[jsalk]

Back in the shop today after a marathon few days at AXPONA.  So I thought I'd document my reactions to the show and recap some of our experiences.

First off, thanks to everyone who paid us a visit.  It is always nice touching base with old friends and meeting new ones.  That is one of the nicest things about this business.  It is almost like one very large family sharing the experience.

This year we showed in three rooms - room 432 with Frank Van Alstine and two rooms on the lower level with Well's Audio, Luminous Technology, Ginkgo Audio, Dana Cables, VPI, Lampizator, etc.  We will never do that again.  No matter what room I was in, someone or something needed attention in another room.  In fact, on Friday, I was never able to make it up to 432 in the afternoon.  Lesson learned.

Room 432

I wasn't able to spend much time in room 432 this year.  Frank was showing his new 850-watt (Frank, correct me if I'm wrong in the numbers) monoblocks.  Those monsters would drive just about anything on the planet and have that typical smooth AVA sound.  While the market for these might be somewhat more limited than AVA's more standard fare (due to the fact that you have to purchase a pair), I'm sure there will be decent demand for them based on the raw power and performance available.

Frank was also showing a prototype of a new DSD DAC they are working on.  This project was long in the making and I was hoping he would have something to show at AXPONA.  This new DAC handled everything I threw at it with ease.  With many DACs, you hear clicks when switching from PCM to DSD.  Not this one.  Much work needs to be done generating the PCB board designs before this unit is ready for production.  This DAC should serve a lot of people well when it is released.

Approaching the show date, we were still working on our new, under-$3000 3-way speaker.  But I got a bit nervous that it might not come to fruition in time for the show.  So we built a pair of Supercharged SongTowers and finished them in a plum color over quilted maple to use as a backup.  Since the 3-way made it under the wire, we put these in room 432 along with the SoundScape 8's.

Pete (Big Red Machine) did a wonderful job running the show in that room. I received a lot of very favorable comments on his music selection and the fun people had interacting with him during the show.  I think he took about two hours off over three days.  Without him, I don't think we could have done it.  Hat's off to Pete.  I owe him a HUGE debt of gratitude for a job very well done.

(more to follow)

- Jim

[jsalk]

Sherman Room

I was very nervous about this room.  It was to be the world premiere of Jeff Wells new Majestic integrated amp, so it had to be right.  Jeff and I had talked for about a year about mating this new amp with the new 3-way design we were working on and we didn't want to let him down.  That is why we built the extra pair of Supercharged SongTowers as a backup (see above).

Dennis Murphy (who put in a ton of effort making this design possible) had finished the final crossover tweaking about a week before the show.  But I had never heard a pair of these speakers outside our shop.  They sounded good in that environment, but you never know with a new design until you move it to a location more like one in which the speakers will eventually be used. 

When I first saw how small the room was and how one side wall was completely covered with a hard plastic white board, I really started to worry.  This would be a tough room and the speakers did not have that many hours on them so they weren't fully broken in.  I just couldn't let Jeff down.  But then we hooked everything up and the sound quality was quite high right off the bat.  So that was a relief.  We moved the speakers around a bit and things really started to come together.

That night, I told Jeff I was mad at him.  He asked me why.  I replied that I hate it when I hear a combination with my speakers and it costs me money because I simply have to have it.  The Majestic, Dana Cables and these 3-ways seemed to work magic together, not even considering the reasonable price of these components.  There just seemed to be some real synergy there.

On Friday, we started getting some great feedback and people seemed to really love the new 3-way design.  In fact,  Jason Victor Serinus named this system his "Best Buy system for Day 1 of the show" in his Stereophile Blog.  So we were off to a great start.


(more to follow)

- Jim

 

[jsalk]

Director's B

This was a VERY large lower level room off to the opposite side as the Sherman.  So traffic at that end of the hall was more limited.  For that reason, we will be moving to the middle of the lower level next year in a slightly smaller room.  That said, it was nice to have all that room.

There was a lot going on in this room, so I'll break this up a bit...

