RMAF 2012 Day 3 Tyson and Pez Coverage LIVE

Pez · « **on:** 14 Oct 2012, 02:36 pm »

Coming soon...

rajacat · « **Reply #1 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 02:45 pm »

dflee · « **Reply #2 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 02:47 pm »

Anticipation, its driven me crazy!

Pez · « **Reply #3 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 03:20 pm »

Breakfast pic... So very very sad.

Rclark · « **Reply #4 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 03:29 pm »

...gonna be the dispenser of gas!

ptmconsulting · « **Reply #5 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 03:30 pm »

... and here we GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! ... to close the SHOOOOOOOOOOOWWW!

(damn I wish I coulda been there this year)

OzarkTom · « **Reply #6 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 03:32 pm »

That looks like a breakfast full of GMO's and HFCS.

Pez · « **Reply #7 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 03:57 pm »

Great imaging. Incredible actually. Almost a complete lack of coloration! Very good bass! These are absolutely incredible! Best single driver I have ever heard. Actually among the best I have heard period. A bit boomy in the bass. In positive it's the took size and of course the closeness to the speakers and listening position. Wow I hear no whizzer cone aberrations whatsoever. These are by far the most neutral sounding single driver speaker I have heard. Easily amongst the very best at this show. Ellen Taylor who has a very Leonard Cohenesque voice is big, but also boomy for sure. Again a curable problem in sure. All the positive attributes of these speakers far out weigh this negative. Scaling dynamically is effortless with these speakers! Wow 101dB efficient= run them with 2 watts no problem. Amazing. Outside of the sweetspot they still image relatively well!

Amazing and refreshing!

Tyson's Comments First room of the day and we are already disagreeing! Gotta love this hobby, where 2 people can hear the same system at the same time and come away with totally different impressions. I'd say this is a good system "for a single driver system". Way less tizz and hiss and shout I normally hear in widebander systems. Bass is still a bit too "big" and loose, but better than many, many SD systems I've heard. And big props for using room treatments. Very good sound for this type of speaker, but not my cuppa.....

DaveC113 · « **Reply #8 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 04:02 pm »

Quote from: Pez on 14 Oct 2012, 03:57 pm

Great imaging. Incredible actually. Almost a complete lack of coloration! Very good bass! These are absolutely incredible! Best single driver I have ever heard. Actually among the best I have heard period. A bit boomy in the bass. In positive it's the took size and of course the closeness to the speakers and listening position. Wow I hear no whizzer cone aberrations whatsoever. These are by far the most neutral sounding single driver speaker I have heard. Easily amongst the very best at this show. Ellen Taylor who has a very Leonard Cohenesque voice is big, but also boomy for sure. Again a curable problem in sure. All the positive attributes of these speakers far out weigh this negative. Scaling dynamically is effortless with these speakers! Wow 101dB efficient= run them with 2 watts no problem. Amazing. Outside of the sweetspot they still image relatively well!

Amazing and refreshing!

I told my friend that my system equals or exceeds this one and he was very skeptical, until I took him back to my place to listen to it after the show.... then he agreed.

My system is the Omega Super 3 XRS with an EL34 SET amp....

edit: If you want to hear even better single drivers, at least on simple music, try the Feastrex room on the 11th floor. They played my sample of Bonobo's "Walk in the Sky" far better than anything at the show and definitely topped my Omegas on that track. The Feastrex drivers provide that "holy $hit!" reaction, it sounds so real sometimes....

Pez · « **Reply #9 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 04:15 pm »

Stahl-tek
Atmasphere

This room is very very nice! Vinyl right now. Very mellow and great sound staging and imaging. Damn! Nice dynamics. These speakers are pretty phenomenal. And I am flabbergasted that I actually am loving a system with atmasphere OTLs AND hrons! Very very big sound and incredible intimacy a little shouty at times right now they're playing some horrid symphonic nightmare piece and its unlistenable, sometimes these sound very much like your average horns and sometimes they sound very refined. I am off to a good start this morning... Two very good rooms right off the bat! Maybe ill pick up an RCA dog!

roscoeiii · « **Reply #10 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 04:30 pm »

Lose Tyson somewhere?

Pez · « **Reply #11 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 04:39 pm »

Quote from: roscoeiii on 14 Oct 2012, 04:30 pm

Lose Tyson somewhere?

