HE 2005 Show Impressions thread

BobM · « **on:** 29 Apr 2005, 02:02 pm »

OK, I'll start it and you all can chime in with your impressions:

Here's the best rooms that I heard and some other impressions and goodies:

Big Rooms
Singer had one of the big rooms with 2 sets of VTL electronics, DCS digital and Peak speakers. The big rig (3 piece DCS and $70,000 speakers) had a buzz in the left channel and sounded a bit hi-fi to me. The smaller rig, with the new DCS one piece unit, wins my best of show vote. Definitely listen to this if you can. But I bet they'll be trying to demo the big rig mostly.

The JM Labs - Pathos room also sounds nice. I really like the sound of these medium sized JM Labs speakers with tubes driving them.

9th and 10th floor Small Rooms

ARS Aures Audio had some very fine sounding speakers poweres by a low powered SET amp. These speakers souond good, but look like a cross between Darth Vader and Alien.

MBL sounded very fine, as usual, with smaller speakers in a small room. Some boom was evident though.

Brinkman w/ Martin speakers gets my second vote. EMM digital was prevalent at the show, but the difference between the EMM and the Brinkman vinyl (recent Stereophile review by Fremer) was minimal. Very good sound.

Sonic Spirits (of NY Audio Rave fame here at the circle) sounded fine, both demoing during the show and in the after hours system for the club meeting. Good job Phil.

Von Schweikert VR4-SR and VAC electronicvs were good, as expected.

Kharma Ceramique also was well worth a visit. Funny, I didn't like these too much at the last show 2 years ago, but they were good this time round.

Butler Audio was showing off a new 100W 300B hybrid amp that they claim is very SET like. SET with 100W of power, with almost no heat thrown off and only 1 tube. Patents on this one. Nice for the techies but it didn't sound SET like to these ears. Perhaps the speakers were to blame? Who knows.

Those are the one's I liked.

ENjoy,
Bob

Jakkar · « **Reply #1 on:** 29 Apr 2005, 10:14 pm »

I really enjoyed two rooms on the 4th Floor. The most enjoyable was the Manley/Joseph Audio Room. This room used a VPI TNT-HRX analog front end and a McCormack SACD front end. The speakers were a pair of Joseph Audio RM55s with a dissassembled Pearl used as a center channel. The three channel SACD selection was quite good and the analog music was excellent.

The next room was the Kimber room with Ray's recordings with the IsoMike playing through 4 TAD model One speakers. Very good with brass instruments, guitar and drum kits.

I visited the MBL room once in the morning and they were playing some very stange trance music which really did not seem to showcase the abilities of the speakers when I was there.

I visited the laser turntable room but didn't stay long as they either really needed to clean their records or the laser table is very sensitive to surface noise.

Phil's room was standing room only for alot of the day. It sounded very good with the floorstanding Focus speakers and Blue Circle hybrid amplification.

The Rogue Audio/Eggleston Room had three new Rogue units. They were bargain price amps and a preamp that looked interesting and sounded quite good with the small Eggleston speakers and I believe Meitner sources.

I didn't make it into the Singer rooms, I will try to hit them this weekend if I have time with all my planned vinyl shopping on the 3rd floor.

jermmd · « **Reply #2 on:** 29 Apr 2005, 11:47 pm »

I thought Outlaw Audio offered the best bang for your buck room. There demo was exceptionally theater like.
The Kaleidescape DVD server with Runco projection and Macintosh sound was awesome.
The ELP laser turntable was a really cool idea but way overpriced in my mind.
The Samsung giant DLP RPTV that did 1080 progressive was magnificent even in a brightly lit room.
I also thought the Sound by Singer Megarooms were great. The JMLab Nova Utopia speakers on Bat amplification really made you appreciate "high end."
MBL sounded terrible to me but it was in the worst possible room set up poorly.
The new April Music gear was great in my opinion although I admit that I had difficulty hearing a difference between 96kHz and 192kHz upsampled music.
Finally, there was a pair of very cheap bookshelf speakers playing on a very expensive CD player in one of the end rooms. I can't recall the name (I think it began with E) but they sounded surprisingly good.
I have lots more comments but I'll save them for later.

Joe M.

Music Maven · « **Reply #3 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 01:05 am »

I'm LOVIN' this! Gimme more! Can you package it? I wanna INHALE!!!

SET Man · « **Reply #4 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 03:02 am »

Hi all,

Here is my adventure at the show today.

