Well… back from Rocky Mountain Audio Fest
…and boy are we tired of lifting heavy equipment.
We are so bummed that we didn’t get to do any daily reports from the show because the hotel inadvertently disconnected our room. And we did not find this out until late late late the first night – then by the time we were ready to upload photos the 2nd night it was again late…. and well, it is only a 3 day show…
But there are 1500+ photos and the show report will be forthcoming.
Everybody loved the Lamm ML3 amps on the big Martens in our room – and in fact they liked the sound a lot better than our sound last year [last years system was kind of tweaky – a setup with an integrated on the active crossover on the Supremes required careful tweaking of the bass and sometimes the phase for each song – but it really sang when it was tweaked correctly].
Attendance was – my guess, within 5 – 10% of last year. Considering the fear mongering on Wall Street and the cold snap on the last 2 days, that is pretty good. What people were looking at this year seemed quite a bit different than last year. Hard to pin it down, but perhaps there was more focus by visitors on favorites and less exploration of all the unfamiliar rooms?
OK. Time to answer Remy’s post.
Mike, screw your replies – they are about nothing. Post the pictures. Your pictures are good usually. There are some systems in there that I would like to see how they were set up.
The Cat
You mean ‘Hey Mike, what the heck are you talking about. You talk like you haven’t got any sleep and spent 30 of the last 160 hours JUST moving 2000 lbs of equipment with your wife to and fro. Hither and yon.
Oh, and by the way, I can’t wait to see the photos in the show report.’].
OK, sorry I wasn’t clear.
At last years show, we had the Audio Note Ongaku, which is an integrated amp, being driven directly by the Emm Labs CDSD / DCC2 pair. For digital, this meant we had a very simple system: transport -> Jorma Prime cable – > crossover -> Jorma Prime -> Ongaku -> Jorma Prime -> main towers.
But this meant the bass knob on the back of the crossover, which also has the amp that drives the bass towers, had to be adjusted each time we changed volume on the Ongaku [which drove the main towers] – and since most CDs are recorded at different levels – this meant we had to go change the bass volume for every CD, even if we did not change the volume on the Ongalu.
It was a pain to walk through the cables and reach down in the dark and change the bass knob for each and every CD. When we did this, the system really did some very wonderfully evocative things [which I talked about last show]. But a lot of the time the setting for the previous CD just seemed ‘good enough’.
Well, it obviously wasn’t. People noticed. Yep, those same people that get ridiculed as audiophools on other sites have quite good ears, thank you.
This year, I asked just about everybody I talked to about our sound this year [which is a lot more people than I usually ask; I don’t need people to tell me how our room sounds – but I was really curious this year because it was the first year we brought Lamm amps and because I have a few pet theories I want to test about how people approach various systems vis-a-vis what they are expecting to hear].
People unanimously preferred the Lamm, with only one person recognizing that when the system was ‘tuned’ last year it was on a par with the ML3-based system].
So, one obvious conclusion is that I really messed up last year. It was my design and I really needed to tend it myself if I was going to make something so difficult to use.
Another is that this kind of polling can be very useful. Many sciences use these kinds of studies: Human Computer Interface and Psychology for two. It would be interesting to conduct serious studies of groups of audiophiles – organize them with respect to all sorts of categories – and study what they prefer, and why.
[and, Romy, I know you want to hear more about the sound of the ML3 – but it takes a lot of effort to crystallize my thoughts and I just ain’t there yet].
Thanks for posting,
Take care,
Mike.
I knew there must have been a good reason for not seeing daily reports. The first thing I did every morning was check your site for updated show reports to see some of the excellent pictures you have every year. I was surprised come Monday morning that nothing had yet been posted.
Now stop reading this entry and get to work on downloading those pictures.
Sincerely,
Bill Baker
Response Audio / Bella Extreme
Hi Bill,
I am mortified about the whole mess.
And, no, it is a lousy reason and I feel bad about not getting those dailies up. There are other lousy reasons, like Neli having to go pick up the M9 for our Audio Note room from the shipper on Thursday – which was buried in a shipment of other AN gear she took up to Boulder before bringing the M9 down. And a couple of bad tubes that required a second trip to Boulder…
So that left me by my lonesome stepping in and doing and extra 6 hours of setup that Neli usually does [yep, one of our secrets is that we are a tag team – but instead of wrestling people in the WWF, we wrestle components in the World Audio Federation].
Still no excuse and we talked to the Marriott and we have plans for how to deal with various calamities of this sort in the future.
Not much commentary on these rooms but the 10th floor is up at:
http://www.audiofederation.com/hifiing/2008/RMAF2008/report/1500/index.htm
It is funny, but half of our readers only care about photos, and the other half only about the comments.
Take care,
Mike.
That Romy is kind of a number don’t you think? ..This is perfect exemple of what happen when children are not breast fed…they lack compasion and empathy..
powder milk can induce low self esteem and rude behavior in some..
Thanks Mom!!!
Guy;-)
Guy, your comment is a good evidence that the late-term abortion must be mandatory for some women. If your mother did it when she cared you then it would be one less idiot in today’s audio.
The Cat
Hi Mike,
That first set of photos look great – best size & resolution on the web (that I know of).
I appreciate your effort in providing these for free!
– Steve O.
Thanks Guy! Thanks Steve!
Oh, and by the way, this month, if people are going to insult each other on the blog, the insults must be well thought out and contain the words ‘Bose’ and ‘supercilious ‘.
Next months rules to be announced next month.
😉
Thanks Mike!!!
Guy;-)
Mike,
Some people do not live in the real world. To bad you couldn’t reboot their brains like you can a computer. I look forward to your pictures and commentary.
Thanks Mike.
-Mike
Really like show reports with big big cool photos of sexy hifi equipment.
Confused by descriptions of some systems.
Not what we hear from exact same equipment.
[…information-free troll bait deleted…]