Newer. Longer. Better. đ
Only heard it for a few seconds on a cold system – so you will have to wait or, better, come yourself to room 315 … in the Prana Fidelity room
Our LA Audio Show 2017 – Show Reports will be spread across 3 locations.
Cheers
We will be attempting to post live photos on Cheers – LA Audio Show Report during the show.
We will be also posting the best webpages and videos about the show there that we find out on the Internet. In fact, any registered user of Cheers can post photos, videos, and webpages as well [sorry, pages from Stereophile and its sister mags do not work, just like they do not work with StumbleUpon and many other sites]. Just click on the ‘+’ in the message bar, at the bottom [you might have to click your avatar ‘body’]. Our hope is to create the ultimate collection of wild and amazing stuff that happens at the show.
I’ll try and show up periodically to play host, but sometimes things have a way of getting busier than expected… đ
We will try this again over on Audio Federation’s Instagram Page
We did this several years ago, [this same show in 2014] but there weren’t any audiophiles there yet. Not sure they are any there now, either, to speak of, but instead of posting 450+ photos from the show in 3 days, I will try and post a few choice turntable photos every day. Perhaps this will appeal more to Instagrammers than a full show photo storm.
Here on The Blog
And of course here on the blog.
Not sure I’m up for a posting an entire encyclopedic overview of the entire show that we usually do đ – but I’ll post something here. Any requests?
And if you are attending – come see us! Room 534 – Acapella Audio Arts, Audio Note and Neli, and sometimes me, too, from Audio Federation đ
The problem with Noobs on the Internet and why we have so many unhappy audiophiles [Ha! Thought I was going to talk about Noobs and politics didn’t you đ Or reviewers. Or colleagues at work. Or your kids. Or… yep, this is pretty universal human behavior].
I guess there should be a follow up with how mass populations believe everything they hear in a new  technological medium when it is new, but slowly get ‘inoculated’ against all the same-old dirty tricks and misinformation and become immune there, just like they are in the old mediums. I mean, who believes TV commercials anymore, or You Have Won $1000000! letters in the mail [where is Ed McMahon when you need him đ Maybe that is him at the door right now!!! Got to go!].
[Nope. Wasn’t him].
Maybe, just maybe, those new amps didn’t blow ANYONE away – maybe someone just wants to get your attention because they are lonely. Or they just want to think ‘made you look’.
What a world đ
Found the chart above in a course on Machine Learning. Neli and I are at the part of the graph where we think we know about 50% of what there is to know. đ [Hey, it is a VERY new science. Not much to it ;-)]
Audio Note M10 Signature Preamplifier Review by Fred Crowder has just been posted over on Dagogo.
Meticulous clean design with many custom parts.
Detailed view of the circuit board. No wavesoldered traces here, no sir đ
Fred Crowder’s system. Somebody is envious [that would be me :-)].
Neli has heard this system recently, with the new M10 Signature, and she might have more to say. [hint hint :-)]
We will be at the LA Audio Show 2017 this year previously called T.H.E. Show Newport which was in Irvine. đ
Setup is June 1 and the show opens June 2 and ends on June 4th at 4:00pm.
Acapella Audio Arts’ La Musika integrated amplifier
This is a new hotel for this show. Which I guess makes sense since this is kind of a new show, though it takes place in the same Greater L.A. area on the same dates as the old one. We all loved the old hotel – great service, decently solid walls and high-ceilings [which made the technique of bouncing the camera’s flash off the ceiling not work quite as well as it does in most hotel rooms]. And the energy of this hotel, being near the LA Airport vs. the previous being near Newport and the beach… well, the LA Audio Society has a lot of energy – they will just have to step in and lively up the place đ
We will be in room 534.
Speakers: Acapella Audio Arts Cellini High.
Amplifier: Acapella Audio Arts La Musika integrated
Digital: Audio Note CDT-5 transport and DAC 5 Signature
Rack: HRS SXR 3-shelf
Cables: A mix of Acapella, Audio Note and TBD
The Audio Note CDT-Five transport on a wonderful Spring day in Palo Alto
It has been a year since our last show, missing RMAF [ho-hum. Sorry, but after 10 years of showing every year that show is just… ], and CES too.