This was my first day at the show. So far I'm pretty impressed with the stuff I saw today. I even picked up some LPs home, wish I could buy more but ain't got the $ have to pay the rent soon

The show seem to be smaller with less floors this year I think. I was there for about 3 to 4 hours and did not get see all the room. But of cause I will go again tomorrow and on Sunday too

Here are some pictures from the show.

One of the May Audio Marketing's room. See the Super tweeters on top of the speaker? They were playing some chinese music when I walk in. I didn't stay long enough to really give any comment.

Chord Electronic and Tetra Speaker. Check out the finish on those speakers? I had a chance to sit in the sweet spot and the sound was pretty good. I should have asked to play my CD so I could give more comment

Pretty isn't it?

Moscode room With Von Schweikert speaker. The room was a bit crowed so I did not get a chance to sit and listen. Too bad maybe tomorrow

Bule Circle and Focus Audio room. That is a mascot I think. A pair of Gallo ball in the bra and the shoe are the amps. I stop by inside to say hi to Phil. This year with a smaller but more affordable floor stander from Focus Audio. The sound was clean and fast. Very good as usual. If you like the sound of this smaller Focus you might want to also check out the larger one, I heard them last year, sure they will cost more but they are excellent. Sadly I did not get to hear the new interg. amp from Bule Circle. Hmm.. forgot to take picture of the inside.

Arcapella, Eubstein Audio, Isoclean Power and Aaudio Imports room. They had the smaller speaker playing when I was there. Very impressive I must say for a pair of speaker that small. I will have to stop by tomorrow to hear the horn.

Brikman and Marten. This is one of favorite room I visited on my first day today. They had 2 turntables spinning. The sound was great. The speaker are almost seamless from top to bottom and clean. The sound from turntable was excellent. Pure analog bliss!

Continum Audio room. Very interesting looking TT there! They were spinning "Kind of Blue" I don't why but I feel the sound was not very good. I think I was sitting too close to the speaker and to the right side . I can't really comment more because of that.

Bosendorfer, Art Audio and Kaleidescape. This is definately one of favorite room today. They had classical music when I walk in of cause. With the classical music and jazz the sound was excellent. Very dimensional. spacious and very clean. Before I left the pretty women ask if I want to be on the mailing list and from there I asked her if I could play my music of which I was afaid to ask since they seem like classical only people. She introduced to one of the guy and he put my Trip-hop/electronic music CD on. I must say the system sound excellent even with newer musics. The mid is just great! I'm sure those beautiful Art Audio amps have something to do with this too.

The only thing I think I would like to change is the bass of which could have been just a bit tighter. After that I chat with another guy there about the turntable. He asked if I want to paly any LP but I didn't bring any of my LPs from home but those that I bought at the show. What can I say great sound and great people there. Too bad I won't be able to afford those stuff.

Lamm, Damoka and Weiss. Very interesting room. See those speaker? And old fashion corner loaded horn. They were playing a piano piece. The sound was huge, definately don't sound like a 12" pianist playing a piano

Wonder how will the system will sound with rock, pop and electronic music.

Oh! one more thing. No picture...Mark Levison of Red Rose was playing MP3 in to a new $1500 DAC that he claim it wil make everthing sound like LP! Well, what else can I say. This room feaked me out.

Sure I have to admit that the 128K file MP3 sounded better than plug in your ipod headphone out directly to the system. But still even with $1500 (?) "Bobcat" DAC I think I still feel that the sound was flat and lack all the finer detail. Hard to say becasue I can't play my own CD or rip my CD in to MP3 and play

I don't know a man like him who have been into hi-end since the beginning would do this? Ayway, don't take my word for it go hear it for yourself, maybe be you will like it.

Okay folks. Hope you enjoy my small adventure at the show today. I will go again tomorrow. If I have time I will try to post some more pictures Man! is great to be in NYC!

Take care all,
Buddy

lonewolfny42 · « **Reply #5 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 03:45 am »

Thanks Buddy for the pictures and comments !!!

http://www.stereophile.com/news/042805he/[/list:u]

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hifi2005/[/list:u]

http://www.stereophile.com/news/042505making/[/list:u]

ekovalsky · « **Reply #6 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 04:04 am »

Thanks for the reports.

Can someone going this weekend check out the Analysis Audio & H20 setup in rm 725 ?

Music Maven · « **Reply #7 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 04:12 am »

Great pictures, thanks! Next best thing to being there.

If anybody spots great floorstanders retailing for under $3000, please post that!

Of course, it's educational to be open-minded and enjoy all the stuff!

Jerry

lonewolfny42 · « **Reply #8 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 04:21 am »

Quote from: ekovalsky

Thanks for the reports.

Can someone going this weekend check out the Analysis Audio & H20 setup in rm 725 ?

