Audio Federation - Dealership, HiFiING Magazine and the Audiophiles Guide to the Galaxy

Side 2
Home Entertainment Show
New York Hilton
April 30th, 2005

Track 1 Sound by Singer
JM Lab, BAT, Shunyata, Harmonic Resolution Systems (HRS)

Track 2 MBL

Track 3 Hyperion

Track 4 Almarro

Track 5 tmh Audio
Talon, Wavac

Track 6 GTT Audio
Kharma, Lamm, dCS, Taoc, Nagra, Kubala-Sosna, Kuzma

Track 7 GTT Audio
Kharma, EMMlabs, Taoc, Kubala-Sosna

Rooms You Might Want to See

Our favorite rooms at the end of day 2 seem to have a lot to do with speaker size being appropriate for the room size - small speakers in the very small rooms on floors 9 and 10 seem to work best at this point.

From most reasonably priced to more expensive, here are the rooms we like today
(but by tomorrow we may change our minds!)

The room with Epos speakers driven by a Music Hall turntable. Here we have a system that costs around $3K - $4K that is listenable and enjoyable and musical... and they had the window open, so us show goers got some welcome fresh air.

The Almarro Room as always their small systems do a lot of things right - especially in that midrange, as god or better than many of the big boys, but without the big price.

The Hyperion Room - Interesting and complex music still sounds... interesting and complex on this system with modestly priced $4500.00 speakers.

The Acapella Fidelio 2 room - The small $6800.00 (with stand) speakers fill the room without over-filling, and have a wonderful engrossing sweet spot if you can get that center chair! Disclaimer: Audio Federation sells Acapella speakers

The MBL room playing too loud and too much music with a bass beat as usual. Yes, the MBLs have bass, can we move on? But these $15K 111E speakers with the (pair of) $13K amps actually sound pretty darn good... and check out that humongously awesome preamp!

The Marten Design / Brinkmann room - Nice speakers (around $15K, arnd $18K in this piano black finish), nice sound, nice front end... any questions? Disclaimer: Audio Federation sells Marten Design speakers

The Kharma 3.2 room - We think we've heard the $21K 3.2E speakers sound better (i.e. with the Lamm ML2 amps) but the little Kharma $3K range amps do an admirable job and the system does not overwhelm the room like so many of its brethren.

The big Lamm / Damoka room with the big Vitavox horns. No, it doesn't do everything right - but big room, big realistic sound. Play one of your favorite pieces of music to hear how it sounded like when it was recorded.. And check out that turntable the Damoka folks brought with them - It has to be the most wonderfully retro-looking table at the show. Disclaimer: Audio Federation sells Lamm amplifiers.

Rooms You Might Want to Avoid

Some rooms, for whatever reason, you might want to save for last, as they are more punishing on the ears which has a tendency to spoil the experience in the good-sounding rooms.

(but by tomorrow they may have fixed everything and so you still might want to go hear them!)

The Tad, Pass Labs, IsoMike room - How can a system with one of the best digital sources at the show, if not the best, manage to sound so, so unlike music and real instruments? A surround sound system with nowhere to hide... No doubt, each component is a fine performer in the right system, but...

The Piega, Innersound, Meridian Room - a surround sound system where they are playing music DVD movies. But this sounded to us like there was a lot of digital noise. Like the system above, each component is no doubt a fine performer in the right system (for example, we have heard the Innersound amps in our system, on the Soundlab Ultimates and the Marten Design Coltranes, and thought they were among the best we have heard - and we are very, very picky when it comes to solid state amps). But, sometimes, things just go wrong...