So, I would like to talk a little about the sound in our large room.

As a reminder (it has been a few weeks now. Time flies when buried in 1800 page show reports) we had the Emm Labs XDS1 single-box statement player driving the Audio Note M9 Phono preamp and Gaku-On amps. All cables were Nordost ODIN and all components were on M3 HRS platforms and we also used an HRS SXR rack

We had a little hiccup when one of the 211 tubes arrived in a non-working condition. Phil (thanks Phil!), a local audiophile, loaned us a 211 tube [and the next day Nick Gowan shipped us another pair. Thanks Nick!]. Neli arrived back with the 1st relief of 211 tubes and then left to pick up some HRS platforms we needed for under the Gaku-On amps.

All to say that I was left alone to position the speakers. [Yes!]

So, here we have 20+ feet of front wall space minus the 2 feet or so the rack occupies [also up against the front wall] - and the speakers will probably be fine anywhere.

Then Fred Crowder and Paul arrived. OK good. I moved the speaker and their comments and the expressions on their faces told me if it was for the better or worser. Every so often I would step back into the room and listen for myself. Surprisingly enough, this resulted in at least a locally optimized position for the speakers that was pretty decent. It was surprising to me because we seemed to flail around quite a bit, the sound getting a wee bit better or wee bit worse - but all of a sudden they were both nodding their heads a lot and when I stood back it really had snapped in to coolness. With only a few minor mods it became much more fun to just listen to music than it was to play with the speakers anymore.

—> Position 1.

After Fred Crowder, Paul and I positioned them, about oh, 3 feet from the side walls, and oh, 4 or 5 inches from the front wall. Angled in fairly severely to cross in front of the nearfield listening position.

This worked really pretty darn well. It was very engaging, quick, harmonic, with good soundstaging and imaging. There was enough bass reinforcement to be quite satisfying. And I would have been happy showing the system like this. Several people came and went and they all liked the sound.

Then Neli returned with the HRS platforms and we put them under the Gaku-Ons.

The added separation and tighter bass of the sound now wasn’t quite as engaging. It was ‘better’, but the speakers now had to be repositioned because, essentially, we now had a different [sounding] system and the sound coming out of the speakers reflected that fact.

So, I’m thinking… where are Fred and Paul when ya need ‘em?

Then Mario from the Audio Note factory just happened to show up at the door, and I remember that these guys do shows every couple of weeks in Europe [seriously] and they must have run into largish rooms before.

So we start moving them radically this way and that. What I really wanted to know was: What kind of sound does Audio Note go for with their speakers when they do a show in a big room like this?

I mean, I was pretty sure we could get back to the sound that we heard previously, in setup #1. And it really was quite good. But, hey, we got some time, let’s experiment.

We put them closer and closer to the corners - each time hearing no overtly deleterious effects, and each time hearing slightly more room engagement. They eventually ended up just about as far into the corners as we could get them.

—> Position #2.

The sound was very big, pressurizing the room. No lack of bass, let me tell you. In fact, more bass than we let the Coltrane Supremes have in that room [the Supremes could probably do real damage to the hotel fixtures. I mean 2000 watts, 12 9 inch drivers, very efficient speakers. Give me a break]. Perhaps we have been too shy with the bass on the Supremes [trying to differentiate ourselves from the big boom box systems elsewhere in the hotel - you know, the ones that win all the awards from the newbie and want-free-equipment show reporters], because the Audio Note speakers with their more present bass worked pretty well.

The bass and the dynamics was all hitting the big time [all the components in this system are world-class dynamic champions]. The harmonics were like those never heard before [thanks Gaku-On!]. The soundstage was the width of the room. Huge. The musicians were life size. It was like they were really there in the room. Standing in a line across the stage.

Which is also to say that the soundstage depth was not very deep. It was more shallow than it should have been for many people’s tastes. In some ways, this made it more realistic, but perhaps not as much fun. We think the problem had to do with the fake side wall we made on the left, and the big curtained window on the right. Certainly position #1, away from these less-than-optimal side walls, had no problem with achieving great depth of field.

We stayed with position #2, in large part [from my point of view] to further differentiate it from last year and invalidate any direct comparisons. This was a different system… evaluate it as it is, not as last year’s system with different speakers. This is also part of the reason we did not put the system over on the side of the room: to make the system and room look different than last year [the others being 10 meter ODIN is hard to come by - 10 meters is needed to reach the rack when it is on the rear/side of the room - and we were tired of lugging tons of equipment to the show and back].

