. On the surround sound, for the millionth time, the rears were just plain annoying. So I am supposed to spend the extra $5k on rears when nobody can come up with a decent surround sound disk? This should be the great challenge of 2006-2007, coming up with a good music surround disk. I don’t mean three good channels with junk in the back, or a disk labeled "surround" when the rears are silent, I mean all the channels making sense and adding to the sum.
MBL – Once again the MBL group was odd. The first visit I was floored by how good they sounded. Really good. So I took a second visit and they were really good again. I wandered in a third time the next day and everything sounded off. I went a fourth time and stayed for a half hour or so and they were pretty good. Nothing like the first visit. This was the only room where I had this experience.
Usher – I was expecting less, mostly because it bothers me that they have been ripping off the Scan designs. But I have to say, most of their speakers were very good and beautifully made.
Sony – The new Sony gear coming out this August looks fabulous. As expected, picture quality is going up, I think the Blue-ray disk demo was the first big screen demo I have seen where I could not pick out artifacts. Also, if you are near a new HT amp as I am, wait until you can get HDMI switching and video up-sampling to hdmi.
One thing to take away from this is how hard it is to go into this business. The people who are having a successful show had a lot of experience and backing. I think everyone at some point thinks they want to be in this business and if you look only at the Wilson, Joseph, Pioneer, McIntosh rooms, it looks great. But heading over to the small tube show next door and take a look at the people who are also trying to make a go of it but cannot afford the tuition. There you see people applying enormous hours for just a few eyes in a day and maybe no sales. We also see the Asian groups showing what they can do. But it is so hard to compete with similar looking goods, the aura of everything being knock offs, the lack of support. These groups are working just as hard as the small guys at the tube show, but spending at a higher rate. And they still may not get sales. It is a rough business.
The record pressing plant tour was very cool. Took over an hour to drive there; LA is big, really big. I put comments on that part of the trip with my pictures, link attached.
There are so many variables in a show like this that it is hard to talk absolutes. Not only are there room issues, but many times the test tracks are hard to follow since they are unfamiliar. When I read other people’s raves about a system I did not care for, especially the single driver units, I have to think that perhaps they got to use their own test CD or was in a very small sweet spot while I was not. Or I was simply tired from a day of power listening.
If I were offered something to take home from the show, I would pick Erika Pearson, oh, wait! It has to be audio gear. Don’t tell my wife I said that. Hmm. There were about a dozen CD/SACD players I really liked and will never afford. Other electronics would be AR or Linn. I know that is a boring answer. I would take the Wilson Sophia or Watt/Puppy. Some of the stuff was just over the top, but there is a lot of gear I could be eternally happy with.
Hmm, now I have to figure out if I can get an article out of this.
Follow Ups:
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Its clear that their choices are not just by chance, it is by design to fool and to ride coat tails.And they've done it to SEAS and now Eton. Thiel + Partner is the sole remaining supplier they used to use, that I haven't seen "engineering upgrades" models released.
I agree, it is too blatant. I wish, since they clearly have some engineering capability, that they changed them to make them their own. I woofer is going to look like a woofer, not need to make it look like a SS.
The Wilson presentation was very purposeful and effective, electronics were Audio Research. I unashamedly hogged the sweet spot for half an hour in the MBL room. They played well chosen sections of a variety of cuts from different genre. The Kabula/chord also made an impression on me. The Acappella single driver played Jheena Lodwick when I was there. There's something so enthralling about single drivers when playing female vocals.
I looked forward to listening to Sonus Faber, CJ Flagships but were MIA.
Goose bump factor was still there when it came to the full Range sytems above but not as much as my first Stereophile show attendance in Santa Monica years ago. I can still remember the awe I felt when I first heard Jason Blooms presentation of the Apogees/Meitner, The Wilson Audio/Jadis and the MBL too. I would like to think that I might be just a bit jaded or a little bit more travelled in this audiphile journey. I do suspect though that overall there really has not been that much of an improvement or progress in the search for the musical holy grail.
Enjoy the Music.
