Day 3 is a shorter day, ending at 4:00 pm and after I took photos of the CanJam headphone area I wandered around some.

CanJam from the main entry door

CanJam: the middle aisle.

On the way to the show everyday driving in takes about an hour, and we would listen to music on the Jazz station (KUVO) and Classical station (KVOD), pre-packaged shows on (KUNC), and our local anything goes local station (KGNU). It was fund-raising time so we switched stations a lot.

And we realized that we hardly heard any of this kind of music at a show. And if they weren’t playing music that people usually listen to in the Real World ™, just what were they playing?

So I did a survey. Did not make it through the whole show, unfortunately, but here are some preliminary statistics.

20% were playing quiet classical music and opera (Some rooms were playing classical that was heavy on the organ to show off their bass capabilities – so this may count more as ‘traditional audiophile music’)

56% were playing traditional audiophile music. Soft rock. Female vocals. Often overly peppered with weird percussion noises.

6% were not playing music [not counting those that were ‘between songs’. I just hung out in these room until I could hear what they were going to play next]

6% Alternative rock, classic rock, modern pop

12% Jazz (about half of which was aggressive ‘straight ahead’ jazz, the other half easy to reproduce 4 or less piece jazz)

On the radio we usually listen to difficult classical [up-beat marches, Stravinsky, etc] as well as medium classical [like Beethoven, Brahms, etc], and quiet classical [like much of Mozart, some Bach, etc. mostly 1 – 4 musicians]. Also alternative rock [but not so much the seemingly ever present country flavored bar-band rock], opera, bluegrass, classic country, techno and new and classic rock and hip-hop and reggae and some modern pop and all kinds of jazz [but mostly difficult jazz as the rest reminds us too much of hi-fi show jazz].

So this leaves us with the problem that only about 12% of the music is what ‘real’ people [people who still listen to broadcast radio, that is, so maybe that is just people older than 30], in general, listen to. And probably even a lower percentage for people who listen mostly online.

In a large sense, classic rock is loved by most people, and by all ages, except by those who hate it. 😉 And this is really what people should be playing at shows [oh, I can hear the screaming from the what-about-tradition audiophiles even up hear on the mountain :-). For the, oh, 10% who hate classic rock, make sure you have a good collection of traditional classical and jazz available].

If a system can’t play the music people want to hear, you know, because it ‘sounds bad’ – well, then that is kind of a problem, isn’t it.

Yesterday I took the elevator up to the 11th floor in the tower and visited and took photos of all the rooms except our wonderful old room 9030 [too… let’s just say depressing], the old jtinn room [long boring story], and the VTL room [they do not want me photographing their room] on floors 11,10,9,8, 2 and 1. Used the stairs on the way down, of course 🙂 [see previous post a few days ago]. Neli did floors 4 and 5 over at the atrium.

Today we immediately walked over to the 3 rooms in the Hyatt. The rooms had a little bit more of an upscale vibe over there, but spent most of our time at the Wilson Alexandria XLF demo. Then back we walked and after a little farting [for like an hour?] around I visited and photographed all the room on floors 4 and 5 over at the atrium and most of the Mezzanine – and this time it was Neli who searched the tower for good music and good sound.

Whereas yesterday there were two rooms I kind of enjoyed:

The EMM Labs / Sony / IsoMike room
The Magico S1 / Krell room [I Knoooow!?]

Today I enjoyed a few more:

The NVS [modified YG Acoustics, McCormack] room
The PranaFidelity room
The Zu Speakers, Peachtree room

Taking price into account [of course] I thought these rooms had high performance/price ratios.

The theme this year for me was reasonably good sounding solid-state. How weird is that? 🙂

As Thom Mackris (Galibier turntables) sagely mentioned, almost anybody can make a decent sounding tube amp. But it takes real effort and skill to make a decent sounding solid-state amp.

Traffic at this show i.e. the number of audiophiles attended seems to me to be quite a bit less than last year [my guess is half, though most people I talked to were more cautious about the number], but of a higher quality / more interested in actually listening to things as opposed to quickly surfing rooms.

Wilson Alexandria XLF speakers with a pair of their Thor’s Hammer subwoofers on VTL, dCS, and Transparent over at the Hyatt.

Endeavor Audio Engineering, YFS, CL Audio with Dean Peer as guest in room 545.

I like the all black look. There is something to be said for the gear always looking its best.

Scaena speakers on ARC amplifier over at the Hyatt. Just a cool photo.

Live music sponsored by Ray Kimber.

High Water Sound brought a pair of large Cessaro horn speakers and put them in room 589. There were several horn speakers at the show this year.

Sadurni speakers in room 538

The Sadurni speakers have a built in flea watt 300B amplifier.

SW Speakers in room 453.

Much thanks go out to Albert Porter for loaning me a memory card after I somehow in a characteristic display of raw and fearsome intelligence forgot to bring mine to the show.

We’ll put the whole show up on Ultimist. But for now, some highlights.

Room 9002 – The Ayre Room. The Ayre guys setup a full-immersion record store time-warp in their room, called it Charlie’s Records, and transported a demonstration hi-fi system right into the middle of it. This is a real store [although LPs are from Boulder’s own ‘Absolute Vinyl Records & Stereo ‘] and there are lots of nice used vinyl here folks.

Vaughn Speakers. Room 9007. Plasma tweeter.

Dail speakers with U.S. flag. Room 8020.

FIM CDs for sale in the First Impression Music room in 2004

More tomorrow morning… OK. It is morning… and here’s more.

A 3-conductor cable weaver in one of the IsoMike / Kimber rooms.

A closeup of the cable being weaved and the 3 spools of conductor. Looks like there is room for 5(?) conductors on this weaver.

The Kimber Kable mascot [I think that is what it is. I forgot what Ray Kimber called it. Doh!]

A prototype 1500 watt 220V amplifier from EmmLabs. Effortlessness. Surprisingly truly significantly different from the big Pass Labs amps of years past on these Sony speakers. In the big IsoMike room.

The crane used by EmmLabs to lift the 400 lb amps out of their crates. We want one. My arms and back feel better just looking at it. 🙂

Acoustic Sounds in the Bluebell room [far side of the first floor] was playing good music.

The Audio Note U.K. room number 566 was showing an older version of their smaller ‘K’ speakers [$3000-ish]. We all listened to some reel-to-reel fabulousness at the end of the day. The Beatles, for me, was exceptional [way better than the commercial releases, though I have not heard the latest re-mastered re-released re-pressings].