It really worked and most everybody liked it a lot, in fact everybody except those people who really do prefer a sophisticated and very accurate sound [about 5%, this show is not very kind to these people] - and those [my guess about 20% of the people [NO, I really do not think it is as high as 95%, though an argument could be made… ]] who have no ears anyway and pick rooms they like more or less at random [using a algorithm, in any case, that has zero, nada, zilch to do with the sound. No, I do not think this is criminal - but when you read about what someone thinks about a show, keep these people in mind].

——————–

Compared to our room last year, this was a completely different sound.

Last year’s sound, the Marten Coltrane Supremes speakers with the Lamm ML3 amps, was a very, very sophisticated sound. The delicacy and detail, the preciseness of the harmonics, the shade and shapes of the images in a seemingly infinite 3D space was unheard of. Of course, to really appreciate it you had to know what imaging was, you had to be able to hear the harmonic structures, likely being revealed for the first time ever [they were to us], and you had to relax and trust that the system, rendering difficult notes, was going to do it correctly and so you could relax into the music in a way that isn’t possible with most [which is to say all but one or two] systems.

And this years sound, this year it was danceable, approachable, rocking, boogieable [well, it SHOULD be a real word]. Harmonics were lovelier this year, but not as nuanced or delicate. This year the sound was enjoyable, emotional, impressive. Last year it was OMFG. This year it was “Alive!”.

It is very, very much like Leonardo DaVinci versus Picasso. Leo [can I call him that? He ain’t here so…] paints with excruciatingly fine detail, it is amazing that someone could do that. It is more wonderful than real life photography. Picasso [and I speak only of his ink and brush paintings] uses a half-dozen strokes and makes a woman appear who is so evocative of a real actual person it is just amazing that someone could do that. It is more alive than most people are in ‘real life’.

I love both artist’s work - and the bizarre thing is that some people just like one or the other [yes, now we can put this into the context of some people liking our room this year more/less than the room last year]. I, personally, love both.

I think it is too simple to say that one is of the mind, and one of the body. Or right brain versus left brain. But I think it is indeed something like that. Just not that.

Anyway, since the mind and body [according to most people] cannot exist one without the other - we are now trying to build a hybrid system sound that is OMFG Alive!

And I think, I think we came really, really close the other evening - when Kevin, Neli and I ODIN’d up the system, with the Emm Labs XDS1, Audio Note S9, M9 and Gaku-Ons on the Coltrane Supremes. Horn-like dynamics and ceramic and diamond driver preciseness!

These shows can be viewed as one big party [because that is what it is. But don’t tell anybody].

Not much drinking at these parties. [During the day, I mean. After hours people congregate in various rooms, crank up the tunes they REALLY want to listen to, and then try to talk to each other over the music… except for when everyone stops to listen]

During the day, people wander from room to room, running into friends, talking about what happened since the last time you saw them [often at the last show].

First person we run into each year seems to be Lou (Daedalus). We are unloading buddies: he is always unloading his vehicle about the same time as we [start] unloading ours. Daedalus has the suite right above us, and Lou likes to play the music loud, but the floors are so solid, we rarely ever hear them up there [except Saturday night. A little before midnight, I was uploading photos to the dailies, and Neli had gone to sleep, and the strains of either The Wall, or DSOTM, came wafting though the cement. Two of my favorite albums of All Time. My thought, at the time, silly me, was that he was going to get himself in trouble with the hotel management - and how cool it was that he was able to get away with this for as long as he did. (there is a 90dB rule at the show, which we certainly do not pay much attention to during the day, but… ].

Anyway, we get to know Lou better each year, and next we are invited to go upstairs and get falling down drunk and blast tunes. Not sure we will make it, but, well, maybe for one song.

Next we see Ray Kimber and crew. In fact, we usually see him several times. We wave, we say hi. Ray tells us a joke. Ray, Ray says things with a straight face, and it could be a joke, it could be satire, it could be anything. Me, I do not know him too well, so, during conversations, I have to look at him several times, is several different ways, trying to figure out what is going on - is he serious, is he joking, is he asking me what I think… ? Ray is embarrassingly kind, but sometimes I must look like an idiot [hey, for you jokers out there, usually I hide it better than that].