Its on my list for Saturday..... ...nice speakers !!!

Occam · « **Reply #9 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 04:44 am »

The Analysis/H2O room was quite nice. The amps demostrated exceptional power, but one would hope so with a KW one each tweeter and midwoof panel. Nothing shows success like excess.
The demo music was particularly appropriate for these speakers, lovely at demonstraing drum thwaks, and percussion in general, but pretty much nada below 40hz.....

Phil's Sonic Spirits room was great, not only for the equipment, but for the folks running it. Gilbert Yueng (Mr. Blue Circle) is an absolute hoot! The aftershow gettogether was fun as well as enlightening. The Focus speakers aquitted themselves admirably in a less than ideal room, and Gibert's balanced ingerated is a simple solution for great sound. Tiangus demoed his battery driven non-os dac to great effect along with its blinding blue led

I couldn't get Phil out of the room long enough to take a screwdriver to the Audience Adept powerconditioner to get a look at the innards. Its effect on Gilbert's integrated was most impressive.

I really couldn't judge speakers driven by equipment I wasn't familiar with, let alone placing less than optimal rooms, but the Reymio Compact (Set Man's 1st pic) augmented by supertweet and subwoof was very impressive..

ekovalsky · « **Reply #10 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 05:35 am »

Another site. Great pics!!!

http://www.audiofederation.com/hifiing/2005/HE2005NYC/index.htm

zybar · « **Reply #11 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 02:21 pm »

Keep the reviews coming!

Hopefully I will make it there on Sunday to see and hear a few rooms for myself.

George

jkelly · « **Reply #12 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 02:38 pm »

Two rooms that I don't think were mentioned but sounded good to me was the Horning Room and the Totem Acoustics Room.

Hornings New York distributor was showing their $8500 speaker (forgot name) playing analog. The system and room had all the tweaks. Lots of clarity, imaging, depth and bass.

This was the first time I heard Totem. Just amazing to here all that bass from such a small speaker system. Vincent gave a presentation that only a owner/designer could deliver.

I guess I am also amazed to hear many unemotional, loud, flat sounding systems at such a professional presentation.

A fun day in the city.

Jeff

TheeeChosenOne · « **Reply #13 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 04:50 pm »

Quote from: jkelly

Two rooms that I don't think were mentioned but sounded good to me was the Horning Room and the Totem Acoustics Room.

This was the first time I heard Totem. Just amazing to here all that bass from such a small speaker system. Vincent gave a presentation that only a owner/designer could deliver.

I guess I am also amazed t ...

Totem's room is always enjoyable. They have great speakers. The owner/designer seems to be a minor celebrity as I always see people taking pictures of him. His room is always crowded at the shows...

GDeering · « **Reply #14 on:** 30 Apr 2005, 07:43 pm »

The Joseph room was a highlight for me. Those speakers might even make me a crossover fan.

Interestingly the Hyperion Sound Design 938 impressed me it its control in the bass. With room after room of flabby, tubby (room distorted) bass it was a pleasure to have some bass clarity and definition. It was not as musical as the Joseph speakers, but at 1/3rd the price ($4,000) more my speed. The MBL speakers sounded very good, but the room was too crowded on the couple of times I visited. I should have more patience.

I liked the Butler room a lot. The speakers and sound of the room was very good. Not SE like, but full (in a SE way, if you will). I went in a few times. I wish I took some time to talk to Mr. Butler, I could have asked him a lot of, basically uninformed, questions about how he ended up with a high watt transformer-less amp (which to my mind says OTL) and also runs on a single 300B?

Another surprise was the Chord room. 50K of electronics and 3K speakers. Great sound. They patiently gave me the time to play a movement from a Brahms violin sonata at normal listening levels. It passed the rich and musical test, by far the best SS of the day for me. Chord also has some proprietorial way of getting around traditional transformers, but really I can’t pretend to remember any technical information after a day of “Incredibles” sound track explosions.

On the SET/Horns front I thought High Water Sound did a great job with the Hornings and the very interesting turntable (I should take notes?) Great depth of sound, beautiful midrange. The Hornings are hybrids, but they retain the single driver character with its pluses and minuses. I could see, after a day of listening to good conventional speakers that some one might feel short changed by the single driver sound. If conventional speakers cover the spectrum better, the single driver has greater depth of sound and to my ears ultimately I find depth more satisfying.

