[mal]

The new Eddie Current Audio "Electra" electrostat amp is supposed to be there. 

Ogled it. Caressed it. Listened to it. I walked away very impressed. It's not every day you jump over to Stax from Audeze and think to yourself, "Those orthos just don't have any real meat to them."

I'll be going back to listen to it again.

[Jon L]

I'll be there on the last day.  Where are the headphone setups at, especially the electrostats?

[mal]

They're in several places. Eddie Current is in the Atrium Hotel Marketplace. Headroom is taking up a hallway near the Hilton ballrooms.. Schiit has very friendly room upstairs in the Hilton. Lavry is in the Marketplace in the Hilton.

There are floor maps posted on the THE Show site.

[gkinberg]

HELP! Ok, other attendees can you help my memory? There was one other mini-system that I really enjoyed....and I cannot remember the manufacturer. They had an integrated amp and a CD player at $399 each, which totaled the size of a shoebox. They were running from an iShuffle to two tiny speakers. I was super impressed by the sound from these little toy size components.

Sounds like you might be talking about Napa Acoustic, I also liked this setup but it lacked bass. Of course that figures considering the speakers were little bigger than large soup cans.

Garth

[ltr317]

I only managed to cover three and a half floors at the Hilton today.  So there are two and a half more floors at the Hilton plus all of the Atrium rooms to cover tomorrow.  But just from what I heard today, I have to say that there are probably more good sounding rooms at this show than Rocky Mountain last year.   

[abernardi]

Good first day at my first show 

Emotiva - the powered monitors with the Heil type AMT were very flat, in a good way, and detailed.  They also had a new DAC that sparkled.  Their towers in the next room reminded me of the Goldenear towers, OK.  To be fair the room was really noisy and the volume was low

Voxativ Ampeggio single driver speakers.  Very impressive.  I'd never heard a single driver before and didn't realize they could sound so good.  Very smooth, though seemed to lack a little detail in the upper midrange, if I remember right.

KEF Blades were kind of meh

The Antelope room was a lot of fun.  These electronics and speakers were reference quality, so nothing knocked you over, it was just right.  The atomic clock was impressive as was their AD/DA

Peachtree was impressive.  They had two systems: Their new little integrated amp/dac/tube buffer with little Dynaudios.  Sounded really big and deep for such small speakers, but in short order you realize the low end is not at all detailed.  But it's a good first impression.  The bigger system with their top of the line box and bigger Dynaudios was really good, pleasant, satisfying.  I'd take one home.

Gene Rubin Audio: They had Harbeths which sounded warm and detailed.  But they had this thing called the H2 Harminizers by steinmusic.  Four little black boxes on stands, two in front, behind and to the side of the speakers and two in back and some tiny black triangle thingies and pyramid things stuck to the walls and ceiling.  I felt like I was in an episode of Star Trek with Cpt. Kirk putting up those transporter beam amplifiers - - beam us up NOW Scottie!  Anyway, these Harminizers supposedly "...generate vibrations that make the air more transmissive of music in all its complexities."  They're based on quantum physics I was told.
  Well, I think they actually had a positive effect on the music.  I know we're in the realm of the placebo, and I know I'm suggestible.  I caught myself thinking, wow, maybe this is the magic bullet.  They played the same cut 3x.  First with, then without and then with again.  I noticed two things when the Harminizers were turned on: it almost felt like there was more oxygen in the air, I swear.  Maybe the vibrations were scrambling my brain, I don't know.  There was a smoothness to the music, but I couldn't pinpoint any one frequency or change in detail, it was more like the difference between a speaker that's fatiguing and one that isn't.  Really easy to listen to, very engaging, no sharp edges.  I noticed when the Harminizers were off my ears felt more fatigued.  Who knows, but I'd like to think they really did have an effect.

Saved the best two for last:

The MA recordings room had a pair of Davone Audio Mojo Omnidirectional speakers.  Little black cloth humps with a small tweeter? pointing straight up on top.  Funny looking, amazing sounding.  Definitely try to hear these things!