This year we ran into Marjorie, the show’s organizer, before we had started unloading - and she looked amazingly calm for someone whose party for 3700 people plus 500 exhibitors was about to start in a day or so. I mean, she was calmer than Neli and I. With how well the show came off, and in bad times like these even, RMAF is going to be here for a long, long time. We also were greeted by the Tech Center Marriott director of conventions, or whatever, whose name I forget but who has been helpful several times in the past.

After we got our room set up [with only 3 working tubes we just warmed up one amp for several hours, then the other, back and forth], I set out to take photos of people setting up their rooms. I mean, I was curious about how they did it, and figured that many other people would be as well. Ray Kimber let me photograph their room, while showing me a tweak that was - I think - supposed to be both ironic [young people do not know that we had to rewind tapes - so the idea of rewinding CDs, to them, makes even less sense than it might to us olders] and humorous [audiophiles will buy anything if it has a chance of increasing their system’s performance]. Or is that satire?

Mike Latvis of HRS and Richard Vandersteen and several other guys were setting up room treatments - and I photographed them doing it. I asked them before hand - but no one was willing to speak for the group, so I snapped their photo anyway. Nobody has yelled at me yet, so… good.

Dan Meinwald [EAR, Marten, Jorma] had borrowed one of our wheeled carts and I was assigned the task [any husbands out there know what I mean] to retrieve it. There I met and photographed Dan and Joe Kubala [who is still irked at me for giving a negative report of his room at last years RMAF. You can look at the system and see what you think it would sound like, but the bizarre thing is that several ’show reporters’ said it was great. But you all must know by now what I think of most of those guys - and this is supposed to be a fun post, so…].

Many of the people at the show were a little miffed [and I sugar coat it] at one person or another because of all the rapid change that is happening in our industry. Importers are dropping lines and/or having them ’stolen’ like there is no tomorrow [and there may not be]. Manufacturers are dropping and adding dealers - trying to get a better balance.

But we did get to see several combinations of equipment that we have not seen before.

Everybody is really quite friendly - to me anyway. I am sure some do not like my show reports much, but usually I just get one exhibitor each year who tells me so [maybe he is elected spokesperson for the rest?]

I met several people for the first time. Rachel Zhang of Grant Fidelity was very nice and one of the most … entrepreneurially astute and upbeat people at the show. In a building full of entrepreneurs, and in this economy, that is saying something [one of the things I truly love about this industry is that 90-95% of the people are entrepreneurial. In the software industry, it is more like 5%]. I can see why Grant Fidelity has been taking off [and their room was a runner up for best of show - but I just didn’t have enough confidence because of my very short time there spent listening (sometimes I do not listen while taking photos, though I did listen SOME and it was quite musical)]

We met Ken, who posts on the blog sometimes. He and his friend were a blast - so much energy and passion and humor, what this hobby is all about. Tom Frederick [Performance Acoustics Labs] who is helping contaminate us with the ‘listening rooms need audiophile-grade acoustical treatment’ meme.

It was great seeing Thom and Joan (Galibier). Yes they live here but no, we hardly ever see them outside of shows. Sucks, because they are such fun people [and because they like Blows Against the Empire as much as I do], but we fill up life with things to do and then find it is oh so hard to stop doing any of those things even when life becomes overflowing with ‘things to do’. Their table, just by surviving all these years, becomes more and more mainstream [that’s a good thing, guys and gals. Audiophiles - they either want it hot off the presses, or it has to have been around for a decade or two].

We got to see Wes Bender [helping out in the Galibier room. Call us, Wes, when you get the chance], Daniel Barnum [after hours, a most enjoyable conversation], Steven Norber [of Edge. Great to see Steven - who needs to eat more chocolate So everyone, send Steven chocolate. Kelly, his wife, I did not get to see this year. No wonder the show kinda sucked. Add the rest who were missing: Lawrence Blair (Avantgarde) and Jody (Uh. That’s OK. There are a lot of ‘uh’ affiliations this year) and Eli Gershman and his wife - and yeah, this show really sucked eggs. Oh, back to the list of who we did see…], Shahin [Emm Labs, great fun touring rooms with, though we only got to do 2 or so. Just remembering the expression on his face leaving some of the rooms - makes me crack up even now], Joe and Vin of Nordost [so kind of them to take a break to visit our room - and its been several shows now since Vin has been at one of these shows], and Neli got to see often different people, when I was out snapping photos and she was playing music.

Special thanks to Kevin - who helped Neli out in the room, especially on Sunday when Steve [also a special thanks] and I conquered floors 4 and 5.

