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Comments on HE2007

Posted by bondmanp (A) on May 14, 2007 at 13:33:39

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.

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