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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: No Mention of THE Show 2013............ posted by Todd Krieger on June 1, 2013 at 13:26:51:
Here is my very quick and dirty review.
I missed this last year, so it's been 2 years for me. The big change that struck me is that computer audio has become the default. Only a handful of rooms lacked a computer and DAC as at least one of their sources. There were plenty of other sources, particularly turntables, but computers are clearly the audio mainstream now.
Given that, the buzzword for the show was "DSD." Many of the newer DACs handle DSD files, and a number of rooms played files that seemed to be ripped from SACDs, while others had "double DSD" files, a few of which are being sold. Personal opinion: I like SACDs, but I've never thought there is any magic in any particular digital encoding algorithm. I don't like to see DSD being positioned as "perfect" digital, as I think the encoding algorithm is way down the list of things that make any real difference.
A word on music at these audio shows: apparently the only record released in the past 25 years was Patricia Barber. I exaggerate, but not by much. I heard the same Stevie Ray Vaughan song 3 times in one day. Boy, it would be nice to come away from this kind of show with some cool new music ideas, but it's generally same old same old. I think that's a shame.
There were a lot of rooms featuring dynamic speakers of various brands obscure to me, and they all kind of blend in memory.
Some rooms that I liked:
Optimal Enchantment: Randy has been selling the same brands for years, Basis, Audio Research and Vandersteen. The current crop of these products struck me as something quite special. Although he had the Audio Research DAC, when I was there, it was all LPs.
Sander electro-static hybrids: This room had only 3 chairs lined up front to back to be in the ELS sweet spot. Obviously this would not work for everyone. But in that sweet spot, everything came together with coherence and detail that was for me the sound I heard that I would most like to have at home.
Gene Rubin: Sort of budget room compared to megabuck rooms, the $6000 Harbeths, driven by a 3K amp, were very very listenable.
Gallo: Best speaker bang for the buck by a mile.
Pacific Audio has two neighboring rooms. One featured Martin Logan hybrids, the other the newest Wilson Audio speakers. Very different of course, but both rooms were fast, detailed, and again very listenable.
Big huge TAD speaker room and YSL/Tenor room: Megabuck stuff. YSLs for example were 77K for the speakers. I don't think a hotel room is in any way a fair way to judge such products. But one got enough of a taste to see that they could be really something under better conditions.
Small Magico speakers driven by Constellation electronics. Another of the most listenable rooms. Note: the huge Magicos downstairs in the most megabuck system of all were not my favorite. To be charitable, those big rooms are even more problematic than the small ones.
Kimber Isomike: always one of my highlights. As far as I know, this was the only multichannel, except for maybe the video projector rooms.
Those were for me the best.
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Follow Ups
- RE: No Mention of THE Show 2013............ - tunenut 06/2/1316:54:04 06/2/13 (0)
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