Thanks also to Mario [Audio Note] for sharing some of his knowledge about how Audio Note has set up speakers in large rooms at other shows, and for being kind about the [albeit killer] non-Audio Note equipment.

Thanks to Fred Crowder and Paul for helping lend two sets of ears on the first day of setup. Even though we later changed the setup radically [to engage the room more - mostly to counter-balance the presumed expectation that these small speakers would sound small. They. Did. Not.] , there was some aspects of the sound of this first setup that were more… audiophile-like(?). It lent a great deal of confidence that we could do pretty darn good sound in that large room with those small 2-way speakers. We relied on that confidence when we later moved the speakers closer and closer to the corners, eventually ending up there.

Oh, and the Ray Lombardi (ex Audio Note distributor) and Rob King (ex Colorado Springs dealer) duo were apparently AWOL (:-)) this year, but I did get to chat with Darrin and his dad Gene a few times (Audio Limits dealers in Colorado Springs) and Bill Parish (GTT Audio), which I always enjoy.

And, finally, thanks to all our friends for stopping by. Too many to name [and excruciatingly embarrassing if I forget somebody - which is a serious risk in this post already]

Should go back and add links to manufacturers for the first 75 rooms or so. Ugh.

1800 pages. Do I dread CES 2010? Yes I do [I’m sure I will feel better, and more forgetful and stupidly trigger happy, by the time it actually gets here. Always do]

Curious about what people think of the comment-free pictures in one place and the comments on the sound here, in another. The idea is to try this for a year or so. It will only work if we can get the manufacturers and exhibitors to participate more - and if enough time goes by and they are still not interested then we have lots and lots of other ideas. But at this point I think that this approach is a much truer ideal if we want to bring the show to all youze people who could not make it [and all those who attended but could not make it to each room].

The next issue will have a ‘Most Photogenic of RMAF’ where I will get to post my favorite photos in full-window wall-to-wall format.

We will also be covering the Vietnam Hiend Show 2009, and introducing another writer or two.

Finally done with preparing the photos for the final floor, floor 5.

Unlike some other show reports [professional photographers like Albert Porter work by making each shot they take perfect when they take it], I hand edit each photograph for lightness, sharpness, color, balance, and then it gets cropped and resized. Takes about 3 minutes per photo.

We do it this way because our photos are posted at a resolution at least 4 times that of other reports, and usually 9X and sometimes 16X. When photos are shunk down to such small sizes, any flaws are rendered more or less invisible. But we want you (and us!) to be able to read the labels on the controls, to see the quality of workmanship, to see the actual TRUE color of something, and all those other little details that matter to the out-of-control audiophile

Turns out that floor number 5 had the most photos, or would have had I not run out of memory cards and time.

There will be 2300 photos total (including the dailies, which puts the total down around 2150).

The breakdown is as follows:

Floor:

1: 232 photos
mezzanine: 149 photos
2: 150 photos
4: 459 photos
5: 438 photos
9: 205 photos
10: 277 photos
11: 288 photos

The total looks like 136 rooms + Sanders + 2 at the end of floor five + booths.

I spent about 1/2 my time at this show in our room [9030] as an exhibitor. Usually I spend about 2/3 of my time in the room, but this year I wanted to do more in-depth coverage of RMAF than we have been able to do in the past.

…the prices of high-end audio gear are indeed getting ridiculous.

Somewhere in all the RMAF stuff I talked about how Kara and I had a talk about the high-price of the high-end. I was somewhat a doubter [and wondered if she was talking to me as an audiophile, as the press, as Audio Federation, or as the Audio Note importer.. Yes, we do sell a lot of high-priced gear here ].

Personally [and this is MY rant] I find no fault with the $200K Clearaudio Statement turntable, the $180K Focal Grande Utopia EM speakers, or of the prices of the gear we carry, as long as the company has a range of products and has been around for awhile and the company has a quality reputation [hard to quantify this, but…].

As I go through the show report, and look at some of the prices of equipment from brand new companies and equipment from companies that heretofore produced reasonably priced gear that have been struggling in the marketplace - and see price tags that exceed those of comparable equipment from companies that have been around for years, decades, many decades….

… it just makes me wonder. One of these company’s very first email was a 55% off sale direct from the manufacturer.

Is is just open season on audiophiles now?

First you have the ‘the cheaper it is, the better it sounds’ crowd. Fine. This *is* Bizarro World after all, where everything is its opposite.