Shows I miss? The old CES / THE Show Alexis Park Las Vegas. More fun. Higher quality. More exuberance. More weird. More exhibits. But fewer newbies (I think) so the newer shows have at least made it possible for more startups to exhibit].
Hoping this new old stock show is spectacular! See ya there, or, if you can’t make it, we hope to try a livestream photos approach to the show report this year – more about this in a few weeks.
The MQA controversy is bound to create some winners and losers in both manufacturing and for us audiophiles.
For example, LINN has a very strongly argued case against it:
MQA is Bad For Music
The Computer Audiophile has details about how MQA advances the state-of-the-art in some respects:
MQA (for civilians)
And over at HiFi+ they report that MQA might not even be lossless:
And small manufacturers agonize over what THEY should do, and must pick sides:
ZWEIMANN AUDIO on FACEBOOK
MQA has funding and is making a bold move, but… I have a feeling things are moving so fast, that just about the time that MQA might start making an impact on the regular listening public, something new will already be replacing it.
What wins these days seem to be those things that go viral, not needing a heavy hand like the old format wars of days-gone-by.
But, who knows… not me. This one I am sitting out and taking a wait-and-see wake-me-when-its-all-over approach đ
[Yes, we are going to Newport 2017 this Spring as well, and I’ll post where we will be when the powers that be (Neli) tell me the details :-)]
Here we are in the wonderful world where there is a show that is only 20 minutes away. đ
Although CAS skipped a year, it is back in force and we are signed up for one of the larger rooms on the first floor of the building where the vast majority of exhibit rooms will be.
It is now in Oakland, at the Hilton, with plenty of parking and rooms that do not have air conditioners or heaters where equipment is supposed to go [unlike most of the other shows, shows where you eventually just learn to sit on the thing while plugging cables into the back of the gear].
This is the hotel layout and where the rooms are located.
This is the room we are in. The front wall backs to the outside. So we will not disturb anybody if we play it a little LOUD [unless, however, our neighbors on the other side of the rear wall are too loud for our listeners to bear . in which case we will flip the room the other way. ]
Hmmm, maybe we should just put the system on the long wall, on the left, also an outer wall. You know, there is hardly ever any choice when we setup rooms about where the system should go. This is a such wealth of choices here [we, (well me anyway, haven’t talked to Neli about this recently), have been looking more favorably at long wall setups than we used to. Letting the sound breathe on the sides helps clarity and macrodynamics, and clarity OFÂ macrodynamics :-)]
We’ve been wanting to go to this show for years and years. Every year we would talk and talk about it. One or the other of us would always not be able to make it. This is awesome.
[Still have a hard time writing 2017. Or ‘2’ for that matter :-)]
This is the main listening room with the Acapella Cellini speakers and La Musika integrated amplifier. Audio Note digital CDT-5 and DAC 5 Signature.
Finally sounding…. OK…. here, though we still have some issues with the very thin 1/4 mahogany plywood walls [the (awesome) windows are much more substantial, sonically, than the walls in these Eichler homes!]
The small Audio Note room, AN/E SEC Signature speakers, Kegon amplifiers and M2 Line Balanced preamplifier sounds quite nice, though we are divided on whether to push the speakers just a little bit more into the corners or not. This room also has extremely thin walls, and zero insulation – but it is working better than we feared at first. Still lots of experimenting going on here. Tonality and frequency response are pretty good; still working on the soundstage.
The dining room system, trade-in Avalon Eidolon speakers, is not setup and Neli is still a little upset about it. Took us forever to commit to really using the dining room this way, since it also has Neli’s office in it and, you know, the kitchen.  đ But she should really just go with it – I mean it *is* kind of a nice work environment… đ
Getting everything into a ~1500 sq. ft. home, with us both needing an office, another room dedicated to audio gear and tools [and perhaps someday serving as the guest bedroom] plus 3 listening rooms is challenging… but it is finally starting to work out. (!)
How is sound at sea-level different than sound a mile or more above sea-level?
