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Another great day RMAF. It was crowded but never got log-jammed. I got a good listen at a number of rooms, I hope I can recall them all.
Zu Audio is interesting in that they are the Apple Computer of the audio world. They are different and people like them and they go their own way. I heard a couple of Zu rooms today, the main room was ok and I did not connect well with the music or environment. I got to the Red Wine room with Zu speakers early in the morning and the guy was grooving to some music all by himself. This was odd in that this guy was showing gear all yesterday and when most people would be burned out, he turns on the system and relaxes. For me, Zu is not the last word in detail or clarity or balance. I don’t think the sound stage was that good either. But whenever I am listening I really enjoy it. This is really what it is all about, right? Just enjoying music?
I made a second stop to the GR Research room. On the first stop they had some music playing that should never have entered the building. This time was a better experience and the person in charge let me turn the volume down to a reasonable level, always a good thing. I cannot tell you the number of rooms where the first words are “can you turn it down a little?” The name of the speakers are something like SuperBee. They look a lot like the Linkwitz Orion with open baffle but a quick check at the rear of the speaker and you can see this similarity is co-incidence as the designs are very different. Overall a very good sounding speaker. I wish I could have played my test tracks. They need to work on making the room more welcoming and encourage people to run their own tracks. But overall a good system.
The NAD room was cool because I got to hear their new high end digital amp. I wish I could repeat the technology description, something like a direct couple digital drive. The speakers were PSB. I am a real fan of the PSB alpha but these floor standers in the NAD room were not working for me. This is a disappointment as I really want to hear what the new NAD amp can do.
There was one room which shall remain nameless that had some small company hocking their new high end turntable. They were very excited about it and it was nice to see a young team so enthusiastic about the first product. Now I am not a big vinyl guy but I took time to hear them. So they put on a pleasant orchestra LP and about 30 seconds into it I hear a definite warble in the speed. At this point I am thinking it must be me, this simply would not happen on a high end TT. But I heard it again two or three more times. Something was amiss. I hope they discovered it and worked it out before the crowds arrived.
The McIntosh room is always a pleasure palace of audiophile lust. It was early and they let me play my test disk. Right off I found the image was way off and told the guy I thought the phase was off. He gave me the “yeah right” signal but then offered to do a quick check to appease “the customer”. Red-red, black-to-black, red-to-black WHAT!! He was all red faced as one speaker phase was reversed. He should have picked that up. Shows he is not paying attention to his own sound. Once that was resolved the whole system sounded great.
The Marantz room was good. They kept it simple and clean and it worked well. Not the last word in perfection here but good. I don’t recall the speakers.
Speaking of paying attention. If any company has the resources to build a great room it is Harmon. They get the fickled finger of fate award for outright failure. They have three rooms with equipment and all three sounded terrible. What a disappointment. Sitting in the Mark Levinson room was depressing. Come on guys, if 200 other small companies can sound good, you should be able to as well. And the worst part was that none of the reps in any of the rooms seemed to be aware of the sound quality. They show up and put all this expensive gear in the room and assume it will sound good. Ugh! Someone need to do a reality check on that team.
On the other hand, Jeff Joseph shows up by himself, sets up the right sized speakers for the room and smiles the whole time. Awesome speakers and probably the tightest and deepest bass I have ever heard from a 7” bookshelf. Overall a great listen.
I took a short trip into the Salk room and they were great. I have heard these before and liked them.
The Esoteric room was also a winner. Great sound from smallish speakers. I have not heard the TAD room yet as the room is hidden somewhere on the main level. I always like the TAD room because Andrew Jones has cool music and the speakers sound great.
I finally got a good listen in the Magico room. This is my third show where Magico has had a room and I had yet to get a decent listen. The speakers sounded great. But talking with Bob later about it he noted they were about the same level as the Wilson Sasha in sound. Maybe a different texture but in the same ultra high end range. So the Magicos are $68000 and the Sasha’s are $28000. Not a lot of thinking needed here. I would take the Wilsons. Maybe if I heard the Magicos for a longer time I would pull out the added value. This was, after all, a 30 minute session in a hotel room (don’t let that statement get out of context).
