January 23, 2011 by Michael

CES 2011 – Lamm ML3 + LL1 / Wilson Alexandria X-2

A few additional comments about the Lamm / Wilson room.

The Lamm ML3 controlled these large speakers very well – at low to high volumes. The reason I would have given this room one of the Best Of Shows, if I was giving best of shows, which I am not, is that there were few if any other rooms playing challenging music – from a real source (CD or LP) – that generated a large scale presentation with such ease, that had this kind of decent separation and top-to-bottom evenness… and in the end just a calm constant convincability.

It is typically very difficult to reproduce music that is playing in a Lamm room at a show – mostly classical, some Jazz, and some others picked seemingly at random. This makes for a very nice place to just sit and listen. Very civilized and respectful, different from your average room at an average show [many are just about stirring up hype and attracting reviewers. Ours, for better or worse, are seemingly much more of a party atmosphere where people typically talk a lot and share their favorite yet somehow strangely weird and bizarre music by playing it on our system :-)]

The sound was indeed the tiniest bit soft, as has been noted elsewhere, because [and this is based on our experience with the ML3 amps as well as with these speakers on an Audio Note Ongaku, Emm Labs XDS1 and Nordost ODIN cabled system]

1) the speakers are slightly forgiving
2) the cables are slightly more forgiving
3) these equipment racks have unpredictable effects in our experience, in this case softening effects I believe based on what I have learned over time about 1) and 2) above
4) the sound in the Lamm rooms are typically setup to be a little soft – that is the way they like to do rooms at shows [more of an oasis effect as opposed to the WWIII effect]

There was a absence of real solidity to the image between the speakers, making me think that the speakers were too far apart. Although Lamm typically does speaker setup at show, including Wilson speaker setup, this time – because of the size and weight and perhaps other reasons – the Wilson factory setup the speakers.