We were showing in this room with Wells Audio, Luminous Audio Technology, Dana Cables and Ginko Audio.  Also included in the mix were a Lampizator DAC and a $4000 VPI turntable with a $7500 SoundSmith Hyperion cartridge.  We were showing the Exotica 3's, our new Generation III StreamPlayer and I brought along a pair of our new PowerPlay monitors just for kicks.

Since the PowerPlay monitors do not involve equipment from any of these other concerns, I thought I'd set them off to the side and if anyone wanted to hear them, I could invite them back for an after-hours listening session.  Vinh Vu (Gingko Audio) suggested just setting them up in front so people wouldn't have to adjust the seating in order to give them a listen. 

With a large room like that, set-up time is not trivial.  Vinh and Norm moved the speakers around quite a bit until we got a very realistic disappearing act going. (Norm has a great ear for this.)  We received many highly favorable comments on the sound in this room throughout the show.  We were quite happy about this since we were sharing the floor with some very heavy hitters showing systems upwards of $200,000 if my calculations were correct.  And we had many people tell us that our room was the best sounding on the floor.

This was the first time we showed with analog gear.  The VPI turntable coupled with the  SoundSmith cartridge run through the Luminous Audio Arion phono preamp sounded simply wonderful.  It was a lot of work setting it all up, but Vinh did an excellent job in that regard.  The sound was about as good as it gets.  We played quite a bit of vinyl throughout the show, but it was a lot more work and a lot less flexible than simply selecting music with an iPad.   I'm sure those who were interested in hearing vinyl on this setup were pleased with the opportunity.  But the added work made us question whether or not we would do this again in the future.

We had a few very nice experiences in this room and I'll start a new post for each of these...

- Jim

[jsalk]

Late Saturday afternoon a gentleman with an accent approached me and asked what tubes we were running in our Lampizator DAC.  I told him and we talked for a bit when someone else came up and asked me if I knew who I was talking to.  I didn't.  It turned out to be Lukasz Fikus, designer of the DAC.  So I took the opportunity to query him. I said, "As the designer of this DAC, if you were to optimize the performance to get the absolute best possible performance out of it, what tubes would you use?"

What followed was a 20-minute lecture on how tubes are made, what makes one better than another and who is making the absolute worlds best tubes.  All I can say is this guy knows his stuff (and now I know a little more than I did before).  He explained differences in the way the highest quality tubes are built compared to those that are less capable.  For example, the tubes he recommended were a mesh design.  He explained how some manufacturers would take a thin piece of metal and stamp holes into it.  On top end tubes, the mesh is actually a screen woven from very fine wire and each intersection is soldered by hand.

Lukasz explained that the best tubes in the world are being manufactured in Czechoslovakia. He said only a given number of the tubes he recommended were available each year and he can only get 50 pairs...no more, no less.  The reason is that they are all hand-built and the company producing them can only turn out so many a year.  Each employee builds four tubes a day...all by hand.  They do everything including blowing the glass.

While this is very time-consuming and thus the tubes are quite expensive, the results are well worth the effort.  He said they were built so well that you could buy a pair today and still be listening to them 40 years from now and they would perform as good as new at that time.

So my next question was, "Where can I hear a pair of these?."  He said he hand-carried two pairs of tubes on his way from Poland to AXPONA and that he could probably let us listen to a pair after the show closed that day if we promised to return them before 10AM the following morning.  Of course, we couldn't pass up that offer.

So we installed the new tubes and left for dinner allowing them to warm up properly.  When we returned, we were in for a real treat.  The sound was exquisite to say the least.  Not only was there an abundance of front to back imaging, but also imaging in the vertical as well.

We played one piece of music and one of the people in the room said they had recently seen a concert with that group.  He said that based on attending the concert, he knew where everyone was located on the stage.  Not only that, but he said he could clearly hear that the main performer was seated on a stool and the support musicians were seated in chairs.  Others in the room made similar comments.  Simply amazing.

Thanks, Lukasz, for the experience.

I should also add that Vinh texted Lukasz the next morning that he would have to pry the tubes out of his cold dead hands.  He found a way to let us keep them in the system all day Sunday.

(more to follow)

- Jim   

[Art_Chicago]

Back in the shop today after a marathon few days at AXPONA.  So I thought I'd document my reactions to the show and recap some of our experiences.