Then I stumbled near the end of the day into the Von Gaylord room.  They had an entire line, top to bottom.  But it was their small bookshelf speakers that blew me away.  I think I heard someone mention they had Focal tweeters.   These sounded like they were on cocaine!  There was a little edge in the mid high notes on female voices, but that could be the lousy room conditions.  They reminded me a little of my old Dahlquist Ditton 33's.  They should have made my ears burn, but they didn't.  VERY fast.  Impacts were almost supernatural.  Maybe it was MSG.

I also sat in on the room tuning seminar with Anthony Grimani from MSR acoustics.  He designs listening rooms and studios.  He gave a very concise, informative and simple explanation of what is needed to tune your room.  I learned a lot and now have to do some more work on mine.

That's it so far...

[SoCalWJS]

First day of the show was quite the adventure. Parking was just OK - they still need to work on this. Had to circle around the block as they had ALL entrances coned off and nobody posted to tell you where to go or move the cones to allow you in. VERY concerned how that will be today, but hopefully will be better. No problems checking in. Hit the sales area first and picked up a few SACD'd and drooled over some vinyl that I just couldn't justify. Met up with Cheeseboy, and off we went. Started at the 10th floor of the Hilton.
First room was the One World Audio room with Lindeman speakers. Very pleasing sound with some light jazz playing.







Hmmmmmmm..... this is going to take a while - pretty slow connection at the Hotel.

[SoCalWJS]

Next up was YG Acoustics. The sound was very good.

I'lll try to come back and post more comments later - pictures for now. 

[SoCalWJS]

Skipping ahead a few rooms (some rooms just didn't impress on day 1 - hopefully they'll improve after a bit more time in their rooms making adjustments)

Audio Summa room. Had a mini monitor style speaker on a stand. The "Minuet". I thought this sounded VERY good for their size and will be something I pay attention to if I'm ever in the market.



Sorry to say I didn't take a picture of the associated equipment for the speakers.

[SoCalWJS]

Totem acoustics up next. They had it set up with three different sytems in the room. We heard two of them, one sounded very nice, the other was handicapped due to it's placement in the room (didn't stick around long enough to hear the third system - gotta keep moving - so much to see and hear ).
There is just something that I really like about Totem. Very fast in the bass region with good dynamics.
Sorry, I can't remember model names on these.

[SoCalWJS]

Hit the TAD and Von Scweikert rooms. Photos came out pretty bad (Point and shoot - didn't want to lug the DSLR around for three days). The TAD room was great, definitely one of the best two or three rooms so far, and an improvement over last year IMHO. AJ giving the presentation - so nice to see/hear/meet so many owners/designers at these events.
Von Schweikert had the VR-44's running, but I think they need some further tweaking (maybe just a bad room).

Took a break for awhile and attended a seminar on acoustics. Picked up a few things that I'm going to have to try when I get home. Excellent speaker for this event (Anthony Grimani, President of MSR Acoustics). Would have loved for this to run longer and had the opportunity to ask him a bunch of questions. 


Off to the third floor of the Hilton. Started with the Magico room which had the Q3's running. Room was too small for this size of speaker, yet the tone of these speakers seems very accurate and smooth. Easy to listen to and a good presentation. I took a couple of photos, but room was too dark for this little camera to do much if I was far enough back to get a system shot (reminds me of the advantages of a wide angle lens and a separate flash)
Massive monblocks attached.

[dminches]

Thanks for all the photos. Much appreciated by those of us not in attendance.

[SoCalWJS]

Skipping ahead a bit to a room that I thoroughly enjoyed. Scaena.



WOW. Effortless dynamics. Great sounstage/imaging - and this in a less than ideal room. Intersting and good music (Hadouk Trio????). Another room on my short list -could have sat and listened to this for a long time.



Maybe it was just the amps that were driving me crazy:



 

[Hugh]

The 1st day is by far the best of all shows for us.

It was nonstop action with people visiting.

