[Hugh]

Ditto.

I don't know why anyone would take any of this so seriously. A guy states his opinion on nothing more than a quick first impression and some think the fate of business could hang in the balance? 

[aevans]

What was I listening for: Smooth mostly neutral frequency response. Having a speaker that is tonally wrong on axis will usually get you a bad write up. Audible cone break up, or comb filtering from the drivers is not good and will get you an bad write up. Imaging should not be something I need to work at, if by the 2 minutes in to a track sitting in the sweet spot I still can't at least place a center image then there is something wrong with placement some other wrong thing that will get you a bad write up. In short if the speaker sounded somewhat neutral and did what it was designed to do then it got a passing grade. If there are specific examples of where you think I was too tough on someone let me know and I will explain further.

Now for the replies:

JLM - Would you like to join our small audio club in SE Michigan?

If you are reffering to SMWTMS I would be honored.

Brad - Nice photos, wish you spent the same detail in proofreading that you spent in getting quality images.

7 hours of the show floor, 4 hours of photo editing each night, 3 hours for writing, and I still had to make time for drinking at the hotel bar to get the scoop on what others thought. I've yet to go back over everything outside of a simple spell check.

md92468 - More like "No Couth"...geez, these are folks whose livelihood you're messing with.

Get better sound, and they won't have anything to worry about. Might sell more speakers that way too.

Scottdazzle - No coverage of ModWright, Daedalus, Odyssey, Endeavor, Purity.  wtf?  Hard to award best of show when you miss some of the finest rooms.

I picked my rooms looking for speakers. If any reviewer says they can hear a DAC or amp on a pair of speaker they have never heard in a room they have never walked in before, they are either fooling themselves or lying to promote some industry friends product.

Early B. - If you're gonna review gear, you gotta have some deep knowledge of audio, higher than average technical knowledge, and it helps to know a lot of the players in this game. Makes for a more informed opinion. 

I know quite a few things about audio, it's actually pretty impressive. Now, what I don't want to know is is "players in the game." That's the kind of sh*t that will cloud your mind and color your opinion. I did not even attempt to introduce myself unless I thought the speakers sounded good and they offered speakers for sale at less than $4k/pair. The audience that I serve with my website are mostly college kids, and people looking for entry level gear. I am at the show on thier behalf, not to stroke my ego or rub shoulders with giants. Listening to exotic gear is fun, and if something sounded bad many times I excused it with possible room issues or setup problems.

Douger - Once in a while you seemed knowledgeable, Martin-Logan home theater , looks like from Best Buy... Some Best Buy stores sell ML...

The best buy comment is something I got from the guy in the ML room with the Sony speakers when he was telling me about the multiple rooms ML had setup... he said "we even have one that looks like something you could get at best buy"

Early B. - Problem is -- a reviewer is being irresponsible by simply stating that a particular pair of speakers (not the entire setup?) is the worst sound of the show without clear justification.

It's not my job to guess or tell them what is wrong... if they can't figure out that their room sounds like sh*t I don't trust them to design or sell speakers. I heard from 4 other people that the DC10 room was awful, the only prompting I used was "did you hear the DC10audio room" at the hotel bar and people were more than happy to tell me what they thought in very honest hard hitting adult way.

Don_S - I find it disheartening that too many confuse telling the truth with being rude, quick to judge, and using unnecessary profanity.

I'm an adult and my audience is an adult audience that tends to be 20-40 year olds that like using profanity. Sorry I ruined your faith in humanity by having a potty mouth.

Early B. - Opinions and honesty are useless without having some level of knowledge or experience about the subject matter.

As I stated before, I know lots of things and have lots of experience. If you have any questions feel free to be direct with them, but being dismissive of criticism is not going to solve your problems.

rajacat - most of the reviews don't take into account such issues as acoustical treatments, power conditioning that would give unfair advantage to one speaker over the other.

I checked all of the speakers nearfield as well as in the sweet spot, this almost complete removes the room from the equation. I don't know how power conditioning is going to do anything unless you have such little faith in the ability of amp designers to design a good power supply for a 4-5 figure amp.

DaveC113 - He also lied to our face about what he thought about the sound, told us it was great and then made that ridiculous comment on his blog.

Yes, I was dishonest. I told everyone that asked that they sound was "great" and moved on to the next room as quickly as possible to cover more ground and find good sounding rooms. I'm not there to form an emotional personal attachment to each person that has a poor sounding room, so I only talked to the people that I needed to about the products that I thought my audience would be interested in me reviewing.

DaveC113 - And yes, any idiot can call themselves a reviewer and post ridiculous garbage, but they won't last long.

That's just mean. If you say it enough it might hurt my feelings and then I'll need to complain about it on the internet.

[G Georgopoulos]

Dear Sir,aevans, you seem very experienced in this, to me!...

[aevans]

Dear Sir,aevans, you seem very experienced in this, to me!...

Not my first rodeo. 

[Silvertone]

aevans,

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback and impressions from the show

Let me ask you, looks like you picked the Von Schwikert VR55s system as 'Best in Show'

How did that system compared to the Revels Salon 2's/ Mark Levinson No. 536 monoblocks system?

