[OzarkTom]

Well, that is what my wife said, I was acting like a 12 year old.

Thanks Pez for inviting me to post. I do apologize to all the other AC'er's about being a party pooper. Paul invited me to the evening get together, but my wife and I was very worn out. Plus we were visiting my daughter and grandkids in Denver, they had just moved there last year. There was just too much going on.

First my tastes. I like as much detail, and as much naturalness, and speed as I vcan get without losing that magic. I feel there is a very fine line you have to toe. My home system at the moment is the Dodd tube buffered Virtue Sensation amp, Gallo Stradas, and two Infinity subs. The subs is probably the weakest link, but I have never been too picky when it comes to bass. I prefer no crossovers to retain the speed if possible, and I like direct driven amplified speakers if possible. My system had the magic before I had Jason of Virtue mod the caps with the Duelund Alexander caps. At the moment, magic is gone. Detail is wild, but I was warned at the RMAF show I need to put at least 300 more hours to burn them in. I hate burn-in periods.

I met bpape at the show, he was a customer of mine about 30 years ago in Davenport Iowa. It was great to see you Bryan. He still owns some of my favorite all-time speakers, the Acoustats with DD OTL amps. Lots of great memories were rehashed.

Next will be the rewards I will give out, more later.

[OzarkTom]

Since I first went to the CES show about 30 years ago, I can safely say this show was far better than that show. Room acoustics was worst, very few room treatments were ever seen, power was so bad that whole floors would totally black out at times. Usually by the end of the day, I had terrible headaches from the screechy systems. You could easily count on one hand the good systems, and that was for the whole show.

The Awards:

Best sound(magic)-four way tie

YG-Tenor room-400K
Amps 75K, pre-amp-50K, speakers 110K, Dac, 30K, ouch

Kaiser Kawero room-$120K
Beautiful German speakers

Luxman Vivid Audio75K

Estelon room

By Sunday, there were getting to be quite a few rooms that were getting the magic. Every system there was better on Sunday than Friday.

Most improved-tie
Merlin and MBL
I know Bobby was puling his teeth out on Friday, but by Sunday this system was a lot better. MBL had just shut off the US distributor and introducing all new products. at the show. Much better on Sunday.

Most consistant-
GR Research
With 90% of the system running on battery, GR takes this award. It always sounded great.

Most ridiculous priced accessory
Nordost AC power cord-13K
Another might have been the 30K speaker wires that someone told me about, but I never located those

Best Cheap and cheerful system
HSU Research
Mr Hsu probably was mocking the whole show with this system. He was showing a $300 pair of speakers with a $500 sub, and Onkyo receiver. Mr. Hsu was using Home Depot lamp cord wire. This system had magic, many attendees came away shaking their head on this one.

Best Bass-tie
GR Research
HSU Research, Hsu also have their $1800 sub there.
PTE-More on this later.

More awards later, bedtime.

[Rclark]

 HSU huh? Which subs of theirs did you hear? And were they using the MBM Midbass module? If so, what did you think of it?

[OzarkTom]

Sorry about the lack of pictures, that is not my forte either. Here is what I saw as the system that Mr. Hsu was playing.






He also had his biggest subs there, but he never mentioned a mid-bass sub while I was there. That could have been there. His $1495 sub was so unbelievable, I almost bought that one when he offered the demo for $995. I believe one of his previous customers from last year bought it.

[OzarkTom]

I had never heard of the Kaiser Kawero speakers, so I googled the name and people has had these speakers as best of show previously at the 2009 RMAF. There are also some rave reviews from the magazines on it. The inner components are the very expensive Duelund capacitors. The speakers are $66K. If I won the lottery, that might be the ones I buy. Small in stature so they would fit in a smaller sized room. Kaiser had the black version at the show, but here is a pic of the wooden ones. They look like a million dollars even in black.

I give these speakers the top craftsman award.
Just another high craft product from Germany.

[lonewolfny42]

Back in 2008-RMAF....Kaiser Kawero speakers with Master Sound electronics...their best showing....sound was excellent....large room...tube amps.




http://www.stereophile.com/rmaf2008/101208international/index.html

Back then....they were $50,000.00. Price has gone up a bit....

They were good this year as well....in a smaller room.

[bpape]

Good to see you again Tom.  It's been a LONG time.  Now that we've reconnected, I hope it's a much more frequent thing. 

Bryan

[taoggniklat]

HSU huh? Which subs of theirs did you hear? And were they using the MBM Midbass module? If so, what did you think of it?

They had the MBM there, but not hooked up. It was sitting in the back of the room.

[ted_b]

I had never heard of the Kaiser Kawero speakers, so I googled the name and people has had these speakers as best of show previously at the 2009 RMAF. There are also some rave reviews from the magazines on it. The inner components are the very expensive Duelund capacitors. The speakers are $66K. If I won the lottery, that might be the ones I buy. Small in stature so they would fit in a smaller sized room. Kaiser had the black version at the show, but here is a pic of the wooden ones. They look like a million dollars even in black.