But are we really going to see people, and ezines of course to suck their life blood, who believe ‘the newer it is, the better it sounds’. Well, maybe we have had this all along…

Maybe that should be ‘the more unknown it is, the better it sounds’. Yep.

Perhaps we should all just tie-dye some Belden power cords, pick a cool name like, oh, PartyWire, and have unscrupulous dealers sell them for $4K. Everybody who is registered here will be a share holder. We’ll no doubt see lots of faux reviewers posting rave reviews of the stuff. Shills [and the golden-ear-challenged] will post how it improved their system on the forums.

Ugh.

Who buys this stuff? That’s what I want to know.

And exactly when did the entire population of this planet go mad?

[Yes, I know I posted this also on FaceBook. But I just thought that this status / update needed to be in both places]

The RMAF 2009 Show Report is about 60% - about 2/3 - done with over 1500 photos so far. Trying to keep the show report lively and informative. This is a little difficult.

I can talk about how so-and-so was friendly and knowledgeable, which some reports do, but that starts playing the ‘praise our friends rooms’ game that many zines play, and frankly, just about everyone is friendly and knowledgeable, but I just don’t quite remember all of their names… all 400+ of them.

We tried talking about the sound - but the vast majority of audiophiles have been lied to so long that they wither don’t believe anything they read, or they believe sound quality is all in the ‘ear of the beholder’ and nothing is any better than anything else. Ugh.

So we post facts and try to be helpful, trying to provide an overview of this very large number of products that we are going to be showing several thousand photos of.

3700 attendees, 470 exhibitors, 150+ rooms… wonder how many see the high-end audio part of CES? My guess is that it would be about the same number of attendees per room… but CES has over 200 rooms.

Sometimes I hate show reports. Usually about now in fact. I am about 60% done and get so tired of Photoshop and, boy, do I take too many photos or what.

Hope people are liking the background story on the rooms at RMAF on Spintricity. Still working on trying to make it interesting to all you experts as well as to the newbie who is kind of trying to scope out what is what in this kind of complex hobby we have here.

There have been a few rooms that I have heard in the past that… were in previous years far from the mainstream preferences in terms of their sound… but this year sounded quite musical.

These were the Rethm, the Daedalus and the Affirm Audio (previously Maxxhorn) rooms.

For me, the sharp rolloff and lack of harmonics typical of the Rethm speakers were just not going to be enjoyable by most people after lengthy listening. But this year, and perhaps it was because of the use of the AMR digital being a very laid back type of digital playback component, it had enough harmonics and roundedness to the notes that, in addition to the Rethm’s natural midi-dynamics strengths, made it quite a nice sounding system.

In past years, I would go into the Daedalus room and the system would be blasting and the room would be empty and the eXemplar CD player would be playing and it would sound bright and uneven and disconnected…

This year, not sure what they did, but the sound was much more melodic and mainstream. Still big sounding, still capable of rocking out, but there was flow and top-to-bottom coherency and even-handedness. This was a system where, if someone told me they fell in love with it, I could with a clear conscious tell them to go buy it, knowing that they were not going to be doing their spouses and housemates in, ear first.

Last year, I thought one of the Feastrex driver speakers sounded quite good, and the other 2 did not. That these other two had the same problems that the Rethm speaker typically has, described above. One of these, the Affirm Audio (previously Maxxhorn) speakers, however this year sounded much more tuneful and melodic. Again, like the other 2 rooms above, I feel that if a system puts out a more mainstream sound, but keeps its inherent strengths [in this case, single driver coherency] then it is a win-win for everybody.

——

Although there are those who will put up with the deficiencies of a non-mainstream sound, like sliced-off notes and harmonic deserts [:-)], in order to have access to the strengths they perceive of a sound [perhaps midi-dynamics and single-driver coherency, or perhaps a big big big sound], I think even they [these crazy people obsessed with a specific aspect of sound above all others ] would be happier if the system sounded more like real music [or, if ‘real’ is too strong a word, then ‘more enjoyable and accessible’].

And I can’t help but think that their friends and family would agree with me.

We will take as a starting point Jonathan Valin’s $20K+ Speaker Show Report:

Show Report

First, to get it out of the way, what he said about our big room seems to be relatively accurate and even quite favorable and can only figure the surprise at the ’sweet and smooth’ness was because 1. he has never gone into the small Audio Note room and 2. maybe he has previously heard the speakers when they were playing heavy metal at 110dB (which they can do without distortion or sweating).

OK. Now that the detailed analysis of the sound is over here in the blog - we are going to be even freer about what we can talk about.

