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So sorry that we only had time for quick impressions. As I recall I was standing way to the left for maybe 30 seconds. There as a "rightness" of sound (and appearance) that top quality gear should (but too rarely) provides. Design/finishes of the gear was very nice without being over the top. According to the program and the material I picked up it was the Poseidon v.2 (a MTTMWW arrangement with new 8 inch drivers, 97 dB/w/m, $16,450).
I enjoyed this year's show much more than last year's. It is bigger but far smaller than the overwhelming RMAF (if you try and hoof it to all the rooms!).I had plenty of fun hanging out with AC'ers. We are a good bunch. Many of us attended TedB's talk on DSD with his recording engineer buddy Alex(?). And I had to teach TomS a few new tricks wrt audio!!! ha, gotcha!I was able to circle back into most every room that interested me multiple times. Friday was light traffic, Saturday heavy, Sunday very light.Watch out for Vinnie Rossi - he and his lovely wife really have some traction with his new Lio unit. So versatile in its modularity. Fantastic sexy look design. Super functional. And those ultracapacitors playing off the grid make for a dead quiet unit. I'm anticipating his design of a balanced unit soon. He is really onto something here.TomS and I were just commenting to each other one day how there were no bad sounding rooms as we walked down the halls and then we hit 2 in a row. So we jinxed ourselves! crap But there really were very few "bad" rooms. There were many high dollar speakers with glaring irregularities like hot midrange or hot top ends but nothing that drove you out of the room. I used a lousy, doesn't suck, great room trio of buckets to mentally rate what I heard.I was humbled to visit many rooms with Dennis Murphy who quickly burst my bubble about what I thought I was hearing when he started picking apart the sound with his superior abilities. When he pointed out the errors you could quickly realize how the rest of us are mere mortals when it comes to analyzing frequency response. Humbling for sure. I did manage to drag him into one room where we stayed for some time, meaning I got one right (out of 4). My top 5 rooms for sound were (IMO):D'Agonistino/Wilson - absolutely superb reproduction (for a zillion dollars)Sonus Faber - monster $100k++ speakers I lust over just played everything thrown at them (again with a zillion dollars of gear behind them)Salk and AVA - best overall balance of bass and smooth highs. I hate to say this being a huge Salk customer as I will be accused of bias, but not very many rooms had it all (for under a zillion dollars)Mosaic Audio ($20k speakers) - excellent imaging augmented by some subs. Quad - the tall ones, absolutely disappeared in the room. All the music was detached from the black monoliths. Very nice.Honorable mentions - the small Gershmans; the steel/aluminum/diamond $68k speakers in the Thrax room; and the big Martin LogansA good show, friendly vendors, manageable hallway traffic, convenient salads/sandwiches offered in the hallway by the marketplace, live music during lunchtime (very nice), good discounts to be had, lots of talk about upcoming shows.
Nice photos Eugene.Crap, forgot the Volti room. The imaging was fantastic. Had a great chat with Triode Pete in the hallway friday morning. Yes, and Klaus did it again. I went in there 3 times! Escaped the bear hugs each time, whew!Yours truly, knucklehead.
Can't get the Gibson Les Paul (who invented solid electric guitar and multi-channel recording) Reference Monitors out of my head:- 2-way active designs with touches of guitar amps (of course)- carved (slightly) flamed maple baffles (cherry, cherry flame, or tobacco flame with ivory trim - just like the guitars, unique and just gorgeous)- 1 inch carbon coated titanium tweeter- non-woven carbon woofer (4 inch, 6 inch, or 8 inch)- noiseless front ports- high peak output (109 - 118 dB)- smooth (entertaining/enjoyable, not dry/fatiguing) yet neutral/accurate (meant for studio work too) presentation - sound bigger than they appear- all the typical studio monitor attributesline up:4 - $599 each; 55 - 47,000 Hz, desktop use6 - $799 each; 37 - 47,000 Hz, desktop or room use8 - $999 each; 31 - 47,000 Hz, large room usegibson.com
Some show impressions:I readily admit these rankings are not only due to the quality of the speakers, but also the room and the music exhibitors chose to play, which for the most part is wimpy jazz that doesn't stress speakers at all. Also, I certainly did not visit every room. But I'm going to focus on my favorite rooms, rather than those where something went wrong.2nd: a tie - Sanders/Magtech & Pure Audio/PsvaneWhile polar opposites the two systems tied for 2nd were the Sanders Audio room and the Pure Audio Project . Utterly different systems in presentation, though both dipole. The Pure Audio perhaps had sins of omission, but it felt right and room-filling and fun, like you expect from an open baffle running off a single-ended amp. Sanders might have had some bass integration issues, but was the most transparent speaker I've heard, beating out other 'stats on the floor. Amps didn't strike me as solid-state at all (a good thing).
How did you find the tweeter? Felt a touch hot to me, but that could have been at least somewhat due to what they were playing when I was in the room.
I found them way too hot for me too. Loved the look, but they were not to my liking.
They are still a work in progress, they changed the crossover twice before Sunday. The upper mid and treble were much better balanced on Sunday.
Those are just too cool I'll have to check and see if the local Guitar Center carries those. I'd like to hear them in person.
<snip>Best rooms to me :Nick Doshi and Wilson Audio , never heard small Wilson sounding that good.<snip>
and to bunch of fat , ugly and demoralized ratpack of audio reviewers . Most of them should be denied access just for the lunatic arrogant behavior