[skeeter99]

The 1st day is by far the best of all shows for us.

It was nonstop action with people visiting.

Awesome Hugh! Any pics of the room for all us living vicariously?? 

[abernardi]

More show if anyone's interested.... I got through most of the Hilton and some of the Atrium.  Starting on the 10th floor,

Audioquest has a new little DAC called the "Dragonfly" that looks like a thumbdrive, plugs into your USB port and has a 1/8" mini-plug output.  They said they stuffed two clocks in there.  It sounded fine, but I had nothing to compare it to in the room.

BSG - Larry was showing the qøl Signal Completion Stage.  I've been wanting to hear this ever since it was announced.  You probably already know what it is.  I kept peppering him with questions because as a non-engineer I was having trouble really understanding the concept.  To put it simply Larry told me that this box replaces the out of phase info that gets cancelled out during the regular stereo playback process.  I hope I got that right, don't quote me on it.  He said the information is in the recording, it just gets lost in playback.  The demo was difficult because this box adds volume when it's in the circuit, so an A/B test was impossible for my ears because it sounded so different just by being louder.  So he said, "Hey, wait a minute, I've got a demo CD the inventor made that shows the difference at the same volume.  You mean you can encode this process INTO the recording?  Yes.  That I hadn't heard. 
  So we listened to a couple of live recordings first and with the box inline there seemed to be more echo around the vocals, more like a concert hall and the soundstage took on a 3D quality coming forward in front of the speakers.  It was a little like surround sound.  Things seemed to get a little crisper sometimes which reminded me of those old BBE sonic optimizers.  The next was Ella Fitzgerald (I think, I heard so much today it's blending) and the band seemed to pick up some presence but her voice remained almost unchanged.  I wondered if that was because her vocal was recorded right up to the mic, while the band was some distance from the mics.  Larry nodded and said, to paraphrase, You got it.  It's reproducing the material as it was actually recorded.
  I'm still on the fence about it because it's doing an awful lot to make up for out of phase cancellations that would normally occur and I'm wondering how that would affect a really good playback system, would it seem more natural, which is the intent, or less, due to so much manipulation. I still don't understand how it interacts with different rooms, I would think that would get tricky and affect things in unpredictable ways.  I need to do some more research, but I think if this thing is really doing what he says it is then this would be a great addition to the recording process and not necessarily the playback.  Very interesting.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it was in one of the rooms with the Von Schweikert VR-44's I believe where they were playing a Reel to Reel tape of "Tommy" and it was mesmerizing.

The TAD rooms - I think I might be the only one who was not bowled over by these speakers.  It's the first time I've heard them, they were exciting, dynamic, but nothing felt real to me, it felt glitzy. 

YG Acoustics - I think my ears were fatigued because there was a string of rooms that all sounded the same to me, big, full, unreal.

Ah! But in the Audio Summa room I heard what I was looking for.  At first Sal was showing a pair of Silverline Preludes, thin little towers, through some Parasound electronics.  They sounded great, especially for the price!  Then he played the big Grand Bolero speakers through a Brown Electronic Labs class A amp and for the second time in my life I felt ruined.  This sound rose above, way, way above everything else.  It was obvious from the first note.  It is astonishing how much detail, texture, layers are lost in most systems.  Very realistic, very natural, I could have sat there and listened all day.  I don't know what contributed more, the amp or the speakers, because according to Sal, this amp is something special.  I kept looking for the tubes.  I think he said he was going to start making them again to the original specs.  I think if I had that combo, I'd never listen to anything else. 

Yeah, I liked them.

Down to the 5th floor:

RSL soundlabs.  I didn't realize the Rogers sound labs was back in business, I loved their inexpensive bookshelf speakers in the 70's and 80's.  They had these tiny little two ways with the tweeter on the bottom and the woofer (if you can call it that) on the top, this to make room for the port coming out the bottom, mated with a 10" sub in the back of the room.  It was seamless.  I don't know where they crossed over, but I think it was pretty low, they really dug deep and the bass was not bad at all.  I keep thinking making little speakers go so low is a lot of smoke and mirrors and usually the low end is sweet but mushy and muddy.  This was much better.  I'm really glad they're back.  They had a 7.1 system in the next room using the same speakers, but it was, sorry to say, terrible.  I can only guess that these little speakers need to be driven by a good tube amp and not a mediocre HT receiver.