One room I was disappointed by was the H20 room. I was very interested in these amplifiers. But the system sounded down right terrible with my plain old redbook CD of Beethoven op. 18 String Quartets. If a system can make this sound good I know that it has resolution rather then ruthlessness. I was hoping that the digital amps might bring out the better qualities of the CD, but it seemed to be a case of a system sounding best with audiophile CDs. I hope others experiences were different. Really nice people, they did not look at me like “why did you bring that crummy CD?”

I only had a day, too bad.

Gregg

SET Man · « **Reply #15 on:** 1 May 2005, 03:30 pm »

Hey!
Well, is Sunday morning.

Yesterday show was fun for me. I visited more room than on Friday. There are couple of very good sounding room today. And surprisingly there are couple of interesting newspeakers around this year. Here are some of the highlight of my adventure yesterday.

Enjoy...

MBL room. 360* sound. But I think the room is just to small for them.

Merlin and Joule. The sound was very good. Classical music was on while I was there and the sound was very good, clean and spacious. Wonder what will they sound like with rock and pop. I forgot what pre and cd palyer are.

Forest of tubes! In Merlin/Joule room.

High Water Sound room. With Horning Hybrid speaker, Torn Electronic and Sound Engineering TT. A very interesting way of using Lowther driver as a mid band driver! Hardcore Lowther guy would be screming! There are woofers for bass in the back. No not single driver. But I think they work well. they sound very good, still have that great Lowther mid band but without the Lowther infamous shout. The bass is okay, hard to say. The room was a bit crowed when I was there and did not get to play my own music. Maybe I should stop by the High Water Sound to listen to them in a well set up room.

Look what behind the Lowther.

Rock on!

Kharma room. The sub look and sound impressive. The sound of the music that was on Jazz again sounded great. Clean, high clearity, well balance and with feeling of scale and solid low bass for sure. Now I see why magazine reviewers like them.

Sound Fusion room. Now here is a new interesting looking speakers. I think they are from Canada. The sound was pretty good acturally. Those drivers are pretty expensive dirvers used.

A father and son (?) team at Totem. Again they sounded very enjoyable this year. This is a kind of speaker that would be perfect for music lovers and audiophiles alike.

Almarro room. This is one of my favorite room today (Saturday) Nothing fancy in this room. Just some simple looking speaker with 6.5" and Focal tweeter on top and some tube amps. When I was there they were driver those speaker with EL84 interg. amp. SE amp I think put out 4.7 watts according to the guy there. I asked them to paly my CD and they did without hesitation. Believe it or not. This simple looking system sounded so good that it made me smile and connected me with music. I dared to say that the system is more enjoyable than some bigger more expensive systems at the show, seriously. It made my day.

And here for all NY Raver...Look who I spoted in Phil's Sonic Spirits room? Yes, the one and only Chris next to the nice sounding Focus Audio speaker FS-78SE Hey! where is the beer?

Well, here is the picture of the inside Sonic Spirits room. I still did not get to hear the Bule Circle interg-amp with the Focus Audio monitor that the NY Raver raved about. I'm sure they sound as good as they said. But I could tell you that the floor stander in this picture sound great. I stop by near closing time and Chris handed Phil "Prodigy" CD. Man! it was a blast playing "Fire Starter" on this system. Yup,the speaker handled that track nicely even at pretty high volume. Some people even walk in to see. Is good to hear some music other than classical, jazz and of cause Diana Krall! Definately nice selection of wide range of music there. Great job Phil and thanks for playing my trip-hop/electronica CD yesterday, the system sound great with my music too.

After show drink at Ginger Man. I had great time talking to NY ravers and other who was there. Hey! Levi me missed you. The list of beers they have there is amazing!

Well, guys hope you enjoy my Saturday adventure. I'm going to the show again today. I think I will spend about 3 to 4 hours there today. Hmmm... I haven't stop by the bigger rooms at the show yet.

Oh! there is some more pictures of the show in my "gallery"

Take care,
Buddy

PhilNYC · « **Reply #16 on:** 2 May 2005, 02:11 am »

Wanted to post a thanks on behalf of Sonic Spirits, Blue Circle, Focus Audio, and Dodson to everyone who visited our room, and to those who have mentioned good things about us in this thread. We had a very busy show, with over 1300 people coming through our room over the four days!

Special thanks to Daniel (who unfortunately couldn't make it to the show); my transport died during setup on Wednesday, and Daniel supplied his EA-modded Sony S7700 for our use at the very last minute! It was very generous on Daniel's part, and it made the show that much more successful for us. Also thanks to SET Man and tianguis for helping us break things down at the end of the show.

Was glad to meet a few ACers who came to visit...the NY Audio Ravers, Bingenito (all the way from NC!), and I'm sure many others whom I wished would have introduced themselves to me and joined us for our Thursday and Saturday after-hours activities.

