All,
Today I attended the NYAR August meeting at Jim's (Hogg). I brought Anthony (loyal RWA employee and music lover), the Isabella with built-in dac, Signature 30.2 power amp (actually, these both were purchased by Maruisz and we were just burning them in for him
), WLM La Scala Monitors, and RWA interconnects and speaker cable. For a transport - the Macbook loaded with WAV/Lossless files and using USB output.
First, I want to thank Jim and his wife Jane for hosting this event
... they have such a beautiful home with a really spectacular view of the Long Island Sound. The weather was great and there were sailboats on the water, and plenty of cold drinks and tasty food outside on the patio - such a perfect day and they were largely responsible for it.
Inside, there was plenty of equipment (e.g. Jim's Tannoy's and his fine tube amps), and plenty types of music being played. The day just flew by! I enjoyed being with all the familiar faces, and meeting a bunch of news ones! It is nice to be able to put a face to the name on audiocircle.
You guys were a lot of fun - thank you!
I thought that I was going to be setting up in one of Jim's smaller rooms, so I brought the WLM La Scala Monitors. It turns out that room was being used for a "dac shootout," so I ended up parking in Jim's larger, main listening room. While the La Scala (floorstanders) would have been ideal for this larger-sized room, the La Scala Monitors did not disappoint! They threw out a big, wide and open sound stage and Jim's room had plenty of "natural" room treatment, so there were essentially no standing wave or refection issues to compete with. I wish the hotel rooms as the audio shows were like this!
Levi brought some NOS tubes (Amperex gold pin 6922s, Bugle Boy 6DJ8s) and we swapped them in the Isabella and the differences were very noticeable - it was fun! The Amperex gold pin 6922s were very rich and seductive sounding and I thought about "secretly borrowing" them from Levi (aka, stealing) - just kidding!
TopRound also "donated" his Lector CD player and we used it as a transport for the built-in Isabellina dac in the Isabella. There were many members who had lots of CDs to try (ahem, SET Man.. ahem, Lonewolfny42
) and I did not have the patience to rip them all to the Macbook (and isn't that illegal
) so the transport was helpful for this and was a very nice transport!
SET Man (Buddy) delivered on his promise to bring Thai Ice Coffee and everything sounded (and tasted) so sweet with a glass of this! Since I only got a few hours of sleep the night before, all the caffeine gave me a big kick!
Someone (I think TopRound) also brought an old Dynaco 120 (solid state) amp and we connected it to the Isabella and it sounded great. Is it really true it was bought at a garage sale for $30 - now THAT is a value!!!
The SP Timepiece Minis that Lonewolf brought were also a pleasure to listen to and I was glad to be able to finally hear them. The 30.2 was able to drive them fairly loud, but when we really pushed it there was clipping. At "normal" listening levels, they sounded excellent together. When Mariusz finally arrived
, I also enjoyed his AAD stand-mount speakers (sorry I forgot the model number, but they have the vertical bars on the front)... the WLMs, SP's, and AADs all had their own sound and areas where they excel. It was interesting to hear them all in the same room with the same equipment, without bothering with "shootouts." Everyone was having too much fun and tearing through their music collections - now that is what is all about!
Being with you NY Audio Ravers was a lot of fun and thank you all for listening to the RWA system, and t
hanks again to Jim and Jane for having us and being such a great host and hostess! It was a great day in Stamford, CT (and I didn't have to drive too far to visit
)
-Vinnie