First off, thanks to everyone who paid us a visit.  It is always nice touching base with old friends and meeting new ones.  That is one of the nicest things about this business.  It is almost like one very large family sharing the experience.

This year we showed in three rooms - room 432 with Frank Van Alstine and two rooms on the lower level with Well's Audio, Luminous Technology, Ginkgo Audio, Dana Cables, VPI, Lampizator, etc.  We will never do that again.  No matter what room I was in, someone or something needed attention in another room.  In fact, on Friday, I was never able to make it up to 432 in the afternoon.  Lesson learned.

Room 432

I wasn't able to spend much time that 432 this year.  Frank was showing his new 850-watt (Frank, correct me if I'm wrong in the numbers) monoblocks.  Those monsters would drive just about anything on the planet and have that typical AVA sound.  While the more limited the market will be for these amps (due to the fact that you have to purchase a pair), I'm sure there will be decent demand for them based on the raw power available.

Frank was also showing a prototype of a new DSD DAC they are working on.  This project was long in the making and I was hoping he would have something to show at AXPONA.  This new DAC handled everything I threw at it with ease.  With many DACs, you hear clicks when switching from PCM to DSD.  Not this one.  Much work needs to be done generating the PCB boards before this unit is ready for production.  This DAC should serve a lot of people well when it is released.

Approaching the show date, we were still working on our new, under-$3000 3-way speaker.  But I got a bit nervous that it might not come to fruition in time for the show.  So we built a pair of Supercharged SongTowers and finished them in a plum color over quilted maple to use as a backup.  Since the 3-way made it under the wire, we put these in 432 along with the SoundScape 8's.

Pete (Big Red Machine) did a wonderful job running the show in that room. I received a lot of favorable comments on his music selection and the fun people had interacting with him during the show.  I think he took about two hours off over three days.  And without him, I don't think we could have done it.  Hat's off to Pete.  I owe him a HUGE debt of gratitude for a job very well done.

(more to follow)

- Jim

I did not know it was BRM himself! I was sitting next to him on Friday and told him that I preferred 432 room over the basement setup, at least for the bass that SS8 played so beautifully.

[sfox7076]

I had the Luminous in my rack for a few hours when Vihn came for a visit.  So it was the Wells amp, the Luminous (connected to my AMG and a Transfiguration Proteus), DanaCables, and my Exotica 3s.  It was really an awesome combo (though I was having some ground hum issues at the time).  If my LCR phono tube preamp does not work out, I will be buying it.

Shawn

[jsalk]

Roon

We had been working with Roon since around the holidays on a new version of our StreamPlayer that would be Roon-Ready when version 1.2 of Roon was released to the public.  This would be the first version of Roon to be capable of running on a headless Linux device like our StreamPlayer.  There were changes we needed to make to Generation III of our StreamPlayer in order to accommodate Roon...a higher performance processor and a 64-bit version of Linux to name a few.

We had been working on early iterations of the new version for some months, so we were aware that during the development process there is always an occasional bug that needs attention. On the Saturday before the show, I received an email saying another version of Roon was ready to test and I should go ahead and install it.  So I did.  Problem was, it would simply not boot and we were packing for the show on Tuesday.  There seemed to be a rather significant problem involved and I was starting to be a bit concerned.  I emailed Roon about noon sending them the log files, etc. and letting them know of my concerns.  They answered almost immediately telling me not to worry, that they would have an update for me by 7PM.  At 7PM, another email alerted me to an update and the issue had been solved.  Apparently, they corrected a minor error in the MAC version and it impacted Linux in the process.  They had tested the MAC fix but didn't realize they had broken something in Linux in the process. With that solved, we were back on track.

Over the next few days, I received a number of emails indicating that Roon 1.2 would be released any day now.  It didn't really matter since we had a working program we could certainly use to show the new StreamPlayer at AXPONA.  Thursday morning at 7AM, I received an email that said Roon 1.2 had launched.  I thought that was really great.  The product launched and we were showing it at AXPONA the very next day.  You couldn't have asked for better timing.