My companion and I both thought the Acoustic Image room with the ESP Concert Grands was the best in the show. We found the depth of soundstage strikingly better than any other we heard. The Wilson Watt-Puppies driven by the AR gear did sound great, but the depth of field seemed a bit flat.All in all, too many bass heavy demos playing pop music that could not be related to a real performance -- who knows what the guy at the mixing console intended, the voices and instruments are so processed you can't relate them to any sort of ground truth. This may be perfectly good music to listen to for entertainment, but not for judging the quality of an audio system.
That L.A. sexworkers compete with N.Y. sexworkers at two or three times the price?
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nt
My speaker building site
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Pjay, thanks for the report. I was there also. I was interested to read your comment on the Thiel room. It just didn't sound very good to me either. I liked the Chord/Neat room the best. They got excellent performance out of both the systems they were running. They made good music choices as well.
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thanks for taking the time to write this long report.
A hotel room isn't some sort of weird, other-worldly acoustical envornment, it's a ROOM. You know, four walls, a floor and a ceiling. Just like you have at home, I bet. I'm sick of people saying, "Well, you know how hard it is to get good sound at a show..." It's ridiculous. If you can't get good sound at a show, get out of the business.
Why is it so hard to get good sound in a room? (Because it's a room. It's even hard to build a decent sounding orchestral hall with a quarter billion dollars or so.)And also, if you (apparently) don't _realize_ your sound in the room is no good (Ascendo, Tubulous, Zu - I don't mean at the L.A. show which I didn't attend,) perhaps you should get out of the business.
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Ever hear of bad electricity or poor room acoustics? Also, try cramming 30 people in your listening room and see how it sounds.
I remember walking into several rooms that had AC Volt meters reading less than 100 VAC at the wall receptacle. I'm guessing that the newer hotels that the Shows take place in are just as insufficient (electrically) as the old Sahara, since hotels are all built on the low bid and to the minumum of NEC code. (It's not as if you are going to find dedicated circuits for one wall receptacle in a hotel room). Several rooms will likely share the same circuit, since it is cheaper to build with Bathrooms next to each other, the rooms being mirrored opposites, with headboards (the usual set up location) placed on the opposite side of each wall. It is logical to assume that one circuit feeds outlets to 2 rooms on the headboard wall. Imagine large sized amplifiers used in each room ... I wonder if the wire behind the sheetrock gets warm?Then you have speaker cones, cables and electronics that have been disturbed which will take several days (minimum) to relax. Many have probably changed cables and have noticed that it took a few days for the cables to relax, which is why I never mess with them. Electronics take a while to settle, as do speakers, even with measures to keep the cones temperature and electrically stable.
You also have room treatment issues. Given that you have a day (or less) to set up the rooms in preperation for the Show, most treatment issues are dealt with quickly, and are likely not exactly dialed in. Most companies are small, with few employees, (or they can't afford to bring the entire team), which means that the guy who usually has zero to do with paperwork of any sort is now in charge of setting out brochures and banners. (Time is short and the guys have plenty to do in preperation).
I've walked through on set up day many times. It is a complete Zoo.
Jack
Photo shown of pallets filled display goods for CES over at the Convention Center.
I think the typical hotel room is smaller than the typical room that houses stereo in people's homes. Secondly, unlike in people's homes, the small size of the hotel room and the need to make room for some listeners means that most of the furniture has to be removed . . . another difference. Thirdly, just about all the hotel rooms I've been in in the U.S. have wall-to-wall carpeting -- not always a good thing.The one thing that hotel rooms may share in common with lots of people's houses (at least those built in the 1960s or later) is the use of drywall for walls which is not as "tight" as, say, plaster.
RFI, thin walls. skimpy carpet.
Hey, John, I got RFI at home like nobody's business. I'm within a mile of three of the DC metro area's TV station X-mitter towers.But I got thick, plaster-on-wood lath walls. My house is 105 years old.
It's not that the rooms are so unusual (but some are). It is more that the demonstration has to be set up in a day leaving little time to optimize placement and add/subtract furnishings and treatments for good performance. Most of us spend a lot of time listening and adjusting without such time constraints.