Primrose Suite: This is a local dealer’s room [Audio Limits] with the YG Acoustics. I think what JV heard, and what I heard, but what others I trust did not hear, was the sound of this little memory card stuck into a cute little digital playback device. We have photos but - geez - they won’t be up for a few weeks at this rate - so I don;t know what it was exactly. The Weiss front end is certainly decent and from what I have been able to ascertain it sounds better than cheap digital [I am being ironic]. This is one of the rooms that prompted my previous post about how the adoption of the iPod and other digital playback before it is ready may well kill what is left of high-end audio.

One thing I can say is that I prefer the FM Acoustic amps solution over the Soulution amps solution on the YG Acoustics speakers at this point. And that is because, sad to say, the rooms I have heard the Soulution amp in sound bad and the ones I have heard the FM Acoustics amp in sound good sometimes. People are showing so much disrespect to the quality of their gear when they pair them in inappropriate combinations. Those poor Mixibitors are getting old and tired of all this sh*t

First, the other YG Acoustics room [GTT Audio, with the Soulution amps] has a severe bass hump - it had it with the Kharmas and it ain’t gone nowhere in the intervening year[s]. Second, the CD player in this room was damaged during shipping, so a digital recording/playback device was used instead. Ignoring the bass hump: the sound was… it did not have much harmonic color or micro-dynamics or PRaT or even the linearity that YG is known for. Maybe JV can hear around the problems [since he has a Soulution amp under review for the last year or so] but the sound did have these problems and as much as I am familiar with the YG Acoustics speakers this system did them an injustice. Just Say No to Cheap Digital Sources [although in this case Bill Parish, the exhibitor, had little choice].

I did not hear the Acapella room, nor the TiDal room - so we will skip these.

The Analysis room… has a definite ‘planer speaker sound’ to me.

Classic Audio Reproductions Project room on the 1st floor [Atma-Sphere amps]. It does sound better each time I listen and they are very close to a mainstream sound [with the resolution etc. that we are used to] but with decent dynamics and scale [which only speakers like this can do easily]. But I did not listen intently.

The GamuT room was playing very loud in a very, very large room. Assuming a person wants to do this, with speakers like this of only modest size, then this system did very well at it. I, personally, thought this is no way to evaluate a system for a modestly sized room playing a modest volumes - so about the over all quality of the system I cannot say all that much.

In the Kimber room [funny how JV does not attribute the rooms to their owners] I did not get to hear the JBL speakers [one of my biggest regrets this show]. I heard the Sony speakers [not available in the U.S], and there was a lot of hash and piercingness in the upper mids, lack of decay, lack of harmonic structure etc.

I believe the Dynaudio Consequence Ultimate Edition was in the Wadia room. I agree it was something interesting. Did not think the amps were from Levinson - but maybe it is Mark and not Madrigal who is building them. I described this as best as I could a few posts back.

I also thought the On A Higher Note room [Vivid speakers] sounded better than at CES. I attributed it to the hearing of a turntable [the new Brinkmann Bardo] on the system instead of a CD player [forget which player]. I disagree that all of the ‘bad stuff’ was gone - it just wasn’t in-your-face anymore [i.e. what was still there was just more well hidden - and if that is what you wish your cables to do, then… ].

Agree about everything with respect to the Hansens on the Accuphase electronics [as mentioned in a previous post].

The big Focals? I listened for a second and could only see one reason why people would buy a system like this: for the Impressive macro dynamics. I wished I could have heard it more last year with the big ClearAudio turntable.

The Legacy speaker-fronted system did not sound like music to me - too much like a stereo system.

The Electrocompaniet room was interesting. Like the Wadia room, it required more time than I had at the time to figure out its most obvious strengths and weaknesses.

I thought the Nola Baby Grand Reference room was not interesting. I did not hear the reel-to-reel I do not think [the photos will tell the story] - but this was muffled and off-axis behavior was not so good [there was not room for a lot of people, and many were standing and I could not get a center spot to listen to [nor take photos from] but usually of axis behavior is decent when on-axis behavior is decent [but not always].

I heard the Wilson Sasha speaker on ARC electronics… and that is what it sounded like. My current opinion is that Wilson is a formula 1 racing car and people should respect it and treat it as such [NAIM on the Wilson was much more interesting].

The Carnegie Acoustics room had a reasonable sound. Did not hear the bite JV referred to while I was there - but agree that it was OK but not a standout.