Normally, I would have set up the StreamPlayer on the rack in the front of the room.  But this time, I thought it would be novel to place the StreamPlayer toward the rear of the room on a literature table and use a couple of RoonBridge devices we had built up front.  I had one RoonBridge device hooking up to the Lampizator that drove the Exotica 3's and another setup to directly supply a signal to the PowerPlay monitors USB input. 

When we fired up Roon, it immediately located the two devices and correctly identified the capabilities of each.  So DSD will go native to the Lampizator and it would be down-rez'd if we played the same music on the PowerPlay monitors. As a result, we could sit in the back of the room and switch systems using the iPad.  No moving speaker cables around or otherwise having to set things up.  Turn off one stream and start another on another device.  It could not have been easier.

And if someone wanted music we did not have on our server, Roon's seamless integration with Tidal put 20,000,000 additional tracks at our disposal.  There was almost nothing we couldn't play.

I had numerous discussions with people over the 3 day show about all kinds of ways to stream music.  Each had their favorite front end application.  But in those discussions, I could honestly report that no other system is as elegant, powerful and easy to use as Roon.  No other front end can do all the things Roon does with ease and finesse.  After using this system for a couple of months now, I can say that unless you use it for a while, you have no idea what you are missing.  There is nothing else like it and nothing that is even close.

Thanks go out to Roon for supporting us in this effort.  Much appreciated.

(more to come)

- Jim

[mritschdorff]

Roon

We had been working with Roon since around the holidays on a new version of our StreamPlayer that would be Roon-Ready when version 1.2 of Roon was released to the public.  This would be the first version of Roon to be capable of running on a headless Linux device like our StreamPlayer.  There were changes we needed to make to Generation III of our StreamPlayer in order to accommodate Roon...a higher performance processor and a 64-bit version of Linux to name a few.



This is exciting news!  Would you be able to upgrade a StreamPlayer Gen 2 with the higher performing processor and the 64 bit Linux? If so, do you have a "ballpark" price?  I'm hoping so!

[jsalk]

PowerPlay Monitors

You can't always predict in advance what will happen at a show or what will provide the most rewarding experiences.

We took our PowerPlay Monitors to the show just because we could.  But I told my associates, in advance, that I would not interrupt the room to play them (since none of their equipment would be involved).  I told them if someone wanted to hear them, I would invite them back after the show closed for the day for a private listening session.

This was a very large room, not one you would normally use to showcase a relatively small monitor.  But we fired them up and they handled the room with ease and finesse.

When we developed this model, we were looking at providing a simple solution for individuals living in small apartment and currently using headphones, but wanting to set up a small system that performed admirably well without having to purchase a DAC, preamp and amplifier.  Many of the people we had in mind simply don't have the room for floor standers and a rack of equipment.  This solution would provide great performance for a very reasonable outlay.

The drivers we chose were Hiquphon tweeters like those that perform so well in our SongTowers and a solid but reasonably priced 6" driver from Seas.  Like the W16 used in our Veracity ST's, this driver is mounted in the same size frame as their 5" drivers.  So we could build a smaller cabinet and still get better bass extension than possible with a 5" woofer.

When I was creating the crossover, I calculated the driver offset to determine the delay I needed to apply to the tweeter in order to have the drivers align in the time domain.  Then I set about to start creating the crossover with all the filters needed to smooth out the response.  It was a quiet Saturday and I was alone in the shop with a friend who was in the back room cutting some panels for a pair of speakers he was building for himself.

I started applying filters to smooth out peaks and dips, listening to test tones and making minor adjustments.  After about an hour, I noticed that the resulting FR plot looked unusually flat.  I had never seen a frequency plot that was that flat before.  So at one point, I uploaded the resulting crossovers into a pair of speakers and went back to get my friend.  I told him I hadn't listened yet, so I didn't know how they would sound, but told him to take a look at the FR plot.  He, too, had never seen anything like it.  So we fired them up and I watched as he began to grin.  After a very short while, we were both laughing. 

I knew these little monitors were good.  But I had only heard them in the shop so I had no idea what to expect when we finally exposed them to the world at AXPONA.  Well, all I can say is that this was the highlight of the show for me personally.