I continue to be amazed that more effort is not made to better treat the rooms at the CES as well as HE shows. True, most hotel rooms are too small to really do justice to the gear, particularly medium to large size speakers. However, the placement of a few stratigically placed sound treatment panels and base absorbant columns would do wonders to help give a much more accurate demonstration of the equipment's potential.
I thought, that in NY at least, union rules dictated how many objects will be moved into the room and how much you can move as part of the contract. After that there's a charge for union movers.Plus, whether driving or shipping, more things adds to time and personnel. Plus it's harder when you can't impact on the walls in any way.
So I'm sure the lack of simple room treatment only indicates rank incompetence in about 50% of cases...about the same that the music choices indicate. Maybe there's some overlap.
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We're not talking about a huge remake of the room. It would be simple to to place 2 or 3 panels such as those offered by Echo Busters on the front walls. Two or four on the side walls to contain reflections and a couple of bass columns in the rear corners. These are all light items, easy to carry and move around. Just placing them according to a simple formula based on the room dimensions would be a piece of cake, highly portable and make a tremendous difference in controlling room based acoustical problems.I have a dedicated listening room and no single component I have ever purchased has contributed to improving the quality of the sound as much as my Echo Buster room treatments.
Unless I am mistaken, the typical union rules prohibit the exhibitor from carrying in an excess of things.Did you read the point about shipping or flying in with stuff?
It doesn't matter how light or portable the room treatments are; we are not talking about an extra six CDs. So there's real money involved. Do you even know what it cost to show at one of these things?
Now, some exhibitors just go ahead and spend the money, just as some audiophiles do in their dedicated rooms. (I do agree with your implicit point that some demonstrators are just too clueless to do things correctly. At the last NY show, Ascendo didn't seem to realize their speakers had virtually no center fill as positioned. People like that might as well not bother with room treatments...but that doesn't mean having room treatments is cheeep.)
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I am aware that it is very expensive to exhibit and demonstrate one's product at these shows.
I know it was for budgetary reasons that many exhibitors left the CES and joined T.H.E Show
which runs concurrently with the CES. I'm not suggesting that there would be no added expense with including room treatment items.However, considering the amount of capital it takes to develop and bring a product to market
it strikes me as being short sited not to demonstrate one's products to their optimum advantage if you looking to grab the attention of the audio/video press as well as the enthusiasts crowd.
And that was clearly demonstrated in rooms 446 and 448! (Others, too.)
My son was involved in setting up one room. He said it was extremely frustrating, largely because of the time limtation you mention. It takes a while to figure out exactly what works and what doesn't, and he found it wasn't until some acoustic paneling was added to walls in certain places did the sound get acceptable. He said it never reached the level they have have achieved in their store and customers' homes, and it was disappointing to be demonstrating equipment that you know should be sounding a lot better, especially very expensive equipment.Joe
zx
clarkjohnsen,I think the situation at HE 2006 was better than you are imagining.
As I'd seen so many 600 to 2000W amplifiers, I was curious about the power availability and the two vendors I spoke to (MBL and ARC) said the power was not a problem in quantity or quality at all- they could obtain up to 40Amps per outlet and even three phase if necessary. I In every room, there were high end power conditioners and many cables included what I assumed were RF filter, damping rings, and the like.
I'm sure the conditions vary show to show, but at HE2006, apparently the power situation was not a detriment.
Plus I think any vendor with show experience would be assume a poor power situation and brought piles of compensatory gear.
Cheers,
For instance, all the blowback and interference room-to-room. Nor am I sanguine about the ability of "power conditioners" to eliminate these unusual complications. I did not however attend HE2006.
clarkjohnsen,Going in, I had the same qualms as you concerning the power at this kind of show, but relying on the two vendors' assesmment, the quality was not seen as a problem in this case.
Power conditioners are not my favourite solution either- my Audio Research stuff definitely doesn't benefit- except in security against power disasters, but these fellows showing their $100,000+ systems thought all was well and I defer to the expert opinion that the quality as well as quantity of the electrons were acceptable. If the power had been notably poor- or even marginal, the tendency would be for the vendors to complain and they could then blame the power for anything lacking in their repsective gear. This was not the case plus I believe the vendors came prepared for the worst.
