[I hear that JV has his show report up, so I better get a move on here. I write my impressions before I read anybody else’s impressions; otherwise, if I see an impression with which I happen to agree, then I just lose momentum and incentive to write anything at all. ].

First, I am partial to the Magico S1 speaker. In fact, I like all the Magico speakers [don’t listen to Alon, he doesn’t understand me :-)], I just think the systems they usually show them with are deeply flawed. I liked the S5 speakers on the Luxman amps. And we have both liked what we have heard of the S1 speaker.

The S1 is well-priced, and is capable of good timbre and reasonable dynamics, is not incredibly difficult to drive [apparently], and is able to handle complex material.

And I liked this modest Krell system.

I heard well-rounded, well-separated notes with a good, accurate timbre. Fairly dynamic. Fairly open sounding.

At this show, this year, a sound like this is a home run.

Given the relatively low price of both the S1 and Krell gear and the strength of the brands, this is a system that I hope lots of audiophiles paid attention to.

My badge for the show. Was kind of incognito. Nice.

Well folks, it looks like we are going to do two show reports.

The show report on Ultimist will have all the photos [about a 1000], and we’ll talk about everything but the sound. A lot of fun things happen at a show. Many things that are really not at all related to the process of listening closely and determining the quality of the reproduction of the music being played.

The show report here on the blog will talk about the sound, focusing mainly on the rooms that we liked. It will be relatively short. There wasn’t much that was really high-end, or even pretended to be really high-end.

In fact, a lot of it was old-school, and sounded like early 90’s stereo systems. We just hope people went to other rooms besides these and heard how there have been advances in the last decades – mostly in not sounding not quite so fake and artificial.

We will also talk here about the industry and various trends.

Heck, might as well talk about them now since I am thinking about it now and who knows where the brain will stash this stuff over the next few days as we move away from ‘Show’ mode and on to normal life.

Trends

Predatory dealers – These are dealers that exhibit at shows far away from their store, attempting to steal audiophiles away from the local dealerships. There just used to be one or two, and now there are at least 5 or so. Manufacturers are increasingly looking the other way when it comes to geographical restrictions. It is a free-for-all out there, but luckily for us, we are pretty safe being one of the very few who actually care about what things actually, you know, sound like. Most dealers are just box pushers and having remote dealers come into their territory at shows like this is going to cause one heck of a fuss.

Pricing is getting weird – hard to put my finger on exactly what is going on, but I am frequently shocked at how much or how little various pieces of gear are being priced at. This is not sticker shock but audaciousness. Again, at both the high and low ends. It is like target marketing segment and/or target demographics determine prices now, not performance and the relative price of competing gear.

CD Players are disappearing – I’ll have to double check the photos, but there is the requisite turntable for rooms who care about sound, and a laptop / music server for those who care about selection and convenience, and sometimes, sometimes a CD player for those rooms that are willing to play people’s CDs they bring to the show.

Old fashioned bad sound – For those that just include a laptop and some of the more mainstream gear, it seems really easy to create a sound that is reminiscent of early 80s sound. Bright. Tinny. Artificial transients. Incorrect Timbre. It really was shocking how far the sound in some rooms has regressed.

Far fewer show goers this year – and I, for one [not being an exhibitor this year], liked it. Calmer. More focused listening. More couples. Fewer young people unfortunately. Most rooms had people in them most of the time [as subjectively calculated from my traversal of all the rooms] as opposed to the other extreme in previous years where the hallways and a few rooms, lemming fashion, would be quite crowded and some rooms would be completely empty. Why is this? Brand name penetration dilution due to the internet being a more level playing ground than magazine advertisements? Smarter audiophiles willing to look beyond the major brands? Audiophiles who had already heard the major brands at local dealers and want to see what else is out there? More fit audiophiles who are willing to walk a ways to see what else is happening? [I do think people are more fit this year, now that I think about it].

Fewer photographers / reporters – I saw Albert Porter [thanks Albert! He loaned me a memory card the first day] taking official photos for the show. And maybe one other photographer who looked serious [he seemed to be taking as many photos as I was. Although this year, I myself was keeping a handle on things]. I saw Mike Fremer, JA, Clement Perry, Larry Borden, Constantine Soo and JV, but few other reporters. Usually they are all over the place, and every other person I look at their badge and see they are from Positive Feedback, Enjoy the Music etc.

Lots of new / unknown gear out there – I see this all the time on the front page of Ultimist. New brand after new brand goes by. Some top gear. Some affordable gear. Some imported, some domestic. This year’s show had a number of new brands showing their stuff. This is a golden age for high-end audio – too bad the economy isn’t better.

We can’t think of too many more trends. Continuing reduction in of the major manufacturers [which gives the show a more homey, down-home feel, which I like. But fewer attempts are exceptional sound, unfortunately]. Perhaps a few more importers than last year. Neli mentioned that there was more heterogeneity / diversity of gear: very few brands had gear in more than two rooms.

OK. This is long enough.

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.