I’ve spent 50 years at least a mile (5280 feet) high [so many jokes, so little time]. We’ve both spent the last 25 at 7200 feet or so.
Funny, but going to shows at sea level during those years did not highlight these differences, so they are obviously more subtle than the impact of individual room acoustics and setup on the sound.
But, both when hearing things while outside and when listening to stereo systems, there are differences that helps me understand how people at sea level are hearing things differently than the people at higher elevations [few of us there are at altitude].
The short and sweet is that sound works better here at 13 feet above sea level. It travels farther, it is more solid and substantive, more dense. Sound at elevation is thinner sounding, like ‘thin sounding’ cables.
Have to say that even though I may still prefer the lighter, more airy sound that I ‘grew up’ with [Perhaps because is just feels ‘cleaner’], I am enjoying the easy gains system setup down here provides us in ‘the soup’ compared to the more laborious setup in ‘the clouds’
An unfortunate side-effect, however, is the background city noise here, which at sea level also seems to travel farther, be stronger, and permeate ev-e-ry-thing. đ
In the last 15 years, this is the second year we have not gone to CES.
Miss it? A little. Still got my post CES cold, anyway. *sucks*
From a business standpoint the case was clear: prices going way up, attendance going way down – and because this has been the trend for awhile, the number of exhibitors going way down.
Assume the CEA isn’t just trying to call off the uniquely troublesome high-end audio part of the show [a bunch of scoundrels (that would be all of us) masquerading as business people bringing big expensive heavy gear into 100s of pristine luxury hotel rooms and playing very loud music for 4 days].
Then the prices are going up because the rest of CES is still growing. CES overall is successful and there is little competition. Fewer vacant hotel rooms in Las Vegas means higher prices. And THE SHOW Las Vegas abandoning Vegas for Newport Beach a few years ago is no longer there to keep CES competitive.
A growing CES also means attendees of the main conference have more and more to do, and it gets harder for them to find and even remember that there is a high-end audio part of this show [Apparently. Higher attendance MIGHT also mean MORE people making it over to the High-Performance Audio part of the show – but in practice this is not happening].
Last year, attendance was very, very roughly 50% industry and press (friends), 40% people coming up from the very, very busy SANDS conference center downstairs (being at CES for other business), and 10% die-hard audiophiles (more friends).
My hope at this show was always that we would inspire the 40% who just happened to be at CES and stopped by our room to love what they hear, eventually become audiophiles and, someday, someday… to buy something. And by and large this worked. These people, less angry and irritable than their audiophile counterparts I might add (why is this?), almost universally smiled, loved what they heard and told us so, and asked what things cost. And when we told them they put us on their “someday when I’m rich” list. Most of these people are in growing industries, most quite young, so a good percentage will someday be “rich enough”.
But it is a lot to ask of smaller companies, like ours, to invest significant funds right now so that in 10 or 20 years these people will decide buy some decent high-end audio gear, especially when*what* gear they buy will largely depend on what appears on their radar at that time. But larger companies? What else do they have to do in early January? [unless they want to invest that $$$ to get more immediate ROI].
To this analysis we could add the rise and preeminence of the Munich show, the recent success more local Newport show, and…
But, you know, there used to be a lot of international attendees who would come around from the main show, wheeled carry-on dragging behind them, in expensive dark suits checking things out with expert eyes and presumably expert ears [i..e they appeared to be audiophiles]. Why are they not here anymore? Do they just not go to CES anymore? Are they too busy now to make it over from the main conference? Are there just not enough high-performance audio exhibits to attract them? Are they going to Munich anyway, so why bother with a shrinking, unexciting CES audio show?
None of those answers impress me.
Really no clue why they are no longer coming – but I would love to know the answer, as we are always trying to more accurately model the high-end audio economic picture, here now and the future.
And, let’s face it, the best gear just isn’t being shown at CES by most manufacturers. This is why we really, REALLY liked this show. It used to be, but not anymore. And much of the very best, what *is* being shown there, is unobtainable…
As for shows ourselves – looks like we are at least signed up and headed to Newport (L.A.) in late Spring….
