Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Stereophile’s show reports are great for checking my facts and figures, and so I leafed through their report last night.

What struck me was that there was hardly any overlap between the rooms I found interesting and their coverage.

Now, it is a truism that magazines focus coverage on rooms that have something ‘new’. Even so, there are a lot of rooms that had new equipment that did not appear in their report – from small manufactures to large, from inexpensive to … not inexpensive.

They do have a ton of info about the rooms / equipment they did cover – and it is kind of fun to read in a dispassionate “oh, that is what they are up to these days” kind of way – but the view of the show from that report is really quite different than that from ours [and I have not found it in me to visit the others just yet].

In some way, I feel that they are trying to be ‘just a little bit more upscale’ than the Sony, Denon etc. coverage of something like, say, CNET. But perhaps this attempt to form a continuous transition from that kind of reader to a more upscale reader leaves out a lot, somehow.

CES – May Cause Dizziness

Finally back from CES. We spent a few days after CES optimizing a Wilson Alexandria X-2 system (Audio Note Ongaku integrated, Emm Labs XDS1 CD player, and Nordost ODIN) [quite nice speakers, especially after they are spiked] so this show report is getting a late start.

For me, this was the year of CD playback, what with the Audio Note CDT-Five transport and Fifth Element DAC, and post show with the XDS1 – and I am having a hard time, personally, justifying investment in LP playback. Neli thinks I am nuts [and she should know! :-)].

On the other hand… many, many rooms were using laptops to drive megabuck equipment. It is 1983 all over again… Convenience trumps a quote unquote ***slight*** degradation in sound. Well, that slight degradation includes all kinds of edginess and a lack of PRaT and a host of ‘early CD-like’ sound effects. So, for me, someone who listens to the sound will hear what sounds like a bad system driven by a laptop, then later the same system that sounds like a decent system when driven by a CD player [the Perfect8 auditions are a good example]. Computer Audio *can* sound as good as a average, say $3K solid-state CD player [given a decent DAC downstream], the isoMike and Magico rooms for example, but in general it sounds like poop, though one does have to actually pay attention to the sound to hear the issues.

I only took about 1100 photos this CES. Trying to keep it down to a low roar. In hindsight I missed about 5-10 rooms. I will be adding photos to this particular post as I go through and find them.

Most Listenable / Enjoyable / Musical / Interesting of Show

I heard a lot of complaints from exhibitors that many showgoers just peek inside a room for a second or two and then leave – and that it takes some amount of time to judge a system [no, I really think they were NOT talking about me :-)]. It has always been my opinion that a system not to one’s liking can be evaluated in a few seconds, but to hear and understand the depths of a good system can indeed take a good deal of time.

What I think happens though is that people evaluate a system based on what it LOOKS like, when they first enter a room. And if the system does not look impressive, they decide that their time is better spent elsewhere. Audio Note is a good example: the somewhat old fashioned two-way speakers look unimposing and modest at first glance [not an advantage at shows] even though sitting in the corners like they do makes them effectively a very large speaker with lots of bass and no bass issues. This discordance between appearance and performance is actually quite common at shows – and the fact that many people [and reviewers] often gravitate toward impressive looks as opposed to superior sound is common at CES, albeit much more so at RMAF.

Many rooms had bass issues [Lamm and Audio Note, however, did not] to the extent possible I typically just ignore them and focus on the other octaves.

I will try and do a separate post for each room – and I’ll say more at that time.

So, the rooms, in no particular order:

* Lamm ML3 and LL1 (amp and preamp), Wilson Alexandria X-2 (speakers), Neodio (CD playback), DaVinci (turntable), Kubala-Sosna (cables),

The Alexandria’s first appearance at a show was historic – given that the Alexandrias are the best selling true high-end loudspeaker. The sound was quite good. Transparency, presence, resolution could all have been improved significantly with slightly different setup and accessories, but it was not like anyone was doing these better at this show.

* Marten Coltrane-2 (speakers), amp and Emm Labs XDS1 (CD player)! and PRE2 (preamp) and Jorma PRIME cables + Engstrom and Engstrom Lars (amp), BAT pre, laptop, and Nordost ODIN cables [and assorted non-ODIN Nordost power cords]

I combine these two rooms because it was only by listening to the both was I able to understand the Coltrane 2 loudspeakers. These speakers do things that I did not think a speaker could do: just like the better Emm Labs digital [forget the AN level 5 digital for a second, that is on a whole nuther planet], and the Nordost ODIN and the better Audio Note amps and Lamm ML3, we are finding out that there is a whole lot more music on CDs that we had previously thought.