I heard the YG Accoustics in three rooms and all were a wreck. Don’t know why they had so much trouble but this was not their day. I know a lot of people consider them the top rung so I will give them another go at some other venue.
The Avalon room was fabulous as always.
I hit the Quad room twice. The first time I thought it pretty good. The second time it was not speaking to me. Not sure what was going on there but not the day for them.
When I walk into a room and see speakers with lots of drivers all over the front baffle, I prepare for the worst. A lot of people think they can plaster a bunch of drivers together and the more the merrier. I have heard few successes in this type of design. But Daedalus Audio seems to have pulled it off. There were three rooms with these all hardwood speakers (no MDF). Two of the rooms were ok but the third was a smaller room with what seemed like a less complex setup, I think it was some integrated amp and a CD player. It sounded great.
I had to poke into the Jumping Cactus room since they got the lead Stereophile blog from yesterday. They were interesting and engaging.
Once again there were a number of annoyances. So many rooms blast the music and I just cannot enter the room. The big room with the Wilson Sashas was playing some drum track so loudly they were bottoming out the woofers. What was that rep thinking? One room clearly had someone smoking in it recently. Many rooms had music that was just plain poor quality. At the end of the day I was in some room just pulling my test cd out of the player and some guy walks in and says “I would like to hear some none-audiophile music. I have been hearing audiophile music all day long and I want to just sit and hear normal music if you have it”. At first I chuckled but they I realized he was right. I was tired of all this power listening and I would just like to relax and hear something that will move me. Like the Zu guy in the first room I went to this morning. He was just groovin'.
P
My speaker building site
Follow Ups:
Don't attendees to RMAF know what hair dye and exercise is? Grizzle
and paunch city.
Well, a lot of Americans surely need to get more exercise and cut back on the carbs, me included. But hair dye? Now you're kinda creeping me out.
Hair dye creeps me out too, I agree. But all that white and grey
made me uneasy.
"On the other hand, Jeff Joseph shows up by himself, sets up the right sized speakers for the room and smiles the whole time. Awesome speakers and probably the tightest and deepest bass I have ever heard from a 7” bookshelf. Overall a great listen."
Agree, and even more surprising, the woofer is a 5.5-incher!
Yeah that No 7.One of a kind speaker.Proves its not the size of the woofer thats important but what the designer does with it.To start with, a mysterious crossover.
Wish Mr Joseph would design a sub 1k speaker for those of us reeling from the financial downturn.I am sure he can come up with musical bass and mid from even a 4 inch driver.
Cheers
Bill
It just *thinks* it's a larger woofer!
Is that the W15CH or the W15CY (or some custom variant of either)? The hex motor in the CH would seem to have some advantages with less masking and reflection from the motor structure, but I'm not sure how significant that would be in practice.
howcum?
...regards...tr
nt
My speaker building site
I was there all three days. Sunday is always my favorite day because the crowds are later and I got there right at opening to get a couple of rooms to myself. I won't list the bad rooms, but there were plenty that absolutely sucked. However, I've learned not to spend more than a few seconds in the bad room so that my ears are spared from much abuse.
My favorite room of the show was the Avalon/Rowland room, featuring Avalon's new Transcendent and Rowland's brand new Model 625 Class AB stereo amplifier. The Gamut room was very good as was the Playback Designs/DarTZeel room. Esoteric was very good, but I always feel that they could show off their electronics much better with someone elses speakers. The Wilson Sophia IIIs sounded the best that I've ever heard any Wilson sound, driven by dCS and VTL. A really pleasant surprise for me was the Luxman room, that had speakers that looked like snails, but sounded way, way better than they looked.
Now we know why the high end is dying. the 10 was 8k back in the day as I recall.
Was there any correlation in sound quality with rooms that addressed AC treatment/filtering and room treatment vs those that didn't (at all or as much)?
ET
I thought it was time to change my signature line
I can say that the participants in the Magico/Marutani/Audio Salon room were all in agreement that the room treatment made the room listenable. There was very bad slap echo in the room before treatment. As for conditioning, there was conditioning on most gear, although my tape deck was not using it. We put quite a bit of filtration into our equipment so it may not be as noticeable as with some other gear.
