What to see at RMAF?

jrebman · « **on:** 11 Oct 2007, 05:28 pm »

I haven't gone over the vendor listings and made my plan yet, but I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions along the lines of things related to single-driver/high-efficiency gear to see at RMAF?

Right now my top two are Serious Stereo and the Feeastrex drivers that are being shown by The Lotus Group.

Anybody have any other suggestions?

-- Jim

aerius · « **Reply #1 on:** 11 Oct 2007, 05:48 pm »

There's the Lowther America room (1128) where they're doing the stock & EnABL treated demo on Friday starting around 6pm or so. There's a possibility that Thom Makris ( room 1130) will have a set of treated Lowther drivers in a horn setup, that should be interesting.

mor2bz · « **Reply #2 on:** 13 Oct 2007, 02:33 am »

for sure see the bastanis room; he was not there last yr. so this may be one of your
very last chances to hear these truly great speakers. i wish other designers were
half as serious, generous, and knowledgable as Robert Bastanis.

mgalusha · « **Reply #3 on:** 13 Oct 2007, 02:40 am »

Nelson pass has Lowther PM6's driven by a FirstWatt amp running 80Hz and up in an open baffle with 2 10" SEAS Excel woofers on the bottom driven with a Pass Labs X30.5 I believe.

Lyndon · « **Reply #4 on:** 13 Oct 2007, 04:13 am »

Mike,
That sounds very interesting. One of my future projects is the FirstWatt F-4 amp. I am so jealous of you guys out there. See if you can take any pics of this set up.

Lyndon

DaveC113 · « **Reply #5 on:** 13 Oct 2007, 04:45 am »

I really liked the Feastrex drivers, the Maxxhorn Lumination ($12.5 on sale) speaker with the 5nf driver, and the 9" field coil driver in a BLH ($24k drivers only) were on display. The 9" speaker really needed a big space to open up, but the 5" did pretty well for being in a little room.

The Lowther / Pass OB speaker was good too, that special dipole effect was there, but the system only extended up to 10k which took some getting used to, the bass lacked impact, and there was a midrange bump.... in spite of that they were a lot of fun to listen to, and easy to forgive the mistakes.

Cain and Cain had some horns with 6" Fostex Sigma drivers, with the drivers mounted on the wide side of the horn

They were huge, but not very deep. I forget the model name, but they were very good... especially good bass, but lacked the extension and sparkle of 4.5" drivers.

Not SD, but definately check out the MBL omnidirectional speakers. VERY cool... but I'll never be able to afford them. The sounstage is sometimes incredibly good, sometimes it places the sounds in strange places... the realism was astounding with some music. Also, you have to see the Cogent Horns, I posted pics on the thread about rmaf pics. GR Research should get the award for biggest system in the smallest room. LS-9s with monster Dodd tube amps in a regular sized hotel room. These speakers sound like they'd be at home in an auditorium.

Dave

DaveC113 · « **Reply #6 on:** 14 Oct 2007, 05:37 pm »

Correction, the Feastrex 9e was in a big ported box, not a BLH... I guess not having to build a fancy cabinet for it will help take the sting out of the $24k price

RMAF certainly made me appreciate my Omegas

JLM · « **Reply #7 on:** 15 Oct 2007, 04:47 pm »

Everytime I think about going to RMAF a number of realities kick in:

Most of the show stuff is very expensive.

Much of the sound quality you can hear is room dependent.

While glamorous, the majority of the products shown are based on design principles I've decided against (right or wrong).

After hearing other systems I'm very satisfied with what I have.

OTOH, I'd love to meet so many ACer's face to face.