OK, here goes a narration of the pictures in the gallery linked to in the first post of this thread
HarleyMYK's Audio Porn Photos. I have referenced the numbers in the titles of the pictures (NOT the Gallery’s sequential number) before each paragraph. Everything is just what I heard with the specific equipment and the specific room. Some of the speakers may sound different in another room or with other gear or to someone else. YMMV!
I am not connected in any way with any of the manufacturers. I probably saw 5% of the rooms and 10% of the significant displays at the Alexis Park Hotel. I did not get to T.H.E. show.
01 – 03
The Manley Labs room. I saw EveAnna as I walked in. They were playing Ray Montford, Shed Your Skin (as were many of the demo rooms). They were using their big heavy expensive tube gear with Coincident speakers. The sound was both warm and detailed, but the sound came from the two speakers and there was not much imaging for me. I was impressed by how monstrously big and heavy the equipment was.
04
Lovely Opera speakers nicely angled on a base with different sized spikes in front and back. Significant room treatment, but alas there was no imaging (for me). Otherwise the Opera had a very nice sound with great detail.
05 – 08
The Meadowlark, Rouge, Acoustic Zen room had incredible imaging. My test cut was Savannah Fare You Well from Jimmy Buffet, Far Side of the World. In the violin solo, I could almost see the instrument being cradled left to right and up and down. Unfortunately I found the bass coming from the Nighthawks to be boomy and uncontrolled.
09 – 12
The cut-away speaker in photo 09 caught my attention and I walked in. Isophon is a German speaker manufacturer with a pair of internal firing woofers facing each other. Very nice looking floor-standers with nicely controlled bass. But to me the sound was a little congested and fatiguing. Beautiful upstream gear.
13
The Adam speakers had a very natural sound. They were playing some great sounding SACD. I asked to switch to 2 channel with just the floor standers (the model is the “Pencil”). The salesman demonstrated how much distance from the wall impacted the bass – it was a huge difference. We compromised at a moderate distance from the wall. It was my favorite sound so far that day.
14 -15
The Quad room immediately outdid the Adam room. Great detail, nice imaging, plenty of controlled bass in a completely untreated room – very impressive. The sound had a smidgen of metallic or shrillness, but just a hair. The tube amps mellowed it out well. I asked MSRP and was told that the 989 “room partitions” were $8500 a pair, the 240 monoblocks were $2000 each and the CDP with volume control and remote was $1500.
16 – 17
The Polk audio room featured a pretty expensive setup for $900 a pair LSi9 monitors. The speaker cables probably cost more than double the price of the speakers. They were driven with a 7 channel Sony DA9000ES. Lots of room treatment (bass tubes and side wall treatment around seated ear level). It sounded very, very good – even in two channel without the sub. Fantastic for the price! Great imaging, significant bass, although limited as to how low it could go without the sub. Based on this setup, if I had a brother-in-law who wanted to go get speakers for less than $500 each at Good Guys, the LSi9s would be easy to recommend.
18 - 20
I really wanted to like the Gallo Reference. To me this setup sounded only OK --YMMV. The speakers were much smaller than I had expected.
21 – 24
These monster speakers from PASS were my favorite of the day, but also probably the most expensive I heard ($45,000 for the pair). These are active speakers with four amps in each one along with four active crossovers. The room was totally untreated, yet the sound was detailed, musical, with accurate imaging and controlled full bass – this sound had it all. At higher volumes, the room became a problem. If I had tens of millions, based on just what I heard today, this would be my amp – speaker. See
http://www.passlabs.com/prodlit/rushmore.htm for more.
I then went and had a great free lunch by the pool. Another one of the unanticipated pleasures of the day.
25 – 29
Next to VMPS and the RM 30s. A very attractive speaker. I spent about 15 minutes listening to them and could not get them to image. They covered the spectrum of sound very well, with great bass. I went out to chat with John Casler, and Brian asked me what I thought. I told him, and he said “just wait until Sunday afternoon – we’ll have then right by then.” When I came back in Brian was behind one of the speakers with a soldering iron. I stood by the side and the imaging was totally there. I then sat in the sweet spot and they sounded much better – great imaging. Brian mentioned that he had been fiddling with them extensively. In all fairness, I need to make a trip to El Sorbante again and compare them with the RM 40s after they are sorted out.
