All,
We had another excellent show and I want to thank everyone who stopped in the Red Wine Audio / Bricasti / Harbeth room
at Newport Beach!
We had a special guest in our room on Saturday - Grammy award-winning engineer David Reitzas!
http://reitzas.com/ David is friends with Damon from Bricasti (Bricasti has gained much popularity on the pro audio side over the years). It was an honor to meet David, and I was floored when he asked if he could connect his Macbook to our system. Those in our room (including a timely visit from John Atkinson) were treated to AMAZING unmastered tracks of the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Barbra Streistand and more. David literally plopped himself on the floor with his Macbook running his Protools software and starting making magic - pretty much bringing these artists into our room! It was spooky how real they all sounded. It was nothing like listening to their albums - this was on a whole other level of realism and emotion! You'd have to be there to understand how much of an (unexpected) treat this was!
Some coverage on Stereophile.com:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/red-wine-audio150harbeth150bricastiIt was great to see John Darko of digitalaudioreview.com come over from Australia to visit as well:
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2013/06/t-h-e-show-newport-beach-2013-part-3/He was happy that I let him play some of the tracks he loaded on a USB stick. I still don't understand how any MFGR. can do a show and not let the guests play the music that they want to hear. Sure - I understand that some recordings aren't great and don't make the room sound as good as others, but these are recordings that people want to hear how a system handles, and that is why I pay $$$ to get a room at these shows. The next show I exhibit at will have a big sign in the hallway saying something like, "Yes - you CAN bring in YOUR music to listen to in this room. So loosen up, come on it, have fun and enjoy it!" I want people to hear my gear playing what they want to listen to so they can get an idea how it handles the what they want to throw its way. I already know how it sounds with music that I'm playing! Those who brought their own music and listened to it generally seemed to have a big ol' smile on their faces, their heads were bobbing, their feet were tapping. They were having FUN. This is what it is all about!
It was no surprise that the Signature 57 and the Lilianas really gelled with the Harbeth SHL5s (we had the same great results at the New York Show with the 30.1s)! The Bricasti M1 (now compatible with DSD files - and Damon had his Macbook loaded with some live classical recordings - you know, the ones where you can hear the breathing of the musicians and the little creaking in their seats as they move") was running its minimal phase filter and was a stunning addition to the RWA/Harbeth combo in this room!
I'll post more links to show reports when I get some more time to crawl the web.
Thanks again to everyone who visited and make the show a lot of fun!
Vinnie
