Nice write-up of our CAS 2017 room on PS Audio’s Copper magazine by Bill Leebens (thanks Bill!)
Neli Davis of Audio Federation showed the big Acapellas with Audio Note electronics. As you’d expect, sound was lively, lovely, and warm.
I stumbled across Neli filling Audio Note AN-E loudspeaker stands with sand and I decided to take some photos [and hold the funnel :-/].
This time we used fish aquarium sand instead of play sand [aka sandbox or beach sand, which clumps up due to moisture. Good for building sand castles, not so good for filling equipment racks and speaker stands]. Play sand works fine in an arid environment; here near the bay, not so much.
We used most of this 20 lb bag of ‘aquatic substrate’ [aquarium sand].
The all-important pail. About 2 lbs of sand was poured into the bucket from the bag of sand, then decanted into each leg as we went along.
You would think this radiator funnel’s mouth would be too big, but it worked fine. The sand is so fine and dry, it runs into the stand legs like water.
The directions on how to assemble the stands.
We don’t use the upward facing spikes and no one else uses them and suggest you do not either. We sometimes use soft HRS Nimbus Couplers between the speaker and the stand [increases resolution, lowers authority – and makes positioning during setup easier], or a washcloth [makes positioning easier], or blu tack [recommended by the factory – adds authority, makes adjusting positioning more difficult].
Each leg is filled with sand through the larger hole you see here.
All the legs are filled with sand. A few grains of sand got lost on their way into a leg. Neli was embarrassed that we spilled so many [uncountably few if you ask me] and the first stand *did* go better.
We used this solder sucker to blow sand out of the threads where the stand will be bolted on to its top [actually bottom] plate.
Time to screw in the bolts and add the spikes and away we go 🙂 The spoon wasn’t used for much after I convinced Neli to just pour the bucket of sand directly into the funnel which went a lot faster [hence the reason I was holding the funnel and not taking photos at those times].
We didn’t get to go, but I have been following the news avidly, trying to understand what is happening in China and Asia as they seem to be leading the high-end audio resurgence that will hopefully soon follow on this side of the world.
The above photo of Audio Note UK at the show is from Mono and Stereo’s Hong Kong AV 2017 report
There are also many photos on Audio Shark of the HK AV Show 2017. See also Page 3 for more photos.
Mike Fremer of Analog Planet (Stereophile) fame did three Hong Kong AV Show videos [see below]. I preferred the 2nd video. The 1st was also pretty good [but spending so much of that time going through vinyl? Luckily I did not see too much that I needed, otherwise it would have made me very upset that they are so many thousands of miles away]. The 3rd video was more an ‘extras’.
The Hiendy forum had a few photos and you can read the Google translation [such as it is. In Chrome just lick the translate icon in the top search bar on the right].
The upshot is we have seen most of these brands before at U.S. shows [though there are some very unusual system configurations at this show!]. Skewed toward the expensive [so what else is new?], and has a younger demographic with apparently more women in attendance than previous years. It was very crowded, much like the part of CES dedicated to consumer electronics et. al. [everywhere except for the high-performance audio part of CES, which has not been busy for many years. Maybe it need to be in a convention hall like area and not in a high-rise hotel]
I’ll add more links as I find them…