The Vandersteen Model 7 room - well, I know the speaker well enough now to isolate its sound from the rest of the system. Yep, still seems to be a worthy speaker. Otherwise it sounded better at CES, even though at CES it was on Aesthetix gear that was somewhat cool sounding. Here there was a lack of linearity that was disturbing [in everything from harmonics to dynamic response]. Not sure what these speakers really need to show them off [but I can guess] and would love to hear them PUSHED to their limits to see what they can really do.

[Notice a theme here with respect to the lack of respect some people show for what their gear can do and what it needs to show itself off to best effect? The WinAnalog room was probably the showpiece for this kind of mismatch. Yes, they [rumor has it] built the little speakers but to put these little speakers on their new megabuck amps - what does this say about their confidence in their amps?

As Neli says, “so much opportunity for great sound… WASTED.” Or how about this: “A great component is a terrible thing to waste”.

Yes, we understand that dealers/salespeople like to pair popular brands with popular brands - easier to make bundled sales etc. - but if it doesn’t sound great then they are just killing the industry for all of us, including themselves]

In the Haniwa room I did not hear anything special. Is it just me? I expected to hear something like the Intuitive Designs, or - I forget: that monitor with the weird-ass stand we gave a best-of-show to a few years ago, etc. Something that has a very good dynamic response. I just heard a normal everyday speaker driven by less-than-average electronics.

The Merlin room has been sounding these last few shows - well as JV said ‘rich, warm, and sweet’ - but with Joule Electra and Audio Aero and Cardas, almost everything would sound ‘rich, warm, and sweet’. If Merlin sticks with this sound - and with everyone else using iPods and Media Servers, etc. they will end up as best of show any day now

German Physiks and Vitus? You know, it just sounds like …? OK. I try to hear the amps [receive many questions about these amps ] and I do not hear them. This can be a good thing or a bad thing [about the amps and/or system]

Avalon Indras? I believe he is referring to the Blu-Note room. Why oh why do people pair these with VTL? But anyway, this room - even so, I thought - sounded decent compared to the competition at the show.

Skipping the the Lotus Group ‘Granda’ speakers. With 10 minutes left to the show and Steve reminding me we had several rooms left to do, I did not get to hear these speakers except from very, very nearfield - where they did not have space to gel. Not hearing these and not hearing the JBLs are my main regrets this show.

I also liked the Odyssey Audio room - as usual, for their well-balanced approach to music reproduction: separation, harmonics, dynamics: everything is there to an appropriate degree for the $8K or so price of a system. This is a high-end system on a low-fi budget.

The RAAL speaker system also sounded interesting for $4K or so [the soda cans and coffee can speaker on a flexible lamp stand]. Probably a little expensive for what you get - but you can’t beat it for innovation and space saving and attention getting. Maybe the interior decorator in your life might like it too.

I didn’t listen closely to so many rooms: often because it gets to be depressing. But I should have tried in the Galibier room [blame it on Danny Kaey. No wait: Wes Bender. No wait… ], Joe Cohen’s room [Lotus Group], and, well, this was more a ‘things sound good but not great’ show [if I can ignore our room. We have come to realize that we are among a very few who even TRY to have rooms that advance the state-of-the-art. CES has much more an atmosphere where this is attempted more frequently than ‘never’. OK, yes, Ray Kimber also tries to do this most years - though from a ‘this will be so cool if we can get this to work’ as opposed to the Best Sound Ever approach].

The WinAudio amps are pretty, very expensive [what DO companies that put out excellent products for decades think about companies that come out day 1 with $120K amps?] and did not sound horrible. The speakers really veiled any attempts at really hearing what they sound like. But many show goers did not care [Steve ] and the focus of many audiophiles seems to have shifted some towards build-quality and appearance and away from performance. Is this due to the Great Recession? Is it due to the pretty steady decline in intelligence we’ve seen since the Millennium? Is it because no one has any money anyway, so their LIKES and WANTS do not have to be practical. Ah… I think that is it .

Finally figured out that Robert Lee really knows how to setup a room at one of these shows. Their [with Triode Corporation] room sounded quite good. This had a rounder, more harmonically rich, less resolution and a less linear presentation than the Kubala-Sosna room [described below].

The Grant Fidelity room sounded musical.