OK, the HEGEL room was fantastic.  Their rep did a perfect presentation of their DAC and reclocking.  First he gave us a little concise lecture on jitter and reclocking. Then he played a cut thru their low end receiver with a built in USB DAC.  Sounded good.  Then he put their HD11 DAC inline and it sounded much better, more detailed and layered and real.  Then he added the HD2 which is just a reclocking box inline before the HD11, saying it was overkill, but if you already have a DAC, this will help.  Well it wasn't overkill.  To my ears there was a huge improvement.  It started approaching the Silverlines.  It was great because you could directly compare the DAC/reclocking technologies and hear the substantial difference it makes.

Wyred 4 Sound room.  It was very good, great bang for the buck.  There was a guy sitting in front of me who had brought his own CD of a violin concerto and for me violins are a real acid test for sound reproduction.  To my ears it sounded quite natural.  Just as I was about to make that comment the guy in front of me turned around and said to the sales rep, "I'm sorry to say, these are terrible!"  and he went on to explain all the shortcomings.  I waited a bit after he left and said to the rep, gee, I thought it sounded pretty damn good.  He seemed grateful.

Finally I got over to just one room in the Atrium.  It was the High Water Sound room featuring the low end two way Cessaro horn speakers, all tube, all analogue.  We started off polite like all the other rooms, an hour later we were playing Zepplin at... I'm afraid to know how loud.  Let's just say I haven't played music that loud since I was a teenager.  And NO distortion, it was mind blowing.  Beatles, Lennon, WAR... these albums sound to me, on my system, dated, compressed, some to a lesser, some to a greater degree and are really unappealing to listen to, which is disappointing.  But this system made them great again.  I think this was my second favorite room of the show.

More tomorrow...

[enjoythemusic]

But just from what I heard today, I have to say that there are probably more good sounding rooms at this show than Rocky Mountain last year.

By percentage, i agree there is a higher rate of good sound here at THE Show than last year's RMAF. In fact it is VERY hard to choose a 'Best Sound' and not sure i want to even try. Too many really impressive sounding setups. Have both Friday and Saturday's coverage now online, with today's (Sunday) to be posted soon.

www.enjoythemusic.com/the_show_newport_2012/

[Jed]

Wyred 4 Sound room.  It was very good, great bang for the buck. 

Do you remember which speakers were playing?  Wyred4Sound has two rooms and in one the Clearwave Symphonia 72Rs are playing (dual 7" Accuton woofers, RAAL tweeter, cherry finish).  This is my product that they wanted for part of the show, and it would be great to get your feedback, since I was unable to be there.  Thanks!

[dminches]

By percentage, i agree there is a higher rate of good sound here at THE Show than last year's RMAF. In fact it is VERY hard to choose a 'Best Sound' and not sure i want to even try. Too many really impressive sounding setups. Have both Friday and Saturday's coverage now online, with today's (Sunday) to be posted soon.

www.enjoythemusic.com/the_show_newport_2012/

Do you think this is because the rooms are better treated or do you think the equipment is better?  I didn't think RMAF lack at all from quality equipment.  The rooms weren't the best.

[SoCalWJS]

Definitely agree that there are several rooms this year that have sound that can be considered to be "The Best" of show, especially if you make a few different price ranges.

I noticed that most, if not all of these rooms had treatments of some sort, and the majority of these same rooms had power treatment of some kind, from basic to fairly expensive.

No easy winner for best room this year, as opposed to last year when there were just a couple that were obvious choices. With that said, however, there were plenty of disappointments. Not quite sure what happened in one room, but some of my favorite speakers were near unlistenable.