I could not tell as there was not AB testing. I think about 50% of rooms had some AC filter of some sort. I think one of the reasons they keep coming back to this hotel is because it has reasonably stable voltage. I recall the hotel in NY some years back where the people who were checking noted huge voltage drops that power conditioners could not fix.
P
My speaker building site
I traveling back to Brazil, but these two days for me the best:
Evolution acoustics +dartzell, maybe the best
dynaudio saphira+ T+A M10daedalus audio +modwrigt
Aacapella + einsten
I was disapoited with:
yg + soulution
marten coltrane + ongaku
FM acoustics
Impresioned but til without a opnion :
vac
Tri
onee big monotube amplifier mono maybe wave..
Emille
But the big problem I think was the music played almsot all room: one guitar with steel cord, this is the best way to fatigue.
"guitar with steel cord"
one of the best dinners i have ever had was in
a small restaurant in dublin,ireland.
actually i cannot remember what i ate ( probably lamb
or beef or linguine with seafood)
but a young man was playing clasiccal guitar with nylon stings ( i believe)
as i said, one of the best meals ever
Excellent write-up. Thanks!
My conclusion: some people like it!
"What did the Romans ever do for us?"
i mean besides; water systems, sewage systems, roads, order, .... i love that line!...
but i do have to say HPs speach gave me some great deep thinking and concerns about the future and direction of high end audio, in combo with what i ran into in a lot of the rooms. to me i just want a system that refects real music, and gets me excited about the music to the point where i forget about the system. to me it seems that way too many systems presented by the high end advoid this and sound way too "hi-fi" like for my tastes, they dont sound anything close to real, let alone get me involved in the music. and speaking of the music, get sick of the same old hi-fi tracks; jazz with 3 or less instruments or special effects whatever, i mean does anyone really listen to this stuff at home? (when no one else is looking?). however there were a few good rooms with some good music in all fairness.
but now the real problem, it seems that the high end is starting to levitate higher and higher above the earth, soon we will not be able to reach it, let alone hear it. some of this is not new, but count how many people you see at high end audio that are under 50 or even new to the hobby, we NEED to get new life into it, and very SOON! way too much focus on "soundstage", speakers with freq response tilted towards to high end (older men loose high freq hearing), fancy looks, sky is the limit prices, and so on. i think the industry needs to promote itself to the general public somehow, and get away from falling deeper into Harry Potter lauguage and strangeness before no non-audiophile will talk to us again...
I was really disappointed I did not hear that speech. I was highlighted on my plan but beer got in the way and I forgot.
As for high end, you comment took me back the the 1970s standing in Pacific Stereo lusting after the Marantz 2270. I was way out of my price range then. Today I lust after Ayre, Pass, Bryston, Mcintosh and even Marantz still. They are all out of my price range still.
P
My speaker building site
back about 1980 in Palatine IL, i lusted after Klipschorn speakers driven by a tube amp and playing "Starship Trooper" from "The Yes Album" (on LP or course. And yes they were way out of my price range, but now I own a pair of 1980 Klipsch LaScalla's and a tube amp. and quite frankly the only speaker i have EVER heard to surpass it is the Avent Guarde Duo.
sorry you missed the session...
I started listening to my mother's classical music with an AC-powered Victrola. What a jump in the state of the art for her!
The future of hi-fi is all around us: our children. They have gone mobil. As I understand it, the biggest impediment is designing speakers that can be driven by micro volts and amps. (current) and sound good.
I suspect this, too, will come to pass.
By the way, my favorite piece(s) have just one cello, written by some old fart by the name of Bach.
"What did the Romans ever do for us?"
speakers that can be driven by micro volts and amps = horns...
not that i understand all this need for mobility and micro-size, but accepting that, at some pt it should be possible to provide digital file in extreame hi-res = to studio quality, and higher quality earbuds or whatever to provide increase quality sound, the question is will anyone outside the audio community care?
I think the same thing on those Zu Essence speakers with Redwine. Nice combo and nice to listen to. I think the point of the GR room is to show off the Tranquility Dac. I thought it was all computer audio in there. I was also excited to hear the nad M2 but you're right, those PSBs just didn't work.
Funny, I know the room with the tt you're talking about. On day one, we all noticed the arm tracking back and forth.
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