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This was my fourth (?) show in NYC. I really enjoy the HE shows, like a kid in a candy shop. Here are some thoughts I'd like to share - comments welcome, of course.Venue: I like the Hilton since it's 2 blocks from my office and I can park there for free. Also, I know the layout and can move around quickly. The biggest drawback is elevator capacity. The Grand Hyatt was pretty good, though. I only attended Sunday, but there was no evelvator capacity problem. The rooms, for hotel rooms, seemed to work well acoustically, and I heard a lot of good sound at the show. I think the rooms generally added bloat in the upper-bass/lower mid range, but that could have been the gear, I suppose. There was a lot of leakage from adjacent rooms (why I prefer pre-war hotels), and many exhibitors kept their doors open for air, but got noise as an added bonus.
Attendance: On Sunday, at least, the place was empty. My brother and I made our apologies to Mom early and off to the show we went. No waiting at 9:55 for our barcodes to be scanned. Room access was easy, with only a few SRO rooms. Because of the small crowd, exhibitors gladly played my own CDs. I hope the show did well financially, but unless it was packed on Friday and Saturday, I fear the worst.
Exhibitors: Many past exhibitors were absent, audio as well as video, but with video barely represented at all. I didn't mind this, but if the show is to survive, they need to bring back Sony, Samsung, etc., so the "lifestyle" crowd and the press will again show interest. Frankly, I'd prefer two separate shows, one audio 2 channel, and one video/MCH. The upside of the reduced size was that I got to almost everything I wanted to see and more, although I still missed the live performances and some of the big demos (Krell, Sound by Singer, etc.). It was cool to meet John Atkinson and Bob Deutsch (sp?).
Quality of the Demo Rooms: As usual, ran the gamut (and it was nice to see GamuT there, too!). Here are a few highlights:
For cost-no-object demos, a few stood out. The TAD room was impressive, both visually and audibly. Smooth, realistic natural sound, effortless dynamics beyond what is sane, with only a touch of coloration. The source selections, however, made this demo irrelevent to most real-world consumers (custom modded reel-to-reel deck with special 15 i.p.s. tapes, and a CD mastered using the speakers being demo'd).
For the first time at any show, I really enjoyed Gershman Acoustics' room, fed by Sim Audio gear. Very liquid, musical and goose-bump inducing.
Merlin's VSMs also sounded wonderful, but they always do.
AudioEngine's little powered speakers were a surprise, at $350/pr, are the best iPod/computer speaker I've heard.
My long-time fave Silverline Audio was there. Unlike several years ago, when Alan Yeung brought his fabulous Boleros ($8K/pr) and a custom made SET integrated, he went low-budget and light weight with a $600 pair of monitors and $1200/pr Prelude miniature towers. Both of these produced a huge sound stage with hard-to-believe bass extension and bloom. Equally impressive were Alan's theatrics, in which he moved the monitors from stands to the hotel room's night tables - with no major shift in sound, and then inside of the night table on shelves closed on all sides but the front - still very little change in sound! And the thing has a rear port!!! The Preludes were also impressive, sounding bigger and deeper than the monitors. In all, the Silverline sound was apparent - smooth, dynamic, extended, not harsh and with a very large (if not not highly defined) sound stage. Amazing value for the buck.
I didn't listen too much to the Cayin room, but I was interested in two static displays - the CD50 tube-based entry level CDP, $950, and a soon-to-be-released tube USB DAC (also with standard digital inputs) with remote and headphone jack, that will list for $800, and it looked stunning! When asked if I'd be better off with this DAC with a basic CD transport or the CD50, the importer would only reply how good the new DAC would be.
I've never heard Wilson Watt/Puppys before, but in both the Lamm room and the BAT room, they sounded like all they are cracked up to be, and ought to be for the money.
Another off-the-charts value proposition was speaker maker DCM. The tall, slender and deep towers sounded like they cost way more than their $1000/pr price. Truely stunning, musical sound that invited further listening. Add to that that they were being driven by a modest 15 tube watts/channel from Jolida and Jolida's sub $1K JD100 CD player, and DCM clearly has a winner on its hands.
Most innovative speaker was the Proclaim Audio DMT-100. Besides compressed sand orbs for each of the three drivers, the mids and tweeters are on machined aluminum arms that can be adjusted for time delay, hieght, even different balance between the drivers. The company also makes an outboard adjustable xover for the DMT100, allowing further tweaking of the sound, which can then be locked in with fixed value resistors. A tru tweakers dream (or nightmare). They sounded wonderful, clear, detailed, smooth and extended. Very unbox like, which figures.
MBL, which has been hit-or-midss at these shows, was a hit this year, with very natural, uncompressed and open sound from their multi-kilobuck top of the line system. I think this is the first year they displayed only 2 channels of sound.
Another big hit was the Dynaudio Confidence C1 monitors. Of course they had the smooth mids and highs Dynaudio is known for, but these smallish stand-mounters could put out some serious deep bass! Also in the Dynaudio room was a static display of a new entry level Sim Audio Moon CD Player that will list for ~$1350.