I give these speakers the top craftsman award.
Just another high craft product from Germany.

Tom, sorry we didn't get a chance to meet up.  I should have sent you my cell number. 

So...don't forget to mention the stuff that was driving them...none other than the top shelf Concert Fidelity DAC, preamp and monoblocks (they had vinyl there too, but I forget the names).  MAsataka Tsuda (founder/developer) was again in attendance, as was Hajime Sato, his right hand man (VP marketing) and interpreter, as well as proprietor of Eastwind Imports.  Great stuff!  That's my preamp, btw, the Concert Fidelity CF-080.   

[eclein]

I'll have some HSU speakers pretty soon I hope, I have to hear what all these folks are flipping over.... Thanks Tom!!!

[rollo]

 Tom I resemble that remark.  Us sixty year olds still have our 19 year brain.  .
  Not surprised one bit by the HSU demo. As us seasoned vetrans know it is not the cost of the system but the synergy of such. Second the differences between the so called best of the best is a very narrow avenue.


charles
SMA
 

[TheChairGuy]

Little speakers (under 8" woofs) tend to sound better at all these shows....something we should all be aware of unless you have the luxury of larger rooms for your system.

I've never had that luxury - and found long ago that bigger speakers with big bass don't fit in well with modest areas allotted to it.

Treatments help, for sure - but, being realistic with what you have in a room helps more 

[Tyson]

chairguy - except for open baffle bass.  You can use OB based bass in a pretty darn small room, or even in odd-shaped rooms that have bad acoustic bass properties.  But, in general I agree with you - small spaces should use small(ish) speakers.

[bpape]

Treatments help, for sure - but, being realistic with what you have in a room helps more 

Couldn't agree more.  You've got to balance what the room will do to a speaker that works in that space. 

Bryan

[OzarkTom]

Good to see you again Tom.  It's been a LONG time.  Now that we've reconnected, I hope it's a much more frequent thing. 

Bryan

You got it Bryan, many more visits to come.

Tom

[OzarkTom]

Tom I resemble that remark.  Us sixty year olds still have our 19 year brain.  .
  Not surprised one bit by the HSU demo. As us seasoned vetrans know it is not the cost of the system but the synergy of such. Second the differences between the so called best of the best is a very narrow avenue.


charles
SMA
 

Yep Charles, you ate so right. Just stay away from those mirrors.

[OzarkTom]

Tom, sorry we didn't get a chance to meet up.  I should have sent you my cell number. 

So...don't forget to mention the stuff that was driving them...none other than the top shelf Concert Fidelity DAC, preamp and monoblocks (they had vinyl there too, but I forget the names).  MAsataka Tsuda (founder/developer) was again in attendance, as was Hajime Sato, his right hand man (VP marketing) and interpreter, as well as proprietor of Eastwind Imports.  Great stuff!  That's my preamp, btw, the Concert Fidelity CF-080.   

My note taking was also bad Ted. The electronics was also very much the magic in this system. I will exchange cell #'s with you next year for sure.

[OzarkTom]

Best bang for the bucks-tie
GR Research room-If I had a big room, this would be the system I would go with, but since I don't, the next would be-
Earo Speakers
Single driver, no crossover, class D amp, balanced inputs. Just hook a Remote powered Dac with balanced outputs and there you have it. These are the $38000 with 8 inch driver, $18,000 for the pair with 5 inch driver.



Fastest system at the show: Aero Speakers

Again, no crossover and self powered amp

The $18K system, if not snobby enough for your friends, just add the two $13K power cables from Nordost. That should do it.

Here is their website.
http://www.earo-us.com/Earo_Home.html

These just missed my top choice by a hair. The company had no room treatment, no power conditioner, and no extravagant power cords, only stock. They were very natural sounding on piano and female voice.  They were using the Antelope Gold Dac and was getting magical music.

[Jonathon Janusz]

Tom, thanks for this thread.  I just downloaded a copy of the room layout .pdf, and I'm off to another circle to start a thread regarding speaker size/room size/show speakers. . .).

One quick question Tom (all?).  When critiquing the rooms/speakers at the show and making a statement like, "if I had a large room, I would. . .", or "if I had a small room, I would. . . .", where roughly are we drawing the lines between large and small rooms, just to make sure folks are on the same page when discussing.

By the way, as a warning to everyone, I did a yahoo search for the RMAF web site (didn't try google to see if the same applies), and something funky is going on, because it is trying to autodirect to some junk shopping web site (or some other spam/virus/malware link), I think.  If you copy/paste the URLs direct into a browser, the pages load fine, though.

Cheers!

[jimdgoulding]

Love to hear those Aero's.