* Zanden and Wilson – the new, modestly priced Zanden gear sounds quite good – not as luxurious and lovely as their upper end, but quite in the same family.

* Perfect8 (speakers) and Ypsilon (electronics) – Interesting room. These reportedly cost-no-object speakers might be quite good but there was smearing of notes in the midrange and bass. Sure would love to hear these with known 1st or 2nd tier electronics: Ayre, MBL, the better Esoteric, Vitus, etc.

* Edge on Avalon speakers + Edge on Acoustic Zen speakers. I have been unhappy with the sound in the Edge rooms for several years now, but these two rooms I liked: Enjoyable: musical, reasonably dynamic, reasonably tuneful.

* IsoMike, Sony speakers, Emm Labs digital. Similarly, I have more or less hated the sound of the IsoMike systems with these Sony speakers with a passion – but this year this room was decent and I enjoyed the Ray Kimber musical selections here quite a bit.

* Kondo. Simple music on CD sounded quite drug-like – if not quite realistic. Classical music on the turntable was, however, very disappointing.

* Silbatone electronics, Western Electric horn speakers. Interesting sound. Helps to understand our audiophile roots I think.

* Audio Note [and us]. Lot to say here. [realize this is a large-scale sound, comparable in size to the Alexandrias]. Most Impressive, most dynamic, most harmonically correct, most consistently drug-like. But I will have to write a post sometime on the politics of system setup when there are stakeholders with somewhat conflicting goals [usually we also have a ‘Audio Federation’ room, where there is only one stakeholder – us – so perhaps the comments of a ‘newbie’ will be of interest to some of you]. Also, although the speakers are quite broken in, we do not often play our speakers at ‘show volumes’ [which was often 100db+. Led Zepelin never sounded so good :-). Had a hard time keeping my mind on business instead of hanging out here in this room] – which means that by the 3rd day, the speakers were quite a bit more relaxed. Next year we will take advantage of this knowledge and spend a few weeks before the show playing the system at concert volumes [yes, these comments apply to all speakers in all systems – at home or at shows – speakers will seemingly sound better at ordinary volumes if you play them LOUDER than average for awhile… although your relationships with your neighbors might suffer :-)].

I have probably forgotten someone… if so I will add them here. 🙂

* Epos, Music Hall, Creek – This room, as usual, was a pleasant and Enjoyable stop.

It seems like there may be a misunderstanding about what this list of rooms is about. Let me illustrate my dilemma (and perhaps the dilemma of many show goers) having to do with poorly setup systems, badly engineered equipment (sorry, but we are NOT your average website where all equipment is Grrrrreat!), and (sometimes unavoidable) severe room issues:

I went down one of these halls at the Venetian, and room after room – expensive system, cheap system, incredibly expensive system, whatever – the room sound was ‘smearing’ notes. What I mean by smearing is that the notes do not start and stop correctly, and so they overlap. To me, this ruin much of what makes music music: a good beat, suspenseful or majestic decays, harmonic counterpoints, etc. This can be caused by cables, sloppy sources or amps unable to drive the speaker. There was a row of rooms like this for, I don’t know, 20 or 30 rooms. I started to doubt my sanity. Perhaps I was just imagining all this, and this is the way music really sounds? [at my age, I doubt my sanity several times per day – and 100s of times if I watch the nightly ‘news’ :-)]. Then I entered the QUAD room. I just had to sit there a few minutes and luxuriate in a properly designed system. The bass sucked big time in this room because of undesirable room interactions, but the midrange was right. None of the other rooms on this show report list smeared the sound either [except the Perfect8 room, and there it was fairly mild, but still mightily annoying]. The QUADs themselves we’ve talked about before and there was nothing new or spectacular there in that room that I feel the need to write about – so it isn’t on this list.

We’ll of course talk a little bit about the Tenor amps on the YG Acoustics speakers [issues in both rooms prevented any real insight into the quality of this pairing – at least to my ears], and the Magico room [like the Q5 at RMAF but with some bass/room issues – and how reel-to-reel sounded here (rounder but not warmer or more emotional)]. But these are fundamentally not interesting to me at this show – as I A) just did not gain a lot of insight into what they were doing well/poorly and B) they were not systems that I would care to listen to for an extended period of time.