At a show like this, speaker designers like to get around to one another's rooms just to chat about speaker design and to see what others are doing.  I had printed a little poster for the monitors and I included an FR graph on it.  When designing it, my wife Mary said it was too busy and I should remove the FR plot.  I told her it had to stay and for a very good reason.  When other speaker designers came into the room, I would take them over to the poster and show them the plot.  Then I would sit them down for a listen.  In almost every case, they would shake their head in amazement.  It turns out these little monitors are FAR better than even I had appreciated. Without knowing it, I had set the price far too low.

People would come into the room, hear them, and then run out and grab their friends.  In the end, even though none of the other vendor's equipment was used to demo the PowerPlay Monitors, my partners didn't mind because those little monitors brought a lot of people to our room.

At one point, a Seas engineer came into the room and immediately recognized the woofer.  While it was playing, he scratched his head and had a very puzzled look on his face.  He finally came over and asked how I got those woofers to play so deep...and with authority!  I asked him how he got that driver to sound so good.  We shook hands and laughed.

One listener approached me and told me he thought they were the single finest speakers in the building...period.  I told him that was certainly not the case, but thanked him for his comments.  Others told me to quit making every other model in our lineup and concentrate solely on marketing these.

I very much enjoy attending shows and there is always something memorable that takes place.  For this show, although the PowerPlay monitors will likely never sell in large quantities, playing them for people was the most fun for me personally.

All in all, I think this was by far our most successful show ever.   I came away with a raft of ideas for a range of new products.  Unfortunately, being a small company with limited resources, I will have to pare that list down a bit to make it more reasonable.  But I hope we can introduce some great new products next year as well.

Sorry to be so long-winded today, but I thought perhaps writing this up might provide some insight into what it is like doing a show from an exhibitor's perspective.  We are a very small company with limited resources, so it takes a lot of planning and hard work to get everything together for a show like this.  But we normally get a lot of very positive feedback and that makes it all worthwhile.

- Jim

[Tomy2Tone]

Great stuff Jim! Thanks for sharing!

Hope your coming to RMAF this year with all these speakers...

[jsalk]

This is exciting news!  Would you be able to upgrade a StreamPlayer Gen 2 with the higher performing processor and the 64 bit Linux? If so, do you have a "ballpark" price?  I'm hoping so!

There are two things that are required to make this happen.  First, we need to disassemble the StreamPlayer and install a new processor.  The i3Core needs to be replaced by an i5Core.  Second, since a new OS is required, we need to move your music over to a new disk drive.  This can all be done in a couple of days for about $500...maybe less. (Since I haven't done it yet, I don't know exactly how much labor is involved.  But a chunk of that is for the new processor.)

- Jim

[Hugh]

Great stuff Jim! Thanks for sharing!

Hope your coming to RMAF this year with all these speakers...

What he said.

[Denverhifi]

What he said.

What they said!

[ArthurDent]

Good stuff Jim, Thanks for the writeup. Glad to hear things went so well, if not a bit frantic at times. 

[benguin]

Jim, it was great to see you and Mary again.  We spend more time listening in your three rooms than any others and loved to see and hear the family resemblance across the line.
The PowerPlays did sound excellent, and I had to walk up front to confirm it was them playing-- they sounded top notch.   
The Song 3s are an amazing value and it was nice to hear them at a variety of volumes.  Mid volume still produced a very clean delivery without having to load up the room.
The Exoticas are always sweet, and we especially loved the cabinetry on these--- i think we'v got a spot for these in our main room.  The plum finish SSTs were also absolutely beautiful, even if we didn't get a chance to hear them.
It's really a treat to have you as Axpona and get a chance to hear the various set ups.  Sometime soon I'm going to need to add a SalkStream to our SS8 set up.

Thanks so much for your time and attention to detail!
  Ben and Nancy

[vtvu]

I would second Jim's impression that this was our best showing ever.  I thought we bit off quite a bit with three locations: two rooms in the Lower Level and two tables in the Ear Gear Room but everything worked out quite nicely. 



In the Ear Gear Room, we demoed the Danacable vs. stock cable shootout for Hifiman, Enigma, Abyss, and other headphones, which made quite an impression on attendees.  One AC member commented that adding the upgraded cable is like going up to another model of headphones.  The difference is "enormous".  The Wells Milo headphones amp was also a hit.