"Blowback" I'm not familiar with, but there was substantial acoustic interference between some rooms as sound pressures were generally high.
Serious power devices: I saw in the Isoclean room a tempting and beautifully made electrical subpanel especially for audio- all heavy solid copper and gold plating inside- in a substantial -and lockable! box and only $1,400.
Cheers,Bambi B
Unless you're talking about something new, the Isoclean breaker box is $3950.
Brian Walsh,I'm not sure, but think Isoclaen makes a full main service panel with breakers of high cost- high relative to a Home Depot main panel at $200 or $300, but this was a quite small sub-panel and I'm reasonably certain it was in the $1400 range. Odd, as I'm looking at the Isoclean flyer I picked up and it doesn't list any panel. It does list their $3,800 power cord.
BTW, This was the same room with the mesmerizing 833 Wavac monoblock amplifiers ($69,000) driving the Acapella Violon speakers ($48,000). And I'm not sure that I liked the speakers especially but they may be incredible and really an acquired taste.
The Isoclean subpanel really was like a magic box with a dull light grey, rectangular exterior and inside is all copper and gold. I thought at $1400 it seemed expensive but I admit it was by far the most beautiful subpanel I've ever seen. I saw a lot of $150 cryoed outlets too, but the subpanel really strut it's stuff.
Should have had a combination lock rather than a key,..
Cheers,
This reminds me of the Old Sahara solution ... supply extra power from diesel generators, via large gauge wire that people walked on or drove over.Wonder how stable the power is from a diesel generator?
< < power was not a problem in quantity or quality at all - they could obtain up to 40 amps per outlet and even three phase if necessary > >I've always wanted to build amps with 3-phase power supplies. Now I know who I can sell them to -- people who live at the Sheraton Gateway in Los Angeles!
3 phase choke input!
A full-wave three-phase rectification system requires filter chokes that are 35 times smaller (!) than single-phase full-wave rectifiers.
How about air core chokes? Post regulation or no?
Ah, yes! Air-core chokes. Such exquisite linearity!For a typical solid-state power amp output stage one might need somthing in the range of 10 to 30 mH. A big iron-core choke of that value might have 0.1 or 0.2 ohms DCR, but an air core would have ten times (!) as much.
But with 3-phase power, we would only need 0.3 to 1.0 mH. It would be easy to use an air-core choke of that value and keep the DCR down to low levels.
The only problem is our potential customer base of people that live at the Sheraton Gateway in Los Angeles. That's a pretty small customer base. So I have an even better idea. Let's make a line of electronics that runs directly off of DC. We can sell them to people that have solar panels on their roofs. It would be easy to run +/- 40 VDC lines to the stereo system, plus we would have a bigger customer base to sell to.
Let's build it!
You know Charles, it is really a shame that real audio projects cannot be brought forth on some part of the internet. It is all just criticism and 'give it to me free' , even though everyone knows that nothing else in this world is free. For some reason, most people still think that they can get 'perfect sound forever' on a beer budget. ;-)
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Kimber room- I posted this on Hi Rez forum, so will not repeat myself here, but in short, this is quite possibly the most realistic reproduction of sonic events that I've ever heard.The other room that was beyond my previous experience was the Caliburn turntable/Berning/Peak. And while my friend was raving about the Peak speakers, my contention is that almost any speakers at the show would have sounded equally good if driven by that source.
Last night, I reread Michael Fremer's review in the January Stereophile and point for point, I get it. Microscopic detail is my thing, and I've never heard it done to this extent. Fantastic.
Many other rooms sounded good, but in many cases, the amount of money represented should have blown me away- and they didn't. So my awards would go to the following:
Bang for the buck 1: DCM, maker of Time Windows, my first good speaker. They had a $1000 speaker driven by Jolida CD player and Jolida integrated amp. Easily the best bang for the buck at the show. I could happily live with this sound- and it wouldn't even cover a speaker cable in some other rooms.