After that I chatted with AZRyan and his lovely wife. I think Ryan said he thought the 30s were even better than the 40s. Certainly they are a lot easier to talk the wife into.
30 – 31
Usher was playing the $2100 a pair 6311’s. These were their little 2 way floor-stander. Nice full controlled bass, great detail -- sounded awfully nice for the price. However, from here on out, I did not trust my judgment as much, as I was getting burned out. This listening is hard work and I am not used to doing it for so long! Anything I say from here on down is going to be less authoritative (as if anything I have said up to now should bear any credence).
32 – 37
These speakers are the SELA from MEL, an Italian company. They were lovely understated smallish floor-standers. Kind of a less is more sort of thing. Nice detail, sweet midrange. No deep bass, just a very pleasant and easy to listen to sound – just what I needed for a break. The pictures do not do them justice. These would look so nice in my living room and would be very easy to live with. They have no US distribution yet, but the MSRP is $5700 for a pair. If they had said $1500, I would have tried to take them home. I posted some pictures of their other gear and a list of what the heck it is.
38 – 39
My vote for the best sales / marketing goes to Totem. Fabulous Native American theme in their room setup. They had a corner suite, to grab plenty of traffic. The salesperson said she had a CD designed specific to each speaker. I assume that is to show off its strengths (or perhaps ignore its weaknesses). I was not able to play my demo CD on the Forests shown here, as she was demo’ing the speakers to some other folks. I went into the other room, which was set up with the Winds for HT. The salesperson played my demo disk there, and it did not sound good – but again it was set up for 5.1 and I had a Redbook 2 channel CD.
42 – 43
No, I was not blown away. It was OK, but I didn’t even write anything down.
44 – 47
I briefly met Mark and several principals from China - including the developer of the Reference Series (Mr. Pu?). I learned Mandarin 30 years ago at UCLA, and tried a little with him. I am very rusty, but he did not laugh at me.
Although I got to listen to the Reference 3, it was impossible to tell what it sounded like. The room was way too tiny, totally crowded with gear, and there was a ton of noise coming from next door. As I told the developer: Speaker so big, room so small.
48 – 51
Nice time to chat with Kevin from DIY Cable. Also Danny Wiggins. I could not give the new MTM prototypes a decent listen in the room with everyone talking and such.
52 – 53
The ProAc Response D38 was a very easy speaker to listen to. No fatigue pretty nice detail – pleasant.
54 – 56
The Von Schweikert VR-4jr had all sort of detail and bass, but sounded heavy. Sort of the opposite of the ProAc.
57 – 58
The Westlake Lc265.1VF speakers are interesting in that they have coax drivers. They sounded very nice. I felt like there was nothing wrong with these speakers. Maybe they did not go down very low, but they sounded fine. Nice imaging, detail, and controlled bass. You will need to judge if they sounded $7000 good (closer to $9000 with base and muff).
59 – 62
This was a room I just fell into. They are Firebird Sound (FBS). They were demonstrating their high fidelity wireless transmission. Despite the wireless transmission, the sound seemed darn good (realize I had been walking the show now for almost 9 hours). The small black box is the wireless receiver (from a transmitter outboard of the preamp) and the two silver boxes were 100 watt digital amps. The speakers were of Onix finish quality with a taper in the back like the rockets.
63 – 65
From Divergent Technologies - ASL and the Reference 3A – the sound was lovely. Yikes it’s getting late. I have a shuttle scheduled to pick me up in 15 minutes.
66 – 71
OK, 5 minutes to listen to my demo cut in the Merlin room and shoot some photos of their gear (where is my drool bib).
Made it back to the pick up area for the shuttle bus. I had paid $9.00 at the airport for round trip transportation with an outfit called CLS. They brought me over to the hotel in a stinking little diesel bus. To my surprise a huge white stretch limo pulls up and the guy calls out my name. Sure enough, he has a little CLS badge. The last unexpected pleasant surprise of the day.