[Peter J]

How cool is that! A grill that's literally a grill. Stick it on the fire when camping to cook your hotdogs! Gotta love the utility of it...

[jtwrace]

Yep, and $32k!

[Peter J]

Yep, and $32k!

And you get two of them!

[ltr317]

Thanks Dave for the great coverage!

[ltr317]

How cool is that! A grill that's literally a grill. Stick it on the fire when camping to cook your hotdogs! Gotta love the utility of it...

 

[DaveC113]

German Physiks omnidirectional speakers. I appreciate omnis but couldn't see having a pair myself, these are pretty nice speakers though.






Tub's... Not sure about that apostrophe or this system. Way too rolled off on the frequency extremes for me. Single drivers did not make a good case for their existence at this show. All my favorites did not show up and the ones that did are not even close imo. The quality of modern drivers and multi-way designs is getting really good and not many single drivers can keep up. edit... these look like coax, which makes the shortcomings even worse.






Audio Nervana, more extended than tub's but still not what I would call good. The price is reasonable though. The big drivers are Neodymium 15" drivers with a whizzer. The whole speaker would be something like $1600 I think... Part of the sound may be the gear used, it wasn't very high quality and I saw zip-line speaker cable. I appreciate value but the associated equipment was just cheap and didn't help make this a good sounding system.






Devore, I liked these guys... I didn't get to hear the Orangutangs but the Gibbons were nice.








Existence Speakers from Finland... IMO the best single drivers at the show using Tang Band bamboo cone drivers. They had a laid-back presentation that was enjoyable.







Odyssey, these guys learned to setup a room better than most a long time ago and have enjoyed good sound for years, consistently being one of the best in show. This year was somehow even better, the speaker setup was a little different from previous years and it worked great. If Odyssey would make a larger speaker with a bigger woofer they could take over the audio world. As-is the Kismet reference monitors are some of the best small speakers in the world, and they can play loud, but they don't have the surface area to have the grip and impact of a big driver in the lower frequencies.

The value for the money is off-the-charts here! If you are considering buying a whole system, the price of this vs the rest is going to make you really stop and think that you can spend multiples of the price of the Odyssey gear and end up with a a system that isn't as good. And you get a speaker that uses ScanSpeak beryllium tweeters that retail for $500 each and revelator midbass units. There were speakers at this show that cost 10x the price and use the same tweeter. This tweeter was also almost omnipresent and Odyssey has been using it for years now.

[DaveC113]

Vaughn, I kind of like these... overall I like Vaughn speakers and the plasma tweeter sounds great. Very few get a great result using the Accuton drivers though, they have a peak and can sound mechanical rather than musical. There was also a noticeable discontinuity between the Accuton mid and the built-in subwoofers. This system was still above average though...








I didn't think these were Daedalus speakers because they only have ONE of each driver!     Scottdazzle was running this room and it sounded great, I really like the Daedalus sound and the smaller Daedalus speakers deliver it despite the shortage of drivers  ...these are big sounding speakers with a lot of dynamics, and a beautiful tone with exciting sound from the amazing hardwood cabinets.









Monitor Audio, I heard the ones with the ribbon tweeters but didn't play my test track, they sounded alright.






The Hegel room playing Magico S3s, this was a very nice sounding room and makes a good case for Hegel gear, which is not super-expensive either.








Electrocompaniet / Tidal music streaming, this room was setup for casual conversation about the new Tidal music streaming offering, which streams lossless music is FLAC format. I got to try the app and I selected a track to play, which highlighted how good the system in this room really was, this room had A LOT of potential but there was no seating appropriate for actually listening to music. If I can make one suggestion it would be to get a larger room and play music in the back and set up the bar-style table near the door...









Voice Box speakers and Unison Research amps... The speakers were pretty impressive for the size but are also made in China for $2500.

[DaveC113]

Opera speakers, nice system...








Raidho and Constellation, sounded pretty good but Raidho speakers seem overpriced...






2 Sony Rooms, the big speakers with a Pass amp, the bookshelf speakers with the Sony amp, both rooms have the excellent HAP-Z1ES music server. They announced an exciting upgrade to the firmware, the USB port will be able to accept a hard drive that is NOT formatted especially for the Sony, so a friend can bring their hard drive over, plug it in to the Sony's USB port and play music, the lengthy transfer process is no longer required for outboard hard drives!

The Sony speakers sounded really good but are not inexpensive...










Esoteric/Cabasse... Sounded ok, I can't believe how many chassis Esoteric can use to make up a system!






I got to the Tweak Geek room right before the show was over so I did not ask to play my test track, but the system sounded great, which is to be expected from a set of speakers built by mgalusha, who also built a similar set of speakers with a 15" woofer and separate subs for himself that seriously rock. His speakers excell in dynamics... they can scare women and make children cry.    I'm also partial to the directionality of the speakers and the AMT tweeter is clear and detailed without being harsh or edgy. Good job, and a very nice system here.








And you know what I forgot to take pics of? Room 549 with the Von Schweikert VR-55s, which I felt were in contention for best of show. I was in this room more than most as I got to try a couple of my products after hours on Friday. I really enjoyed hanging out with Albert and the crew and I was more than happy with the results, but that's a topic for a different day... I'd just like to say thanks for the opportunity and it was great fun. 

This is the end of my RMAF 2014 report, thanks for checking out my pics and brief impressions of the rooms I visited. 

[ltr317]

Those Vaughns look like the result of a Diyer's project after eating "magic" mushrooms. 