Bang for the buck 2: Moscode amp and Joseph Audio speakers- each a little over 4K. Great.
Bang for the buck 3: Brooks Berdan's small room with his son as host. Ayre and Vandersteen. I'm pretty much sold on the Ayre universal disk player at this point.
Non-audiophile music room 1: Audio aero, these guys were rocking out with Tool and Neil Young and they played the new Red Hot Chili Peppers at my request (something that was refused in another room that shall remain nameless).
Non-audiophile music room 2: Zu Audio had a bunch of LPs including Legendary Pink Dots, about whom I talked to them for awhile, then they played an old Marty Robbins LP they had at my request.
Best demo: Music direct had a demo set up comparing 2 tonearms, same turntable, using the same cartridge and amplification and they could A/B them on the same record. Never heard the isolated effect of a tonearm before. The more expensive one easily bettered the cheaper one.
There were lots and lots of turntables. In pretty much every high dollar room, there was a turntable source. As I said above, the Caliburn was stunning, other than that, the random sonics of the hotel rooms really meant more than the source. This is to say, some rooms with CD players sounded better than other rooms with turntables.
What I missed: planar speakers. Maybe I missed a room somewhere, but I did not see a single set of planar speakers. Personally, these are far more to my taste than the SET/horns that I did see. Are planars now out of fashion for some reason?
I voted the Usher room Best Sound at Show and Best Value.... The Chord room came second, the Globe Audio Marketing room third...."Missing: Conrad Johnson, Magico, Sonus Faber, Quad, Boulder, Magnapan, Martin Logan."
I saw some Quad 'stats (I think) at the show.... Took pics of them....
"Coolest looking: Von Gaylord liquid cooled amps."
Nah, it was the phono cartridge that was illuminated bright blue.... Have pic of that too (but I hold my breath on how it came out)....
...as I still recall how nice and sweet the sound was in the Usher room at he2003. I am sure some of this was the fact that they make the full system themselves, and that their amps are class A. As I recall everything was a good value, consistent with their origin, and construction was nice.Time will tell. If I were a dealer I would carry their line...
on Usher. Their speaker line is awfully damned impressive, and their pricing is quite aggressive. They will be a formidable force in the market place in the very near future.
My only complaint is the stand mount speakers (including the stands themselves) look just like the Sonus Faber Electa Amators (albeit much cheaper), and the amps look just like Threshold's units....
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nt
My speaker building site
for different folks, I guess. See my show report below on this page, but I enjoyed basically ALL the single-driver/quasi single-driver speakers at the show.As usual, things sound very different right off the bat, but once your ears/mindset adjust to the unique presentation, warts and all, I still see them as very viable alternatives to those folks who dig it.
Did you get to check out the Edgarhorn room? I sadly missed the time deadline..
Yes, went to the Edgar horn room a number of times. Seems like a nice guy. He shared with Belkin and they had an open bar the whole weekend. Cannot complain about that!
This is the kind of waffling, weaselly, confused, rambling and inept reporting that keeps me from registering on this site and keeps manufacturers from taking audiophiles like you seriously.
So where's your report? Perhaps you have some observations to share about shows held there in Malaysia?
n
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Boo!
... the report that you put so much time and effort into ... you know, to share
your observations of this (or any other) event with those unable to attend.
Perhaps you could provide us with a link or two to your contributions?
æNormal is just a setting on my dryer.
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Another pompous jerk missed.
See ya!Bye-bye.
Don't let the door ...
My daughers made the DVD rental picks this weekend. One pick, a musical, depite my initial reservations, turned out to be a real gass! In fact there was a line from one of the tunes that came to mind upon reading your post, something that I thought might be great advice for you ... "Keep it happy, keep it snappy, keep it gay".That said regarding registering I guess I'd have to agree with you on that one ... perhaps you're not quite ready to emerge from the closet, and posting less couldn't hurt either!
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
You don't want to register, so no one's keeping you here.Frankly your comments were from out of left field and not needed.
If you are a manufacturer, I hope your creations are nicer than you seem to be as a person.
Wonder what kept Sonus faber out of the show, given the strong review of the new Amati....
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