He justwoke up and rolled out of bed. You'll be seeing his snarky off putting comments very soon.

Tyson here. I'm here now, had a bit too much wine and an awesome single malt scotch, Highland Park 18 (thanks Rim!). Feeling a bit tender this morning. But not too bad, perhaps just a bit more surly than usual.

Pez · « **Reply #12 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 05:00 pm »

ListenUp
PSB Loudspeakers
NAD Electronics
AudioQuest

On the Bach piece these speakers Do a pretty good job. They have a decent amount of sweetness and a touch of emotion, but nothing that makes me stand up and clap.

on the Mahler t hey tend to compress the dynamics to a few dB for the most part, but on the huge dynamic passages they do very well to scale up. They just don't seem to have that microdynamic refinement. They sound pretty good on the Ani. They do well with imaging of her voice. There is some hollowness to her voice partially due to lack of room treatment. Onto thom. They again scale very nicely though obviously this track is pretty compressed. They are definitely overloading the room. I just realized this setup doesn't seem to really touch me in any meaningful way.

Tyson Notes[/u]
Mahler - More muted and distand sound. Everything sort of blah runs together.
Bach - OK, not great, sounds kinda distant and muted.
Ani DiFranco - Pretty good for midfi. Ouch, boomy hollow bass sounds on the guitar body. Not good.
Thom Yorke - Bass, well there is definitely sound coming out. My mother told me if you can't say anything nice.....
General Room Notes - I'm not really sure why we are in this room. I think it was a request from someone on AC. I think I'll implement a new rule regarding requests - we have the right to ignore them when they are dumb. PSB, really? That's like going to a high end show and listening to Paradigm. It's too bad, because Listen Up is a local hifi shop and I know for a fact that they have much better equipment to show off than this. If you are ever in Denver I recommend stopping into their shop.

Pez · « **Reply #13 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 05:08 pm »

HEGEL
THIEL Audio

Listened to a little Cohen. There is some room issues surprise surprise. Bass boom. Though normally I tend to think if thief as brightly balanced these seem to be more mellow. Pretty sugary sweet sounding on female vocals and somewhat metallic sounding on percussion. Sort of what one would expect from a poorly designed ribbon, but these ain't ribbons.

Tyson's Comments No ability to play our own disc, PC based only. Not sure how I ended up in a Thiel room, I normally really dislike these speakers. The good - large soundstage, spooky holographic, actually. Really catches the depth and grit of male vocals (Tom Jones). The bad - they are still metal driver based speakers. Although, they are much less hot and harsh than previous models. Actually pretty close to tonally neutral. If you are a detail freak you will love these speakers. If you are a tone freak you'll have to look elsewhere. But good god what detail! Female vocals are just ethereal. Again, not my cuppa, but I can see for others that this would be a grand slam.

Pez · « **Reply #14 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 05:21 pm »

Hear No Evil
McIntosh laboratory inc.
Clarus
KEF

The Bach VIOLIN haha is sound great for a speaker with metal drivers run by parasound. The Mahler scales much better than the last two rooms and has a confidence that they also lacked. Ani has great balance. The guitar isn't sounding overly twangy. I usually don't like parasound or kef. This room is very nice. Thom lacks the bass bump of a bigger speaker. There is a bit of boxiness to the sound that is pretty apparent. Pretty darn good despite my preconceptions.

Tyson Notes[/u]
Mahler - Surprise here, these guys get a really good sense of the bows striking and releasing on the cellos and basses. Pretty amazing for such small speakers.

Bach - Nice focus and clarity on the solo violin

Ani DiFranco - Guitar sounds coherent, nice and metalic and twangy on the strings (gee, I wonder why!). Only downside is her voice lacks the warmth and weight of the very best systems. Surprisingly not overly sibilant, but thumbs up on that!

Thom Yorke - Good bass, from what little I heard. Surprisingly good little speakers!

General Room Notes - Coincident drivers, always love the KEF stuff. In fact I'd say that the KEF's are the only metal driver'd speakers I actually like on a semi-regular basis.

Pez · « **Reply #15 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 05:33 pm »

Ayre Acoustics
Vivid Audio Speakers

This room already wins for best looking room in the show. We have been transported back in time to a place where shag carpet and lava lamps abound. The overall sound of this room is sooo nice. Great imaging sweet balance if a little hollow and slightly tipped up. I still think the sound is superb and if you threw in a tube amp this would be phenomenal. Great stuff here!