The Kubala-Sosna, EAR, Marten rooms was [and Joe will kill me for saying this] actually pretty good - probably the best I have heard the EAR sound, and had lots of resolution, dynamics, harmonics [though not QUITE as colorful as what I personally prefer] and presented these a linear fashion across much of the frequency spectrum - exactly what one looks for in a system that is to afford long term listening pleasure in my estimation.

OK. IF we were going to do a best of show [hey, at least I went to ALL of the rooms], and with me ignoring the few rooms [mentioned above] that might REALLY had best of show [including our own], then, in no particular order:

Best of Show RMAF 2009

Kubala-Sosna, EAR, Marten
Odyssey Audio
Acoustic Zen, Triode Corp.
RAAL [Bryston et. al.]

Each year I get a talkin’ to by *somebody* about my show reports and this year it was Channel Islands Audio (CIAudio) in the Von Schweikert room.

It started off by them accusing me of trashing their room sound. I tried to think of whether I had ever said ANYTHING about CIAudio in any show report. I am sure the confusion showed on my face [Neli says I look especially stupid when I am confused ].

So then the clarification arrived [to save me from looking stupid… or as stupid anyway] which was that I said their system couldn’t be taken seriously because it was driven by an iPod.

And then more clarification about how I only like tubed gear and Analog sources.

Well, that last is not exactly true, but I can understand how one might arrive at that conclusion.

And the statement about the iPod sounds exactly like something I would say.

At the time I said I was sorry, but we really had to decide how much ‘fidelity’ we were going to sacrifice in order to attract the iPod generation [the idea being, that if we sacrifice too much to get them, we will have won the battle and lost the war].

With some prompting, another person in the room indicated that they thought that the iPod with the Wadia dock sounded better sometimes than the Oracle CD player. We shall skip the discussion about whether the Oracle CD player is a good benchmark of high-fidelity or not and discuss something I think is a more general problem.

1. Almost every electronics manufacturer at the show has some kind of support for the iPod.
2. The iPod does not sound great when playing in a hi-fi system [hopefully we can agree on this]
3. The iPod generation is completely, absolutely, without a doubt absent from hi-fi shows, and we don’t hear much about them shopping up a storm at any high-end dealerships either

Now I am going to state some assumptions, otherwise this post will be as long as your typical online equipment review:

1. To attract a listener to the audiophile way of life they have to hear a system that sounds good.
2. Support for the iPod is a pre-requisite for the iPod generation who we want to transition to something better [there are technological methodologies that would help to transition them in other ways - like to a music server, with potentially much higher fidelity, but let’s continue…]
3. Making the iPod sound good in a good sounding system would be a home-run in this game of ’save our industry from a lingering death’.

Just doing step 2 leads to failure to attract the iPod generation, and loses us some of the current generation of audiophiles as well, and this is where we are right now.

My proof comes with the experience I had in several rooms at the show, where, when I was in the room they played an iPod (or digital source) which was extremely bright and, in fact horrible in many ways - whereas other people whose ears I trust and who know my criteria - they heard a real source component and the sound was reportedly good to excellent.

This is plain stupid. In fact it is idiotic.

We would do better to attract the iPod generation by people bringing decent system source components and not looking strange, or even hostile, at young people when they want to play young music [you know, like the music WE LIKED when we were young? Duh].

Neli’s idea is that there could be an iPod docking station and lazy exhibitors are NOT to use it because they are too lazy to bring a real source component and CDs [or a turntable and box of LPs… unlike us lazy bones this year].Instead they should offer to plugin other people’s iPods and play THEIR music.

But this only works if it sounds better than them just sticking a couple of ear plugs in their ears. And if the exhibitor’s system is playing an iPod - and it sounds like poop - and the exhibitor happily grins and says “ain’t that great?” … what does that say about our entire hobby to a newbie. It says all we have in high-end audio is poopy sound and that they should spend their money on a bigger flat-screen instead.

So, now I not only reiterate that a iPod-fronted system can’t be taken seriously as hi-fi - but that, at shows, they are a threat to the hobby. And that includes laptops and music servers - which, with iPods, significantly increases the number of rooms that have megabuck equipment in them that sound horrible most of the time because they try to be ‘cool’ playing these sources that they cannot [yet!] make sound good.

So, let’s make this stuff [yes, it is COOL. No doubt about it. In fact we are eager to jump in with both feat.] sound good BEFORE we subject all these listeners to it, OK? Otherwise we have a repeat of the CD introduction - and we know what THAT did to our wonderful hobby.

Remember, CD Players were just as COOL, back in the day.

And they darn near killed high-end home audio.