Guys,Well, RMAF is over and hopefully everybody made it home safe and sound. I hope everyone enjoyed the show this year. There seemed to be quite a few more vendors/companies represented but not as many attendees. I suppose the recent events in New Orleans and the associated gas prices may have something to do with that. That, and the general decline of high-end audio in general. Oh well...
I want to thank everybody involved in demonstrating our gear - starting with
Mike Garner from
TweekGeek.com. Were it not for him, we probably wouldn't have been there at all this year. (We're saving our pennies for T.H.E. Show in January.) He has helped us as much as anyone could ever ask - and tons more.
I also want to thank
Steve Chang of
Chang Audio Network. His pre-show party was a gas and he was a real trooper through the whole thing. His enthusiastic spirit kept me going when i was really feeling the stress.
Danny Richie of
GR Research and
Joe Jurzec of
JAM'n Audio need to be thanked as well. Each of those fine gentlemen helped in whatever ways they could and were a great encouragement to the rest of our crew. All-in-all, I have nothing but thanks to everyone involved -
and to all that stopped by our room as well. THANKS!!!...for taking the time out of your busy schedule. We appreciate it much.
Now...for the ugly part. Well...not really ugly, but just a tad bit of disappointment.
When we got to the Tech Center on Thursday, Mike had left to have dinner with his wife. I couldn't contact him so we all just went on over to Steve's house for the party. I had wanted to help tweak the room, but when I went to the room I could hear music playing through the door, so I figured he was all done setting up and was letting the system burn-in overnight.
On Friday morning when I got to the room, I felt the sound was pretty "boomy" sounding. I figured the high frequencies sounded recessed in comparison because the excess bass was swamping them out. We moved the acoustic panels around a bit and that seemed to help, but I still wasn't happy. Nevertheless, one expects such sound in those little rooms so I resigned myself to the fact that it was about as good a sound as possible. I was wrong.
Mike was demo-ing with the
McCormack UDP-1 CD/SACDplayer and the
McCormack MDP-1(?) preamp. Power was delivered by the
Nuforce Ref 9's. Althoough I wasn't personally familiar with any of that gear except the Nuforce, I figured it was about as good as one could hope for and certainly up to the task of delivering very excellent performance. I was wrong.
Now, don't gt me wrong, I couldn't be more thankful to Mike, and his gear is definately better than what I have back here at the shop so...beggars can't be choosers. It was his room and I had nothing else to offer. Like I said, I was just thankful to be there.
But...Saturday night we had an eye-opening experience. My dear friend Joe Jurzec came by our room in the afternoon that day and after listening to the system he said very emphatically, "We have to get that
Modwright preamp in this system!" Now, I had heard the Modwright/Nuforce combo in my shop the day Joe came for his tweeter upgrade. I've already posted about the sound we heard that day. Back then I attributed a good part of that sound to the impedance mod I did on the crossover. I still know that the mod made a huge difference, but what I didn't know then was just how good the Modwright/Nuforce combo was.
So anyway, down the hall Joe marches and before long, he's walking in with a preamp. Mike didn't mind at all so what was I going to say? It was after 6:00PM by then and the show was essentially over for the day, so why not give it a try?
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!By writing this I don't expect anybody reading it to think anything other than the fact that I'm trying to make excuses for the sound of the room. If I were one of you guys and I heard our room (or not)...and then I read this, that's exactly what I would be thinking. So take what follows with a grain of salt - I'm sure you will. In fact, if anything good comes from this, let it be this: If you ever get a chance to try a Modwright preamp in your system...DO IT!!! What follows is not so much an excuse for the sound of our speakers as it is an endorsement for Modwright. That preamp was magnificent and totally transformed the sound of our speakers!
Before the Modwright, the sound had little in the way of micro-dynamics, there was virtually no "air" around the instruments or proper ambient decay and the sound was essentially dry and lifeless. As I said before, I just attributed the sound to the fact that the room was too small and boomy. Since I've been back from the show, I've even spoken with others that said they were told the same thing by folks that heard our room.
Well, when we inserted the Modwright in place of the McCormack everything came to life. It was like someone had removed some form of curtain from in front of the speakers. The highs were more detailed but not bright, and I could easily hear all the ambient cues in the recordings.
Our "sound" was back. I could actually hear ambience seem to come from behind my head and every instrument had it's own space, while a richness of "presence" eminated from the front of the room. I would never have believed it if I hadn't heard it myself. I don't know what that little puppy did or what's going on inside it, but you'd have to be deaf in one ear and not be able to hear out of the other in order to not hear the difference.
In retrospect, I guess it all makes sense. Our speakers are designed to be as transparent and true to the source as possible. They only put out what they're being fed so I guess that little experience was a testamony to their accuracy. But except for the guys involved in our room and a couple of others (I think Dan Wright heard it) nobody else knows that came to our room. I guess it was a good experiment in the end, but a show is no place to be experimenting - AAARRGGHHH!!!!
I'll tell you one thing: At T.H.E. Show we're going to have either that preamp or one just as good in our setup. Sunday morning we had to give Dan his preamp back and when we put the McCormack back in I felt like..."What's the point? We might as well just tear down the gear and go home." It was like somebody stole our speakers and substituted some Best-Buy junk.
That's what you get when you put all your money into manufacturing equipment and don't have the funds left to experiment with the front-end electronics. To be honest, folks ask me for recommendations on amplifiers and such all the time and I never really know what to tell them. I just don't have the experience. All the stuff I started out with in my home setup years ago is either broken our out-dated. I have relied on others that have better gear to tell me how our speakers sound. Well, not anymore - I KNOW now.
So guess what? Now I can honestly telly you to try that Modwright/Nuforce combo. There may be better yet to be had, but on our Continuum 2.5's, they were absolutely breath-taking. The only two rooms at RMAF that I thought sounded as good (if not better) after inserting the Modwright, were the Avant-garde room and the Avalon room. I heard that the Genesis room was spectacular too. Even if their stuff was better, I don't feel too bad. Look at their prices. Just wait until I buid a $30k + system.
-Bob
PS. Is there anybody out there that has any experience with the Modwright gear and can still recommend something better? Believe me, I'm all ears now! Thanks!
