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CAS Day 2

24.4.209.249

Posted on August 16, 2014 at 17:33:18
M-dB
Audiophile

Posts: 295
Location: Nor Cal
Joined: June 26, 2014
I'd like to thank all the participants for lugging all that stuff and becoming the new brick and mortar on wheels. It always impresses me, I saw a picture of that piece but the scale and detail in person can be surprising. Constellation's new integrated quickly comes to mind

It's also impressive how these people can ring decent sound out of some absurd spaces. The most glaring was Ultimate Audio's room showing the stunning Sound Lab Majestics. Not just a two dimension square room but a three dimension cube. And still they managed to wow the crowds.

There were plenty of very interesting speaker and amplification combinations that, IMO, were stymied by electronic pad wielding digitights controlling their sources with ultimate mobility. I caught myself relaxing in the rooms spinning LPs and working my way through the rest and I wasn't alone.

For me the system that spoke to me was by a manufacture who wasn't really pulling out any stops. I left room 338 wondering why they even made the effort to show but truly thankful they did. Kent English and two others hauled out of the Pass Labs warehouse in Auburn a fresh looking Technics SP10 turntable, a air of their class A 50 watt .8s, and a pair of Kent built Jensen Imperial cabinets loaded with a single Tannoy Gold driver. No exotic cables, no power conditioning, tweakless. At one point this mid 50s design was belting out some serious electronica with aplomb as well as some delicate orchestral work with subtle Tympani that simply sounded correct. This could very well be the speaker for life. You be the judge.



 

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The Pass Lab room with the Tannoy Golds was also my favorite room. Nice turntable too! NT, posted on August 16, 2014 at 22:48:43
jnr
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theaudiobeatnik.com

 

RE: The Pass Lab room with the Tannoy Golds was also my favorite room. Nice turntable too! NT, posted on August 17, 2014 at 05:09:01
fantja
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Excellent comments guys.

 

RE: CAS Day 2, posted on August 17, 2014 at 17:06:55
Jive Turkey
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All I can say is that I'm glad I'm back home spinning vinyl on my system. I did the whole show in three hours and there wasn't much that impressed me a whole lot other than physically and monetarily.

The Sound Lab room was nice until the music became louder and then it all compressed together.

The big Usher speakers were fairly nice on Rouge Audio amps.

The Sony speaker room sounded much better when they played the Clearaudio table and JC3 preamp than when playing the digital server.

I liked the Pear Audio Blue turntable, but I'm not a fan of Dynaudio speakers. They were playing the Kid Thomas table, though they identified it as the Kid Howard, if I'm not mistaken. I'd buy the Thomas, but it's out of my price range at the moment thanks to a new Sony projector. No....I take that back. It's still too expensive for me. But I do want one.

The Robin Hood was on the other end of the room with Triangle speakers, but I didn't get to see it in operation as they didn't have a phono stage for it at the moment.

I poked my head into every room, but it really doesn't take but a minute to tell good sound from mediocre sound after being to dozens of shows over the years.

Not really wanting to go back and hear anything in particular a second time, I decided to beat the traffic of the 49'ers game and head south.



See ya. Dave

 

I went to several presentations on day 2....., posted on August 17, 2014 at 19:32:23
FrankC
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Posts: 1230
Location: Silicon Valley
Joined: April 6, 2000
All had nice "topics" stated in the program, but turned out to be nothing more than sale pitches for products. And I was truly disappointed with that.

I went to a seminar on the direction of computer audio today, and it was an 80-year old guy pitching to a crowd of old guys about how the machines his company in Montana builds is better than anyone else's as a source. I was 5 minutes late, and I thought I had walked into the wrong room. Computer Audio? You would think that there would be a roomful of 20-somethings & 30- somethings....and his claims, well, take it with a grain of salt.

Another one I went to was about room acoustics, and it was Amarra trying to see you their MacBook-based music playing software. If you buy the top of the line version, you get this room measuring software. Buy yourself this microphone, you can then use the program to basically "EQ" the computer-based playback. "No need for any ugly room tuning devices", the speaker said. So I pointed out that the entire premise of his assumption is that everyone only uses computer as a source. And those physical deficiencies would still exist when we play other sources such as vinyl or CD.

The Genesis room hyped about playing the "mother" disc (the metal disc that makes the mold that makes scampers), but it turned out the artist was playing an 1/2 inch tape and promoting/selling her album.

Nothing wrong with any of these, but the program was just a bit misleading, and I am dubious about some of the things being said in these "seminars".

The best and most educational demo has to be the Blue Coast Recording demo of a live recording and immediate playback. Cookie talked and demonstrated techniques used during mastering to "manipulate" the master. That was very interesting.

I spent quite a bit of the day in the Wilson/ARC room. It is quite a setup, not the most expensive, only middle of the line components from ARC (SP-20 pre, Ref-75 amp, CD player) and Transparent Super cables. It sounded mediocre on a few occasions playing CDs brought by someone, but spectacular at other times.And I finally figured out why. During the demo, the guy from Wilson is playing these master tapes that he had obtained (as an industry insider) off his digital recorder into the DAC section of the CD player. The material is "unobtanium" to the rest of us. So even if you had brought that system home, it would never sound that good with the stuff in you music library. ;-)

I like the product, streamer/player that Olive is delivering. It is ridiculously cheap in Audiophile terms, and is a very nice product. I'm considering buying one to hook up for the living room.

FrankC


 

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