Thanks again Dave, for the extended coverage.  Since I couldn't attend this year, I live vicariously through your and Pez' yeoman efforts. 

Cheers,
Paul

[Vapor Audio]

I made a test track with 30 second to 1 minute clips of 7 different tracks from Rodrigo Y Gabriella, Hiromi, Thievery Corp, Bonobo, Beats Antique, Infected Mushroom and Billy Joel.

I started with Vapor, and also checked back in on Sunday as well. The setup sounded great with the Antipodes Music Server, Allnic amps and Verastarr cables driving the Vapor Joule Black speakers, which were stunning... the RAAL matched the midrange driver more seamlessly vs the Joule Whites and sounded more cohesive and musical. I think the Black version is overall a better speaker. The bass was just great. Last year was good but this year was a grand slam. They also get special mention for being one of the best values at the show, for under $15k you're getting a top-tier speaker, they could have charged $50k no problem. They handle every genre of music very well and can play loud.

Hey Dave, good to see you again this year.  I don't know where I was, but I missed you playing your cuts.  I would have enjoyed hearing what you put together for this year since our musical tastes are so similar, although I'd replace the Billy Joel with some NIN 

I'd like to note a couple things about the White vs Black comparison if I could.  First off, the White we showed at RMAF last year was only a first revision crossover.  The final ended up being significantly more in balance, and inline with our 'house' sound.  What we had at the show was a bit lean with too much midrange.  But there are differences in the final implementation of White and Black.  As I tell people all the time, we don't have a philosophy when voicing a speaker.  We don't target crossover points, we don't insist on certain crossover slopes or topologies, we build it and let the drivers tell us what they want ... not the other way around.  With the White, the Accuton midrange just isn't nearly as extended as the AudioTech midrange in the Black.  Since the Accuton isn't as extended, there is much more phase shift in the 2000hz range and 2nd order acoustic slopes just won't work.  With the Black, the AT midrange is literally flat to 15khz, so there's no phase shift around the crossover, and it lined up perfectly for LR2 slopes.  The crossover on the Black tweeter for instance is just one capacitor, whereas on the White it's 2 caps and an inductor. 

The danger with giving people that much information about specifics of the design is that they'll take it an form inaccurate opinions.  One being LR2 slopes and the other being LR4 isn't a reason to choose one over the other.  And the Black being more musical is exactly the point, that's the whole reason we do the Black/White thing, to let people pick their poison 

Thanks to you and all the other AC'ers who have provided show coverage.  As is the case with ever show, you all just plain kick everybody else's butts!  At this point there's more coverage on AC alone than the entire rest of the internet combined.  It's guys like you who help provide value for us doing the shows! 

[Vapor Audio]

BTW, since you covered the Electrocompaniet room ... somebody told me an interesting tidbit of info at the show.  I don't know for sure that it's true, but based on who it came from I believe it is. 

Apparently the Norwegian Government gave them a grant in the 7 figure range for them to develop those loudspeakers!!!  I don't know exactly I'd build after a multi-million cash infusion, but there's a picture in my head and it's pretty impressive 

[paul79]

Nicely done Dave!

For those that don't know Dave, I can personally vouch for this mans ears. They are almost as good as mine

Again, thanks for this....

[Occam]

Details on Mike Galusha speakers and anciliaries in Tweek Geek Room
http://localhifishop.com/tweek-geek-rmaf-2014-creating-unforgettable-audio-experience/

[BobRex]

I'm glad that Mike's speakers are getting some notice, but I gotta ask:  Who in their right mind develops a web site with a background fading from light blue to black and BLACK TEXT!?!?!?!?!?!   You can only read the verdammte text in the bottom 3 inches of the screen, after that, notta.  The background may be cool (yeesh), but it's worthless with text based data.

[Big Red Machine]

BTW, since you covered the Electrocompaniet room ... somebody told me an interesting tidbit of info at the show.  I don't know for sure that it's true, but based on who it came from I believe it is. 

Apparently the Norwegian Government gave them a grant in the 7 figure range for them to develop those loudspeakers!!!  I don't know exactly I'd build after a multi-million cash infusion, but there's a picture in my head and it's pretty impressive 

True statement, came right from the EC sales manager's mouth.  Being in R&D for years, I can appreciate the work and how nice to get government funding for this exploration.  Most of the monies were toward composites, adhesives, and assembly methods to make a very inert cabinet structure.  They did not give money to design a speaker per se as the technology went toward aerospace, etc. applications.

[DaveC113]

Those EC speakers have sand-cast aluminum cabinets. A lot of effort went into those speakers, would have been nice if they arranged the room to allow for critical listening.

[Vapor Audio]

True statement, came right from the EC sales manager's mouth.  Being in R&D for years, I can appreciate the work and how nice to get government funding for this exploration.  Most of the monies were toward composites, adhesives, and assembly methods to make a very inert cabinet structure.  They did not give money to design a speaker per se as the technology went toward aerospace, etc. applications.

... and for the company vacation in Fiji to discuss how to use pre-existing technologies like sand-casting 

[Big Red Machine]

... and for the company vacation in Fiji to discuss how to use pre-existing technologies like sand-casting 

May I carry your bags, sir?

[standub]

Funny part is i've always liked the Electrocompaniet room, till this year when is was just ok.

[beowulf]

Hi Dave, thanks for posting this great report, it sounded like a lot of fun.  So what were you favorite price-no-object speakers vs. favorite reasonably-priced (aka poor-man's speakers )?