by Michael

3700 attendees, 470 exhibitors, 150+ rooms

3700 attendees, 470 exhibitors, 150+ rooms… wonder how many see the high-end audio part of CES? My guess is that it would be about the same number of attendees per room… but CES has over 200 rooms.

Sometimes I hate show reports. Usually about now in fact. I am about 60% done and get so tired of Photoshop and, boy, do I take too many photos or what.

Hope people are liking the background story on the rooms at RMAF on Spintricity. Still working on trying to make it interesting to all you experts as well as to the newbie who is kind of trying to scope out what is what in this kind of complex hobby we have here.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2009 / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

Most improved sound at RMAF 2009

There have been a few rooms that I have heard in the past that… were in previous years far from the mainstream preferences in terms of their sound… but this year sounded quite musical.

These were the Rethm, the Daedalus and the Affirm Audio (previously Maxxhorn) rooms.

For me, the sharp rolloff and lack of harmonics typical of the Rethm speakers were just not going to be enjoyable by most people after lengthy listening. But this year, and perhaps it was because of the use of the AMR digital being a very laid back type of digital playback component, it had enough harmonics and roundedness to the notes that, in addition to the Rethm’s natural midi-dynamics strengths, made it quite a nice sounding system.

In past years, I would go into the Daedalus room and the system would be blasting and the room would be empty and the eXemplar CD player would be playing and it would sound bright and uneven and disconnected…

This year, not sure what they did, but the sound was much more melodic and mainstream. Still big sounding, still capable of rocking out, but there was flow and top-to-bottom coherency and even-handedness. This was a system where, if someone told me they fell in love with it, I could with a clear conscious tell them to go buy it, knowing that they were not going to be doing their spouses and housemates in, ear first.

Last year, I thought one of the Feastrex driver speakers sounded quite good, and the other 2 did not. That these other two had the same problems that the Rethm speaker typically has, described above. One of these, the Affirm Audio (previously Maxxhorn) speakers, however this year sounded much more tuneful and melodic. Again, like the other 2 rooms above, I feel that if a system puts out a more mainstream sound, but keeps its inherent strengths [in this case, single driver coherency] then it is a win-win for everybody.

——

Although there are those who will put up with the deficiencies of a non-mainstream sound, like sliced-off notes and harmonic deserts [:-)], in order to have access to the strengths they perceive of a sound [perhaps midi-dynamics and single-driver coherency, or perhaps a big big big sound], I think even they [these crazy people obsessed with a specific aspect of sound above all others :-)] would be happier if the system sounded more like real music [or, if ‘real’ is too strong a word, then ‘more enjoyable and accessible’].

And I can’t help but think that their friends and family would agree with me.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / RMAF 2009 / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

Warning: Reading Show Reports May Be Hazardous to Your (Hi-Fi System's) Health

As I casually read what various reviewers wrote about the sound they heard at the show a few things become obvious. This is not about the sound in our rooms, about which I have read one positive and one not so positive (about the small room – but I did not hear the system after a major cable change was made – so do not know if the reporter was right or not)

1. A lot of reviewers just can’t hear. They string together a lot of good sounding ‘audiophile words’ and hope in this way to gain some advertising. This would be shocking if it wasn’t so sad.

2. Some just mention the positive things about the sound, never the negative [same ole same ole – but only a few people/mags are this honest anymore].

3. Some lie, sometimes describing sound more or less accurately, and sometimes just negative and/or positive things in order to achieve some political or economic goal they must have in mind.

As for comments on forums, take a room at random and make it the Best of Show. As far as I can see it is completely random – aka noise. Aka no information provided.

There is not any room so horrible sounding that someone, somewhere won’t post that it is the best of show.

I used to think this was akin to ‘there is no man so ugly that some woman somewhere won’t think he is handsome’.

But this has more to do with the beholder being really confused, than it does with seeing the inner beauty of someone/something. And it has to do with people being manipulated into thinking something different happened [good or bad sound] from what REALLY happened.

Of course, this cacophony of misinformation, lies, political maneuvering, sloth, etc. just mirrors that of the current state of affairs everywhere circa 2009. The difference lately has been that so called ‘trusted sources’ do not have loyalty to the traditional reporter’s ‘creed’ to tell the truth.

That, while representing yourself as being ‘independent’, but instead telling a self-serving point of view that makes you money is AOK.

The 1984 part of this is that people have been programmed to accept this as being acceptable behavior for a ‘news organization’.

The upshot of all this incompetence and deception is that it is really hard to get any real information about the sound at a show, or, to expand our focus, any component. Even if you listen to it, if the person setting it up did not have the correct associated components, you still didn’t hear it [most systems seem to be either the random Audiogon click to buy approach or some dealer putting components together because it is good ‘politics’]. It is hard to get an idea of how something really sounds [think how poorly Wilson has been represented all these years – how many people hate their speakers. This is why].

Because of all this, Spintricity is just presenting things like specs, people, how-tos and why-tos, and ads. Because of the rampant unethical behavior of the press, we can’t even think about doing reviews ourselves, of equipment or rooms at shows, without tarnishing our magazine with the stink of the current zines. [Even though we are darned good at it with having probably the most significant and wide-ranging experience with uber high-end audio of any reviewers/reporters/audiohpiles. And our personal preferences are also 1) known to us [so we can at least try to listen around them] and 2) fairly mainstream]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / Show Reports / Sounding Off 0 comments