Let me tell a story about my birthday weekend and what my wife and best friend put together.
Last week my wife told me that I would need to go to the airport on Friday morning and pick someone up. When I asked who I was picking up, she told me Danny Richie. I just about fell on the floor. She then said he was coming to have an audio gathering at my best friend Bob’s for this weekend. My mouth hit the floor!
I met Danny about 3 years ago at the 2005 AV123 Colorado get together when he showed the original pair of X-LS and RS760 speakers. We talked a lot about speaker measurements over the course of that weekend. The sharing of his understanding of the subject was amazing to me about things I had only heard of and from readings on the subject. Over the last few years have done a few speaker upgrades with Danny’s help and guidance. These have always had very musical results.
A few days after that news, my friend Bob calls and said boxes from GR Research just arrived. Now I am really scratching my head trying to think of what they might be. Bob described them to me and they are the new NEO2X speakers! These are the original prototypes in the Parts Express boxes. I go over to Bob’s, bring some cables and stands to give them a listen. Sounded very good, but setup improvements would be made over the next few days!
I picked up Danny at the airport on Friday. Talked about all kinds of fun things including lots of alternative energy ideas. Discussed the new servo subs and what the W enclosure sounded like. We were home in what seems like no time with all the discussions. All kinds of ideas were flowing.
We spent the rest of Friday doing setup and listening to the NEO2X with improvements being made in positioning within Bob’s listening room. Will post some pictures in the gallery section. Picture number 1 is the first setup. Picture number 2 is Danny with his new baby’s! Picture #3 is the final setup.
That evening had some calzones that Bob had done for the next day’s event. They were excellent. They were accompanied with his home brew’s which are always a wonderful thing. Bob even found Vanilla Crème and Root Beer sodas made with real cane sugar that were great.
After the session was through later that evening, we made plans to start the next morning with stage 2.
Got to Bob’s on Saturday morning. Brought over my portable CLIOwin setup so we could do speaker measurements and some room measurements. Having Danny show me some of his measurement techniques and what it means was a wonderful experience. We replicated his NEO2X measurements in Bob’s room. Looked at the horizontal and vertical dispersion responses and they are very SMOOTH on and off axis!
Did some more setup changes and got the NEO2X’s dialed into Bob’s room. They sounded very good. Danny had been talking about the new servo subs he used with the NEO2X’s at his place. This gave us an idea. We added the bottom octave using Bob’s pair of AV123 ELT Powered Bass Stands. This was just to give some extra LF to give a full range speaker setup. Did one more speaker movement for better soundstage after the PBS integration. We were hitting on all 8 cylinders at that point!
Then we just started listening to all kinds of music over the next hours. Everything from pop to rock to classical went into the setup. The vocal and instrumental details from these speakers are very good indeed.
Introduced Danny to recordings by a musician and vocalist that we know, Deborah Liv Johnson. He really enjoyed the CD’s that she had done on her own music label. They are very good recordings of her voice and really sounded wonderful on the NEO2X’s. Danny’s designs are among the best I have heard at reproducing vocal music. This is something that I really value in a speaker design!
Bob then had dinner for the group. Calzones, steaks on the grill and an appetizer that I have to get the name for again. It was a garbonzo bean, pepperoni and tomoto sauce dish with herbs and spices. Just a wonderful flavor! For desert were cake and chocolate deserts from the local bakery. Very tasty indeed!
Had the card opening session with musical cards. My task is to come up with an audiophile version of the cards!
Had a round of drinks with another gift and back to listening.
Just before this listening session Charles and another friend Mike did an impromptu piano playing session of some classical pieces with Bob’s upright piano. This gave a nice reference to what we were reproducing. I played a recording of them made three years ago in the same room that I mastered to DVD-A at 24bit/96KHz and showed what the recording process does to the sound quality. This is a very cool thing to do if anyone gets a chance in their audio life.
Everyone took turns in the listening seat with their recordings to get a feel for what Danny had done with these speakers. They were all smiling after their turns. Charles said after his demo, he really enjoyed the music reproduction.
The evening ended about 11PM. Got some sleep. Picked Danny up this morning and took him back to the airport to go home. More discussions on the way back. Again in what seems like no time, back at the airport and dropping Danny off at the terminal.
To say this was a great weekend is an understatement. I cannot thank my wife and Bob enough for this time together with good friends. This was sharing ones passion for music, great music reproduction equipment and time together with friends. Everyone should have more of this in their life!
My special thanks go out to Danny for making the time to come up for the event, sharing his knowledge of speaker design and measurement and providing some very cool new speakers for listening sessions. I want to thank Danny's wife and family for sharing his time with us.