The small system in the Sherman Room was well received.  Even though the room was not ideal, we managed to tame the acoustical challenges and got the sound to be quite nice.  It was picked by Stereophile to be the "Best Buy" of Day 1, which was certainly appreciated.



The big system was in an enormous squarish room (36x35x12) but with some work we managed to get the system to disappear thanks to an impromtu stacked table trick we used last year at the Capital Audiofest.  With the large room, people had space to move around, the room never got too hot and it was certainly a pleasure interacting with attendees without bothering other listeners.  With the Roon-ready setup we were able to run both the big rig, the PowerPlay monitors, AND the analog rig without a hitch.   Jim did a great job teaching us to operate the system seamlessly and we looked like we knew what we were doing.  The PowerPlay wowed a lot of people who had to come up next to them to confirm that they were actually playing because they filled the big room with effortless good sound.
Lukasz brought down the Emission Lab tubes to show us but it was actually Fred (Gopher) who let us keep the tubes to use on Sunday. It was a kind gesture that was very appreciated.
It takes a good team to do a good job and we certainly had one.  Everyone chipped in and did his/her part: Jim, Mary, Jeff, Chris, Hal, Norm, Dana, Richard, and Doug, with help from others (like Tim of Luminous who could not be there) as well.  Thanks also go to Mat and Jane of VPI and Peter of SoundSmith for loaning us the fantastic analog rig to showcase our system.
It was fun to take on the challenges of running three locations (four for Jim) but it was exhausting so we will be back at AXPONA next year with a more streamlined setup in a right size room in the Lower Level to make our job more manageable. 
Looking forward to seeing everyone next year.
Vinh Vu
Gingko Audio and Danacable.

[fsimms]

Thanks very much for posting such a detailed report Jim.  It was wonderful to enjoy the show vicariously through your descriptions.  It was almost as good as being there myself.  But then again, .... maybe not. 

Bob

[Ric Schultz]

The "word" on the street is that upsampling to the highest possible DSD format and using HQplayer to do it is the hot, hot thing.  HQPlayer is suppose to have the best sounding DSD upsampling and the higher you go in frequency.....the better the sound.  Check out this link:

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?20405-T-A-1-bit-converters-in-the-PDP-3000HV-and-DAC-8-DSD

Roon is now compatible running with HQplayer.....so you can have the best ergonomic software integrated with the best "sounding" software.  However, you need a pretty powerful computer to run Roon and HQplayer running at DSD256 or DSD512.

The question is:  Are you going to have a version where you have Roon and HQplayer on your Streamplayer?   And how about an I2S output so I can run a short cable right into a Gustard X20 DAC?  (takes dsd 512 through I2S supposedly).

[jsalk]

The question is:  Are you going to have a version where you have Roon and HQplayer on your Streamplayer?   And how about an I2S output so I can run a short cable right into a Gustard X20 DAC?  (takes dsd 512 through I2S supposedly).

HQPlayer is likely a possibility and it is next up on our list of things to potentially add to the mix.  I2S is somewhat more of an issue.  First, it is designed for short runs.  Second, there seems to be no universal standard for supplying the signal to the DAC.  Some DACs use HDMI and others R45.  It seems like this would be a real support nightmare and that is something we try and avoid.  We try and keep things simple and reliable - plug and play. We will be looking into this, but I can't comment at this point on whether or not we will offer this option.

- Jim

[jsalk]

Enjoythemusic.com announced their Top 10 awards for AXPONA 2016. 

The room we shared with Van Alstine was fortunate enough to score one of these awards...



Here is the write-up...
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/AXPONA_2016/Audio_By_Van_Alstine_Salk_Sound_OPPO/

They also featured a nice write-up on the room we shared with Wells Audio and Dana Cables where we showed our new Song3 3-way design.

Here's that...

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/AXPONA_2016/Wells_Audio_DanaCables/

This is the same room that Jason Victor Serinus, in his Stereophile Blog, called his "Best Buy" room for Day 1 of the show.

There were quite a few more posts about this room and more write-ups coming.

- Jim