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Here's the first of a few installments. Apologies for the tardy and
less-than-stellar pics ... technical challenges there and a real job
back at home have conspired to make this somewhat challenging.
Cain & Cain Company, spinning vinyl on Terry’s Teres.
Cardas Audio Room featured deHaviland Electric, Amazon, Morch, Dynavector (Karat), and Wilson Benesch.
Art Audio’s big room featured several models of Ars Aures loudspeakers and Dynamic Design A/V wiring. The 845-based Quartet (capable of 50 wpc)were doing push-pull that sounded damn close to single-ended when I visited. The soundstage went wall to wall and then some! Ensemble transport, Gill Audio Elise DAC and Elana pre did their part. The speakers are described as “first-order network, coupled cavity, transmission line bass and terribly underpriced.” No, I didn’t ask. But I later looked up the price on the larger one: $18,995
Here’s a nice SOTAwith a Tri-Planer arm in the Classic Audio Reproductions room, featuring (of course) Atma-Sphere toobs. I’ve never heard a bad CAR room at any show. This one was no exception. Very natural sound. I didn’t want to leave.
A pic from the highly touted BAT/Avalon/Tara Labs room. “Best of Show?” I don’t know. My ears had shut down by the time I made it to that floor that day. It was, however, apparent to my body, that the Clearaudio Champion Magnum was doing a great job of propelling the cut in play: SRV’s “Tin Pan Alley.”
The passageway between Thigpen’s two rooms was … erm … modified … to create an appropriate enclosure for his infrasonic sub. While chatting with Keith Herron later (who’s also now venturing into speaker production) he mused, “I wish I had thought of that!”
Last year’s hero, this year’s (comparatively speaking) couch potato, is looking damn happy to have let go of the reins. Here’s Ron along with the CAR T-3 speakers and that's an early Teres ‘table.
Dave Adams and the The Dowdy Lama (here's the mesh-plated 2A3) teamed up to show off their latest. Dave's speaker employs a custom-ized PHY driver … experimental at this point; he's hoping to bring product to market within a year … prices to start at $15,000. A recent Josh Stippich creation did preamp duty in this rather spartan room. Overall. there was a vast sense of musical space and and amazing conveyance of the size/scale of instruments.
The High Water Sound room was another treat. Horning Loudspeakers and Tron electronics. DaVincini Audio Labs tonearm on TW/Acoustic's Raven. All on a Silent Running Audio rack. In a word, excellent.æ
RMAF '05 photos and commentary courtesy of audioasylum.com
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Follow Ups:
The more description the better!
"Let me help..."
Does it spin to the rhythm?
"Let me help..."
You can learn more at the site linked below.
æ
I don't have the requisite attic or basement, nor the spare $13,000.This is an interesting claim, "...the rotary woofer has enough acoustic output to move a open door back and forth .5” between 1 and 5Hz! It has enough output to find resonance frequencies of walls and ceilings in a room. It requires no equalization to achieve flat response to below 1Hz."
This is an interesting claim as well, "Microphones have low frequency capability that far exceeds the low frequency output of current subwoofers. In many cases infrasonic information is in a recording, it is not being reproduced by the sound system."
I wonder if this is potentially DIY technology?
"Let me help..."
> > "I wonder if this is potentially DIY technology?"Well, all I know is that after the show I was scheming with another acquaintance exhibiting there (doing diffusor panels that looked cool) about a homebrew version. If it takes Bruce $13k for a prototype a homebrewer probably can't realistically expect to match the results, but I bet it's possible to get something that 'works'.
Time to scope out the offerings in RC helicopter linkages.....
> > Time to scope out the offerings in RC helicopter linkages...How does the device operate? Is the blade pitch varied by servo control? Is the rotation speed varied per the music source as well?
"Let me help..."
In the Thigpen unit we saw at RMAF, the rotational speed is constant. I think he said a 1/3HP motor, but I'm not sure whether it's induction or dc - I'd guess induction as you can get them for a dime a dozen off the shelf. The pitch of the blades is driven by a standard magnet/voice-coil assembly connected to a standard amp (I think it was a Sumo, but I didn't look closely. Bruce wants/needs a dc-coupled amp as any AC-coupled amps roll off to early :-) ). Attached to the VC assembly are push-rods that connect to the aformentioned helicopter linkages which are attached to the blades themselves.
The one detail I don't remember is whether the magnet assembly rotated or not. I'd guess it did, as I can't imagine keeping gap tolerances to the VC if the magnet and VC were rotating wrt each other.
If I explained it well enough, you can readily understand the 'diy' reaction - brilliantly simple, but it seems to work extremely well. Watching the walls of the room pulse in-and-out was eye-opening to say the least.
BTW - I didn't hear the helicopter linkage comment directly but my friend did. I'm not sure whether that was only in the prototype or whether the 'real' unit used them or some custom linkages.
...$13k?!? Seems a bit steep. Obviously, it'll have to be sold based on performance--I have a hard time picturing high-zoot audio-geeks lining up to drop 13 large on something that looks like a DC motor out of a conveyor....Good luck to Bruce! Always glad to see a different take on things.
nt
My speaker building site
VERY nice pics.
And somehow devoid of a bunch of guys that look like.......like us! Thanks for the update. I'm ready for CES already.
Thanks, guys. Bruce, I gotta' tell ya' though, CES is looking less and
less interesting to me after two years of RMAF. You gotta' make it to
Denver next year.
æ
I'll make it a point to make it. Once again, nice job!
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