[John Casler]

Just a quick note.

We had a great meeting listening too the NEW NuFORCE S-9 Speaker System.

It also nice to meet Bob Smith from SP, and see Casey, from NuFORCE, as well as fellow dealer Paul Lim from Imagine HiFi in Pasadena.

It is true these speakers really do a great job, as they should in that price range.

Pictures should be up soon on the LAOCAS site.

A good time was had by all.

[ooheadsoo]

I had a good time there, as well.  Good seeing some faces I can put to names, now.  The speakers were very nice, very dynamic and clean despite some bloated bass caused by the room.  Most critically, I wasn't familiar with a single track that was played on the speakers, and so I don't know for sure how much of the bass was from the recording and how much from the speakers and how much from the room.  One of the first CDs put on had some nasty stand up bass recorded for sure - no other recording with stand up bass sounded bloated like that.  The bass levels and overall levels being produced by those relatively small speakers was very surprising.  You just don't expect speakers that size to make such a robust sound.  Is it safe to say the speakers disappeared?  I'm not sure I would pinpoint the sound to any one speaker even while closing my eyes while listening to block visual input (makes a big difference to me -  I tend to hear what I see) and thinking about it.  The sound was just too big and dynamic, didn't seem like it was coming from the smallish speakers to me. 

[John Casler]

I had a good time there, as well.  Good seeing some faces I can put to names, now.  The speakers were very nice, very dynamic and clean despite some bloated bass caused by the room.  Most critically, I wasn't familiar with a single track that was played on the speakers, and so I don't know for sure how much of the bass was from the recording and how much from the speakers and how much from the room.  One of the first CDs put on had some nasty stand up bass recorded for sure - no other recording with stand up bass sounded bloated like that.  The bass levels and overall levels being produced by those relatively small speakers was very surprising.  You just don't expect speakers that size to make such a robust sound.  Is it safe to say the speakers disappeared?  I'm not sure I would pinpoint the sound to any one speaker even while closing my eyes while listening to block visual input (makes a big difference to me -  I tend to hear what I see) and thinking about it.  The sound was just too big and dynamic, didn't seem like it was coming from the smallish speakers to me. 

I hope you came over and said Hi.

Bass problems in a room like that, are to be expected at certain frequencies.

Additionally, they will change, depending on your position in the room.

[ooheadsoo]

Don't you know it.  Bass problems annoy the crap out of me.  We had just a handful of words in the doorway just before you walked inside and started to cup your ears , I was one of the many guys wearing all blue, although I think I was the only fat ass chinese guy with glasses wearing all blue.

[Russtafarian]

John, thanks for your hard work pulling this meeting together given the fact that you arrived home from an extended east coast trip just hours before the meeting. 

I really enjoyed meeting and speaking with Bob Smith, the designer of the speaker.  His pro sound background is evident in his design approach.  The analogy of trucks vs. sports cars has been used to compare pro audio speakers to high-end audio speakers.  Trucks are great for hauling heavy workloads, but they don’t have the exhilarating speed, agility and sexy looks that we like from our sports cars.  Well Bob has built a solid truck that out performs many of the tweaky sports cars we audiophiles have been driving. 

First off, the Nuforce is a cool looking speaker with its contoured baffle and multi-layered baltic birch cabinet construction.  From what I heard, the speakers really got the spatial cues right in terms of reconstructing the recording space.  The soundstage was deep, detailed, holographic and detached from cabinets.  Tonality, from what I could tell given the environment, was right on through the midband.  Bass was a bit muddled, due no doubt to room interaction, but showed good pitch definition.  And the top end, though very clean and transparent was a bit tipped up.  Bob did acknowledge to me that though the speaker measures flat to beyond 24khz, that response can put an uncomfortable amount of HF energy into many listening rooms.  So they are playing with the idea of putting a HF contour switch in the speaker.

Nuforce has found a great partner to help them produce their first speaker.  I think it’s going to be a winner. 

Russ

[lonewolfny42]

It's World Premier Sunday, August 20th...1-4pm. Holiday Inn, Buena Park, at Beach Blvd. and The 91 in the Marquis II Ballroom.

How big was this ballroom ? Thanks.

[Russtafarian]

I'm guessing the room was 20' wide and 40 to 50' deep.  It was packed.  Must have been around 60 to 70 folks there, maybe more.  Didn't really get to hear much until crowd thinned out and there were only about 20 people left haging around.

[lonewolfny42]

Thanks....

[ooheadsoo]

I didn't think of the high end as tipped up, personally.  Although I felt that the music was continuously played too loudly for critical listening, at no point did I have fatigue from the top end, as I have from a handful of other speakers with treble problems.  The tubby and ringing bass was annoying, but again, that was most likely the room.  I am somewhat accustomed to listening to speakers with decently flat measurements, however.  Until the people thinned out, as the system got turned up, the ambient noise just ratcheted on up in proportion, quite interesting to observe    My meaningless description of the imaging would be large banks or swathes of sound not coming from the speaker.  Very interesting.  I also found it interesting that the person whose recordings we were listening to later in the day (Steve McCormack?  not sure...) wanted to boost the treble a bit, but it could be that it had nothing to do with what he heard on that day.

[John Casler]

  The tubby and ringing bass was annoying, but again, that was most likely the room.  I am somewhat accustomed to listening to speakers with decently flat measurements, however. 

I just was looking over the pics on the website.

Is this you back in the left corner?

I don't know how much you moved around the room, and listened, but that "cubby" where you are standing in the picture, had to have sounded absolutley horrible bass wise.

I did get an opportunity to move around and the bass response couldn't really be judged in that room.  Some spots were bass deficient, others were bass boosted.

I have the speakers now, and will see if I have time to set them up, and see what they do in my room.

[ooheadsoo]

Yup, that's me in the back corner, although I certainly never listened to the speakers from that spot.  What's more, there was an air conditioning vent right on top of that spot and standing there, I could barely hear Jason and Bob speak.  I made most of my bass judgements from around the equilateral triangle position; when I moved around, I mostly just listened for imaging and tonality.  I also didn't know a single track played, so take it all with a few handfuls of salt.