I'm looking into those monoblocks, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

-Oscar

[lowtech]

Lol.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsV5PDVOGnM

[nrenter]

The hyper-sensitivity here is simply embarrassing.

I don't know why anyone would take any of this so seriously. A guy states his opinion on nothing more than a quick first impression and some think the fate of business could hang in the balance? 

Amen, brother. If someone's business hangs "in the balance" over one guy's opinion, you've got bigger issues than that one guy's opinion.

[youravhandyman]

If he had posted a negative opinion of your speakers, would've you still appreciated his "zero ass-kissery" shtick?

In reference to Vapor audio No Audiophile was not happy with the Nimbus.  Guess we all read what we want with these reviews.  Thumbs up for the reviews No Audiophile.  And kudos to those who took a lump with a smile.  They clearly are in the business for the right reasons.

[DaveC113]

Yes, I was dishonest. I told everyone that asked that they sound was "great" and moved on to the next room as quickly as possible to cover more ground and find good sounding rooms. I'm not there to form an emotional personal attachment to each person that has a poor sounding room, so I only talked to the people that I needed to about the products that I thought my audience would be interested in me reviewing.

Just... wow... I'm sure that'll work out for you just great.   

[aevans]

aevans,

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback and impressions from the show

Let me ask you, looks like you picked the Von Schwikert VR55s system as 'Best in Show'

How did that system compared to the Revels Salon 2's/ Mark Levinson No. 536 monoblocks system?

I'm looking into those monoblocks, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

-Oscar

The Revel was the smoothest sound of the show, something that does mean that the amps were doing their job. Two things in my mind kept them from taking the top spot from the VR55s. One was the size, the listening axis was too high for the small show room. The other is that I prefer a more flat room sound to go with a flat on axis sound. I achieve this in my home system with a very wide dispersion RAAL ribbon to fill in the natural roll off that rooms eat off of the top octaves with from wall materials absorption. This does have the downside of not having matched directivity between the midrange and the tweeter. The VR55s rear tweeter does the job keeping the room sound flat, while making sure that the directivity of the front drivers are better matched than my extra wide/narrow ribbon tweeter. It's a great design, and with the beryllium tweeter and silly good build quality it really just knocked it out the park.

[OzarkTom]

Thank you OP for sharing, this is the best report I have seen yet. I enjoy reading all reviews no matter who is writing them. These hotel rooms suck when you are trying to get good SQ, I am surprised when any room sounds great. For those that think it should be easy, take your system to a local hotel and set it up. It will humble you very fast.

I thought I knew it all, so I packed my system and took it to Dallas to the LSAF five years ago. On the first day, I was so embarrassed for anyone to come in my room, it was nasty, nasty, nasty.

The next day, a little better but still not right I finally borrowed a battery system to hook up my amp, much, much better. I was not embarrassed when audiophiles came in my room. Of all the small hotel rooms, everyone said I had the most natural sound at the show. But it still never sound as good as it did at my house.

Bad sounding rooms, bad AC in the hotel rooms. If I ever repeated this experiece, it would be battery power all the way. Just ask Danny Ritchie here on AC and ask Living Voice at the Munich Audio show. LV takes a nuclear powered battery plant to Munich, or so it seems.

[OzarkTom]

Oops, I left Vinnie Rossi out. If I was a speaker manufacturer at these audio shows, I would use Vinnie Rossi equipment for the electronics.

[a.wayne]

I'm with noaudiophile on this and enjoyed his coverage ,  too much blocking takes place in the industry , there's  no excuse for a bad product today or bad show sound , avg to good  sound should be par for the course ,  honesty should be appreciated and used as a push for making better products ,  this constant praising and promoting of bad sound because the vendor is  nice  or one of the insiders is what really gives this industry and Audiophiles their ratbat crazy rep and after all its not really that difficult , even for an amatuer,   Ozarktom figured it out  in two days and went batt Power ... 




Regards

[Brad]

I'd say if you're going to give a company an award for a great product, might be worth taking the time to correctly spell the company name......

[aevans]

I'd say if you're going to give a company an award for a great product, might be worth taking the time to correctly spell the company name......

Typo on first post of thread... Well there goes all of of my credibility, right out of window!

[rajacat]

Typo on first post of thread... Well there goes all of of my credibility, right out of window!

Why are you so sensitive to criticism? Isn't it OK to review the reviewers?

[DaveC113]

Typo on first post of thread... Well there goes all of of my credibility, right out of window!

That happened when you admitted to lying.

[konut]

Typo on first post of thread... Well there goes all of of my credibility, right out of window!

You're assuming you had any credibility in the first place. FWIW, I don't believe anything I read, and only 10% of what I see. In spite of that, I enjoyed your coverage.

[*Scotty*]

aevans, How do you determine where the sweet spot is in these show rooms? I have had a hard time in some rooms.
Scotty

[a.wayne]

Sweet spot is easy , look for the lump of sugar ....