I could go on, but the theme was two-fold: High end, no-holds-barred multi-kilobuck systems, and super-high bang-for-the-buck entry level gear. A great show, and I look forward to the next!
There were some dissappointments. The Lominchay horn hybrids looked beautiful, but produced cupped-hand sound only a true horn-o-phile could tolerate.
Follow Ups:
I did not get out much this time as I had to man the Listening and Measurements room. I also often only got a short listen to most rooms so don't take my opinion as gospel. Overall, this venue was a lot better than last time in NY. I would say LA handled the people better and I did like the mass marketers TV land rooms on the main floor for a quick peek. But the listening rooms were clearly better this year than the past two. And while it is a pain to be handing out tips all over the place in NY, it feels good to be in the city.Friday was great on the people volume side as was Sunday. The pace was high but you could get into rooms. Saturday was a madhouse and I guess that is good to have that kind of interest.
Overall I think the sound was a lot better, not just the rooms but the setups and synergy.
I liked the Rives room with the sound panels, good sound, I did not check the untreated room. The speakers were Talon.
Cabasse did not do it for me this time.
I missed the TAD/Pioneer room mostly because I already made up my mind I like them. I have heard them at a couple of shows now and while I would have trouble identifying any specific feature like "clear highs" or whatever, I simply like being in front of them. I missed stopping in and seeing Andrew Jones and checking his latest oddball CD mix.
Magico was Ok, They had an odd shaped room with a cove and that probably pulled a little imaging out of them. I think they missed the bottom half octave which was supposed to be one of the amazing things about that small driver.
The horns did not do anything for me. All the horns.
The Zu room has great guys and I like what they are doing. Sound was not for me this time. Not sure why they did the room at an angle as most of the rooms were fine head on.
Years ago I thought Dynaudio was over valued but the last couple of shows I have found they sound very good.
High on the sex scale this year was the GamuT and Chord.
Bolzano did not do it for me this time.
Moscode sounds good but I only got a peek.
Sorry I missed the Cayin room. Last year I decided that I needed to know first hand what it was like to have a tube amp and bought a Cayin EL34. It was assembled about as well as amps come with good components. I save money on a sane enclosure: no 1/2" front panels. Sounded great, fab for the price. Almost kept it but I had my eye on some scan-speak woofers.
Yes, I am scrolling Stereophile blogs to remind me.
Gamut was interesting. First, I really like Lars and Franc. When I first went into the room I thought the sound was busy. Again, I could not put my finger on why or what. I went back later and was really impressed. I ran off to get my ref disk and ran through the ten tracks. Every cut was amazing. The guitar track was clearer than I have ever heard it. On other tracks I heard highs I have not heard in a long time. I have lost a fair amount of my upper range, so for me, a lot of tweeters have an "everything else up there" sound above around 9K. In the Gamut room I could very clearly hear crisp and definite individual pings and bells. I think the very slight issue I heard had to do with room and setup. If I got it right, for around $25k I could get the speakers, amp and CD. That would do it for me.
Proclaim did not do it for me this time.
Heard about 30 seconds of a smaller Wilson in some room, great as always.
I am really tempted to troll for Andy Singer but I won't. Never made it to his room. I also missed some new planer speaker I wanted to see. Never made it to the ballroom to buy new CDs, something I like to do at the shows.
John Marks: I want a set of every track I heard you play. I loved them all. Time for JMR to come out with a test CD. (BTW, John got the tube vs SS test right).
Kal: Thanks for sitting in one of our sessions and adding input. (Kal also got the tube vs SS test right)
Ken Kessler: You really should try a bottle of that wine I sent over. Franc from Gamut swears by it and I have to agree (Unfortunately, I had a little too much and cannot remember the name, Italian Vella-something where the grapes are aged one season before pressing. Lucky we were walking back to the hotel.) (Ken was too busy with the ladies to take our amp test).
John Atkinson: Amazing you make yourself so available. Best in show for me was getting to use your SACD player all weekend. I flew out of bed Sunday to get an extra couple of hours to run through my SACDs. Thanks! (OK, and the Gamut room).
Great show!
To me, GamuT sounded a bit too thick in the lower-mids/upper bass. The Cabasse sounded better once the source material changed.I liked the Proclaim, but their room was a challenge (too many angles on the cieling).
Moscode amps always sound good at the shows. Each time, with different speakers, they seem to bring out the best in them.
The Chord/KEF combo was one of the best at the show. IMHO.
Rives demo was very good. To those who noticed the dual-amps in the corrected room, this was unavoidable: The Rives Parc hi/lo passes the signal, so it needs two amps. Nothing underhanded was attempted. The two rooms were night and day different. I tell you, if I dropped 25 large on Talons plus all that great VAC gear and got sound like the untreated room, I'd be pissed.
I was not in attendance at HE 2007, but I've noticed that some people actually preferred the sound of the untreated room. I wonder if this simply comes down to preference, or if it is because many people are not accustomed to hearing music reproduced without first reflections, lumpy bass etc. Kind of like how after an ISF calibration of a TV, many people don't like the corrected picture at first, but one they grow accustomed to it, they can't do without.
I would agree on the Gamut room, but it got a whole lot better with my CDs.
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