The Highwater Sound room had a few interesting things. The Cessaro speakers, for one.

Unfortunately, I think the speakers may have been too close to the front wall, creating a bass overhang, detracting from, and sounding distinctly distinct from, the immediacy of the horn midrange. We have heard these before and at that time bass integration was not an issue.

They also featured a couple of different Thales (pronounced ‘Tallas’) tonearms that are so innovative – the convenience of a pivoting tonearm with the hopefully more accurate and more better sounding linear tracking cartridge (i.e. the cartridge is aligned with the grooves, similar to the lathe that made the grooves in the first place).

The first tonearm, below, the Simplicity, is quite new. The second, more expensive one below that, debuted a few years ago [it looks like it is now much more robust in its current configuration]. Both are on a Thales turntable.

How this actually works … ?

After spending this show across the hall from the D’Agostino room (Krell++ on Wilson) and listening to a steady thumb Thump THUMP for a few days, I think we’ve come up with another way to organize show rooms:

They should put all the rooms that will play opera near each other (all one or two of us). And all those that will play techno (again all one or two rooms). All those that will play Diana Krall and Patricia Barber together (a lot of these). And a few rooms will be in the classical section.

And a few rare rooms in the ‘we will play anything’ category.

And so on…

And, finally to put all the ‘thumpers’ together. 😉

The White Room (Hegel)

White and more white, even on the floor.

Kind of a sensory deprivation room – it affected me in several ways:

1. Forced me to focus more on the sound, as my eyeballs had much less to do than normal.

2. Disoriented me, in that there was much less information telling my woefully tired brain which way was up (i.e. horizon information) – so I was a little more wobbly on my feet and had to think more about which way was straight down (paying more attention to gravity)

It was just really weird, man 🙂 We’ve all probably been in near pitch black rooms and listened to music. Or just closed our eyes. This was like that but with the eyes wide open.

This made me think of how I would rank all the things I could be looking at while I listen to music [which would actually add to – not distract from – the enjoyment of the music]

My Favorite Front Wall Views

1. The Ocean with various islands in the distance [i.e. Hawaii at about a 100+ foot elevation]
2. Waves breaking over rocks/onto a beach
3. Our current trees and cityscape view
4. Nature
5. 100% whiteness

Yeah, so I liked this room’s setting a lot.

When we think of where to move, I fantasize about the places that combine the 1st three views into one 😉

What I think I prefer least is (just my opinion):

* A painting (I just get tired of string at the same thing all the time. I have thought and thought about this as I have gone to art galleries for decades. Side walls of the room is fine)

* LPs (I love looking at LPs – but I like them on the sides of the room, looking directly at them reminds me of other music I could be listening to instead)

* A stupid tiny little window (sorry, but I have lived in too many basements with too many stupid tiny dirty spidery windows)

* Rock posters (makes the most sense, perhaps, but the reading part of the brain would read them over and over…)

What I do not know if I would really like or not:

* A giant aquarium (in college I used to stare into an aquarium and play LPs – or rather visa-versa :-))

* A giant fire (in a fire place, silly :-))

* Various seamless natural wood or polished stone walls (don’t know if my pattern-finding part of the brain would not be able to stop finding patterns in the wood/stone, detracting from finding patterns in the music)

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Oh, and the sound in this room was typical Hegel: more tuneful than average, and with average amounts of dynamics and resolution and continuousness etc, for their price range.