The Dynaudio, SimMoon room
 

The first floor!

OK, pardon my excitement. It has been a long show report.

This room... they seem to be going for something like a 'big sound', which is some subset of being Impressive. I mean, they get some amount of slam and midrange detail, but...

And there just seem to be so many other issues, like timbre anomalies and dynamic irregularities with this system, that it all comes off as not really sounding all that much like the music that is on the CD. Always a nicely setup room, though, .. and so much fun to photograph :-).

More Dynaudio, SimMoon room pictures.

 Little Dynaudio monitorloudspeakers.

 The wall at the back of the room.

 Another system. We did not get to hear this one.

Racks and racks of Simaudio Moon equipment.

 More moon equipment.

 Dynaudio monitor loudspeakers.

 Moon components.

 The stereo amplifier driving the big Dynaudio loudspeakers.

 Close=up of the Dynaudio loudspeaker.

 Dynaudio in-wall loudspeakers.

 Moon CD player.

The Totem, Arcam, Plinius room
 

 OK, pardon me, but this is just weird. All these animal hides, on the walls, chairs... It not only smells funny, it not only creates a weird sonic environment, as well as not allowing the room to 'breathe' well, trapping the humidity and other emanations from its human visitors inside the room, it is just, well, a little strange for this vegetarian to be in this room.

I thought the sound of the small system, photograph below, was pretty interesting for the I think $700 asking price for the loudspeakers. I could see why people would like those speakers for smaller rooms and budgets. There was some amount of bass that was certainly Impressive for the size, and it was Enjoyable and even potentially Emotional.

It wasn't an in-your-face-look-at-me-render-lots-of-details-badly type of presentation, nor was it a closed-in ham-strung-dynamics presentation [though it does gravitate toward this direction] which occupies the other throne from which the mid-fi world of dealerships draws its speakers and offers them to the masses.

More Totem, Arcam, Plinius room pictures

 A Totem of Totem loudspeakers.

 ARCAM DVD player.

 Pioneer Elite receiver and ARCAM receiver

 On-wall Totem loudspeaker.

 On-wall Totem loudspeaker.

 The Totem loudspeakers we listened to.

 The Totem loudspeakers we listened to.

 The system we listened to.

 The system we listened to. Plinius and Muse CD players.

 Rear of the Totem loudspeaker.

 The system we listened to.

 More Totem loduspeakers.

 The MBL room
 

 These rooms, and these loudspeakers, are designed to be Impressive. Very big sound. Overly emphasized bass. Always in a dark, dark room. Always very, very loud.

A lack of detail [don't just look at those cool tweeters and think it must have gobs of detail - listen for the beginning and end of the notes, not to mention details within the note envelope. Are they there?], and no micro-dynamics to speak of, makes this not very Emotional, and definitely not Real. It can be Enjoyable if one is able to overlook the anomalies mentioned. For some reason, the bass was noticeably detached from the rest of the frequencies in this room. I mean, there is always some discontinuity with multi-driver speaker systems, but this was so stark that is was quite strange.

But still, usually a crowd pleaser for those who are going for an Impressive system that can handle somewhat complex music and which does not use offensive behavior to spotlight the midrange in order to draw attention to itself in a retail environment [doesn't need to, the looks draw enough attention already :-)].

More MBL room pictures.

 Tara Labs calbe display.

 The big, and I mean BIG, MBL amplifiers.

 MBL loudspeakers.

  MBL loudspeaker tweeter.

 MBL loudspeaker.

 MBL loudspeaker. Kind of Georgia O'Keefe looking, huh? Or not.

 MBL 1011 converter.

 MBL preamplifier.

 MBL CD transport.

 MBL display.

 MBL CD player

 MBL loudspeaker.

 Smaller MBL system display.

 MBL transport.

 MBL... receiver?

 MBL loudspeaker.

 MBL loudspeaker.

 MBL loudspeaker.

 MBL loudspeakers.

Nola, Muse, Sunfire, Equi=Tech, Sim2, Plinius, Nordost*
 

 There were a lot of systems at HE 2006 that had a screen and front projector setup. But there was not one that was playing a movie and the movie soundtrack at the same time during our visits. The point being that many rooms were setup for 5.1 surround sound but were not really taking advantage of it.

anyway, this systems seems to small for the room, and they were not even trying to achieve standard A/V sound pressure levels. The purpose of this room seemed to just demonstrate that Nola has support for 5.1 in this price range.

More Nola, Muse, Sunfire, Eq=Tech, Sim2, Plinius, Nordost pictures.

 Nola center channel loudspeaker.

 Nola front channel loudspeaker.

 Nola outboard crossover for the loudspeaker.

 The equipment rack for this system.

 Muse CD player (lots of these at the show, huh?)