Tyson's Notes - General Room Notes - Hahaha, I LOVE this room - they totally did it up like a cool swinging bachelor pad. Nice!!!!!! I mean, I don't like the sound all that much, and it's almost certainly the fault of the Vivid speakers, they sound just as metallic this year as they did last year. But man, what a f'ing cool room. I want to just hang out here for the rest of the show - mad props to the vendor!

Pez · « **Reply #16 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 05:53 pm »

Odyssey
GIK Acoustics

Last year Klaus and Alex asked us to be honest with what I thought with their room. I told them they desperately needed room treatment. They actually listened, not only did they listen they brought in the very best room treatment you can get IMO. GIK and Bryan!!!! Damn!!!

On the Bach piece I have yet to here the detail and intimacy that I heard through this setup. Just really amazing. The Mahler piece has way more depth and such a nice level of scale. These speakers do dynamics well and there is 0 overhang, zero shout, zero filth here. Ani... Wow great imaging great sound staging. Among the best I have heard at the show. This system is so well focused its truly breath taking. Thom Yorke grabs you right off the bat. In a lot of systems this track can sound really bad. In this system it sounds totally absorbing and controlled beyond belief. Great panning effect, soundstage is enormous. Detail detail detail, emotion emotion emotion. Wow... This is probably the best of show. I am actually pretty much convinced it is and we have several floors to hit still. There is no other room at the show where this much attention has been payed to the room, not even close and guess what, it sounds better than any other room.

Listening to pink Floyd now... Depth detail wow this system is incredible. They're demoing the diffusers. They took them down and instantly everything sounds hollow just like a lit of other rooms. On to a pipe organ piece HUGE bass no overhang.... None! Stevie Ray sounds god damned great. I just want to sit here and listen, I don't want to leave. What an experience, literally soul touching.

Tyson Notes[/u]

Mahler - Oh, yes, speedy indeed. From the sweet spot, the strings go waaay back in the soundstage when the go pianisimo. I don't normally associate paper drivers and silk tweeters with a ton of detail, but they have it here, and not in an in your face way, but a natural way. Nice weighty sound.

Bach - Good focus, sweet sound. Very enjoyable.

Ani DiFranco - guitar and vocals are more integrated than in other systems we've heard (especially today). Very nice sense of space and depth of image.

Thom Yorke - Big sound, Hard to believe all of that is coming from these fairly small 2 way bookshelf speakers. Nice groove. Not only captures the different tonalities of the various drum sounds, but also captures their physically different locations. I think this is the first room that has been able to resolve this track this well.

General Room Notes - Last year the Odyssey room was good but was desperately in need of room treatments, which we told Klaus in no uncertain terms (over drinks, of course), and leave it to Klaus to not just address the issue, but come back with a completely over the top badass solution. GIK Acoustics is the nom de plum of room treatments IMO, and is the one vendor EVERYONE should buy from. And EVERY audiophile too. Without room treatments your room will NEVER sound as good as it should. You might disagree with me, but you would be wrong.

Overall I thought the Odyssey room was very good last year, and they took quite a big step up again this year.

jtwrace · « **Reply #17 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 05:55 pm »

Very important to note that this room is $5900.

Great job Klaus and Bryan (GIK)

SlushPuppy · « **Reply #18 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 06:27 pm »

Quote from: Rclark on 14 Oct 2012, 03:29 pm

...gonna be the dispenser of gas!

jimdgoulding · « **Reply #19 on:** 14 Oct 2012, 06:29 pm »

General Room Notes - Last year the Odyssey room was good but was desperately in need of room treatments, which we told Klaus in no uncertain terms (over drinks, of course), and leave it to Klaus to not just address the issue, but come back with a completely over the top badass solution. GIK Acoustics is the nom de plum of room treatments IMO, and is the one vendor EVERYONE should buy from. And EVERY audiophile too. Without room treatments your room will NEVER sound as good as it should. You might disagree with me, but you would be wrong.

Overall I thought the Odyssey room was very good last year, and they took quite a big step up again this year.
[/quote]

Nice review, fellas, and a sane system

. Odyssey make those speakers?