This was a fairly typical CES. PS Audio wasn’t here [saying that “now the big show is CEDIA” – with this kind of math, we could get rid of our national debt with a few strokes of the pen :-)]. I didn’t see Ayre either [Guess I am blind, because they were there. Sanders, Boulder and Avalon were here, however, as I go through the list of all our Boulder-based manufacturers]

Many more rooms at T.H.E. Show (Flamingo) than last year. The suites at T.H.E. Show are quite decently sized. Traffic was good at here, although I, for one, was surprised at the number of rooms and I would expect that many people were also and did not plan enough time here to see all the rooms they wanted to see]. Assuming we get our equipment shipped back safely [right now it looks like they mucked things up badly], this show is becoming a first class show in its own right.

The first half of the first day was VERY slow at the Venetian – but things did pick up. Most exhibitors are now in the Venetian Tower, only YG Acoustics and a few mid-fi brands are left at the lower levels of the Sands/Venetian. For those of you who are able to walk up stairs, using the other elevator bank at the Venetian, the one with the elevators that only go up to floor 28, (and which does not have a line of people 3 wide extending for 50+ yards), and then WALKING up the stairs to floors 29 and 30 (and 34 and 35) is a WAY faster way to travel [and apparently sanctioned by the Venetian, which has posters on floor 28 directing you to the other floors].

OK. To the room by room part of our program…

Silbatone Acoustics had a couple of systems set up with horn speakers… 757A and … More to say about these, but if you are at the show, check them out. 34-210 at the Venetian.

Audio Power Labs in 34-209 in the Venetian has some amps driving the Vandersteen 3A speakers and it sounds quite good. Need to listen more, and the amps are to be in the $100K to $200K range, but this is definitely interesting.

Engstrom & Engstrom on Marten Coltrane 2 Nordost Odin cabling. I was familiar with enough of the equipment here to get a good reading on both the Coltrane 2 speakers and the Lars amps. More details later, but I am impressed with both the ability of the amps [think AN Kegon without that wonderful harmonic bounty, AN Kegon Balanced without that ability to grip the speaker’s every move – these are all 300B amps, but quite different from each other in several important ways] and the improvements the Coltrane 2 has made over the Coltrane 1 [more ease, more natural separation during complex passages, and expanding the ability to render multiple complex subtle melodies down an octave or two]

Perfect8 was disappointing this year. Bright, congested and difficulty with complex passages. Not all problems could be blamed on the laptop source. Whereas last year there was a glimmer of something interesting here – this year there was not.
[UPDATE: tagged along with a friend who spent a long time in here on the last morning playing familiar CDs. The laptop was, in fact, responsible for many of the overtly negative issues. There is still some smearing of the notes, lack of bloom [midi-dynamics a little muted], and noticeable lack of harmonic detail in the bass – most of which might easily be attributed to the upstream components. These are once again interesting speakers – their challenge is to match the uber resolution of the ribbons with the unfortunately lesser resolution of the midrange drivers, and of the much lesser resolution bass drivers – and do it in such a way that it is seemless. This is where the speakers succeed or fail. And the upstream components can also either help or hinder this integration.]

Kondo showed with their new prototype field coil system speakers – an interesting approach to [more about this later] drug-like sound on more simple compositions – but there was a strange lack of realism on classical – quick piano strikes for instance. Not sure what was causing this…

OK. Did all of the 29th floor and 35th floors. Not too many interesting things… but a few. In no particular order –

Lamm ML3 amplifiers on Wilson Alexandria X-2 speakers

Lamm ML3 on Alexandrias… Wilson positioned the speakers a little farther apart than I would have put them, and we can nitpick here and there [hey, that is our business here on the blog] but this is a landmark system to appear at a show – both in terms of sound and historically. [details later on all this stuff].

The Sonus Faber new statement speakers do not have the aesthetic nor, seemingly if this room is any judge, the sound of the other models.

Rear of the Sonus Faber speakers.

Sorry… sleep time. More tomorrow morning.

Dan D’Agostino (ex-Krell founder and chief engineer)’s new company’s amps.

On the Wilson Sasha did not sound like old Krell – good – but did not seem able to control the speakers as well as one might like.

New Audio Aero ‘LaFontaine’ CD/SACD player/linestage. About half the price of the $44K LaSource

Close-up of the laFonTaine

Blue Light Audio showing off new $2000 Evolution Acoustics MMMicroOne loudspeakers

New statement Zu speakers [sorry for the focus issues? Not sure what went wrong camera-wise here. I’ll try for a better one today].

Studio electric exhibiting a new, more conventional-looking speakers to good effect.

Clarity Cable has a very nice enjoyable sound again this year.

The Awesome Spark on static display in the Cayin room