For anyone interested, here are some of the CDs that got heavy rotation in our room (when we weren't playing visitors' CDs):

Sonny Rollins - Way Out West (K2 20-bit remaster)
Joey DeFrancesco w/Jimmy Smith - Legacy
Jimmy Smith - Root Down
Wynton Marsalis - The Magic Hour
John Scofield - Uberjam
Monty Alexander - Live at the Montreux Festival
Doug McLeod - Come to Find (XRCD)
Steppenwolf - All Time Greatest Hits
Billy Idol - Greatest Hits
Jennifer Warnes - The Well
Mino Cinelu - (self-titled)
Exotic Dances from the Opera (Reference Recordings)
Bolero: Orchestral Fireworks (Reference Recordings)
Schubert: Quintet, Op. 114 "The Trout" / Sonata, D. 821 "Arpeggione"
FIM Super Sound (First Impression Music XRCD)

Whew! The show is over...I'm gonna get some sleep now....

SET Man · « **Reply #17 on:** 2 May 2005, 02:46 am »

Hi all,

Well this is my last report of the show. I was there for about 2-3 hours today.

Hyperion room. Again classical music was playing when I walked in. But I got the guy there to play my trip-hop/eletronica music. The speaker sound great with classical and my own music. Very nice for the price. I believe those amp and pre are Hyperion own.

ELP Laser TT. Interesting technology. From what I know it was first develope 20 years ago. I assumed the CD killed it. Until now. Anyway, the equipments used with the TT are impressive. Halco and Joseph audio speaker. Sound wise I did not feel anything special. The sound was diffent. I feel that needle based TT at the same price could be better than that. And there were an older couple that bought some of thier records. The exhibitor have to clean each one before palying and yet still every dust still show up as tick and pop. But I have to admit that clean LP do sound very quiet.

Kimber room. Again this year I found myself enjoying his show. This year he came with a 4 channels DSD set up with 4 monster speakers from TAD and 4 huge amps by Pass audio. He demo us some of the great recording that he made. There was one piece about the janitor shot someone. I've never heard a hand gun fire at close range but the sound coming out of speaker was sacary real. And you could hear the janitor walk around you. Also there were other great chorus group piece with singer surrounded us, when they do the roll call it sound as if they were really standing around me! Thanks Mr. Kimber looking forward to see you again next year with great music

JM Lab and Patho room. This room sound so fine. There were playing a very relaxing classical piece and I must say the sound was very good. Clean, clear, spacious and very relaxing. Not to mention that both speaker and amp are beautiful.

Innersound room. Sadly I did not stay long to really enjoy the sound of these stat. But I did heard a few minute of music there. The sound was clean and clear. very open and spacious. With 10' the bass was great. A great blend of stat and dynamic woofer. But of cause they are very beamy and only one person could really enjoy what they have to offer.

Well, finally I get to hear the Focus Audio monitor with Blue Circle integ-amp. The come combo sound excellent. Better than I expected from such small speaker. Very clean, clear, fast with depth and enough bass to keep me happy with my trip-hop/electronica musics. Well, they were so good that one of the show goer bought them while I was there near the end of the show! I think that said it all. Great show Phil. Hope to see you there agian next year.

Well, folks is over. I had a great time this year. So, what did I learn from the show? Well one thing for sure is that you don't have to spend lots of money to get good sound. There were some stuffs at very reasonal price that sound excellent. Some of which I did enjoy more than some mega buck stuff.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy my adventure at the show.

Take care,
Buddy

Bingenito · « **Reply #18 on:** 2 May 2005, 02:50 am »

Phil,

I am very glad that I was able to make it to the show. My father and I had a great time.

Congratulations on your room. The sound was top notch. The system had a deep and wide soundstage and was ultra smooth.

The Focus Audio guys did a great job with that speaker. The freq. extension exceeded my expectations for a small two way floorstander.

The BC202 had no problem driving the speakers which are 86db Sens. to concert like levels while listening to Fire Starter

That was my favorite part of the day. No snob like Audiophile nonsense. Let's crank it up and have a good time, after all that is what it is all about.

It was great to meet you, Chris, and Gilbert in person.

Gilbert was a crack up as I expected

After hearing the BC202 I think there is a BC206 in my future real soon

Again great job with everything. The hard work paid off!

lonewolfny42 · « **Reply #19 on:** 2 May 2005, 08:04 am »

Thanks again to SetMan/Buddy and Bingenito/Bryan for posting the photo's. Levy ...did you shoot any Sunday....besides the audio babes ?

Chris[/list:u]