Wow, how much fun is this, the critic critiqing other critics 🙂

They liked our all Audio Note room (what is not to like), but had an interesting take on our other room.

This is so funny, because we quite worried that the system would be overly loud. This system had a tendency to play at really high volumes, and with such amzingly low amounts of distortion it was sometimes hard to tell just how loud it really was.

And I quote:

“When we were there, they were playing CSNY at very subdued levels to a packed room (the Coltranes [Supreme] were powered by the Audio Note Kegon amplifiers – $49K). All very nice stuff, but can you say somniferous? I mean crank it up a bit. Perhaps not the best match.”

I think maybe that CSNY is not the best match for Dave and Carol…. 🙂

It was my choice to put on “Suite Judy Blue Eyes”, which is what I think I put on from that album at that time (one of my all time favorite songs – along with most of the other songs on that LP – along with most of their other LPs – and all of Neil’s LPs. I know we played Cinnamon Girl but I do not remember Down By the River… Oh well, next show :-)).

I also played a whole album side of Abbey Road. which I also played at pleasant volumes (you had to talk loudly to be heard over it but not shout). And Peter Tosh ‘Legalize It” [THAT we played LOUD]. Yes, they are somewhat compressed and my playing it was to some extent risky. Why? Because they aren’t AUDIOPHILE SHOW APPROVED.

There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED volume.
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED artist and track list (somewhat dependent on the particular audiophile).
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED song length.
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED recording quality.
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED drum solo length (OK, we all have this :-)).
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED amount of Partricia Barber and Diana Krall (which now rests at zero :-)).

Personally, what I wanted to show at RMAF is that our systems can play music people actually want to listen to. And we did and it worked. The room was packed just about the whole show (re: lack of pictures I was able to get out of the room to take this show – but we did take around 1000).

We played Stevie Ray Vaughn at live show levels.

…and we played Holst the Planets where you soemtimes had to strain your ears to hear what was happening (and hold on to your seats 30 seconds later).

But *if* you evaluate systems largely on their dynamic capabilities, then you should evaluate the systems when they are playing dynamic music. [Dave and Carol requested to hear more dynamic music, but left a scant few seconds later. ??? ]

As this post concludes itself, I want to talk about how much fun it is to DJ at a show.

First, a show is like one gigantic party. I mean, 1000s of like minded people kind of mill around, wandering from room to room amoungst 100s of rooms, listening to tunes, chatting with friends, playing their own CDs her and there, hearing new music, getting to play it louder than their situation at home may allow… It Is A Blast.

Now imagine you get to DJ in one of these rooms. A room is like a Club. The DJ gets to play music they like and that they think the Club goers will like. There is a lot of “Oh, I bet people will think this is cool.” or “This is such wonderful music, and it brings back such memories and it sounds amazing better now that it did on my old plastic turntable (or 1st generation CD player for you younger people out there 🙂 … or first IPOD for you even younger people out there :-))”.

Often, I like to play quiet peices between pieces that rock out – kind of like Led Zepelin albums, or even Deep Purple [although some albums are just one long intense nuclear rocket-powered roller coaster ride :-)] . Have you noticed that they interperse quiet or acoustsic tracks in amongst the adrennilin-inducing ones? Well, people at a show are no different – sometimes we need to recover a bit after a particularly emotional, or aggressive, or delicate, or nostalgic …piece. So as a newbee DJ, I practice the “Mix It Up” technique of realtime playlist generation.

We all have our personal tastes… We can’t play AC/DC or Sonic Youth, or… with Neli in the room, We can’t play anything from Hell Freezes Over with either Steve or Neli in the room, we can’t play hip-hop or rap with anyone else in the room but me (and Ben 🙂 ) ….:-) etc. etc.

Anyway, being DJ at a show allows one to play not to a captive audience, but an interested one, which is much more fun, much more challenging, and much more rewarding.

We want to thank everybody for visiting our room. We hope you enjoyed your stay. Thank you and good night.

… well… not quite.

We finally got all our stuff out of the Marriot RMAF show hotel and drove up around 2:00pm to stairs covered in 8 inches or so of snow. But, at least the driveway was melted!

Now comes the setting up of all the equipment once again, warming it up… Just like a show, but the show is ‘here’ and not ‘there’.

BTW, carrying all this heavy audio gear up and down 45 steps I have found to be quite a workout. So, I was thinking, if any of you are thinking about getting in shape, just start moving your audio gear around from room to room. What a great excuse to offer the more audio-shy significant others…”It keeps me off the streets and provides a healthy anerobic workout”.

🙂

Sunday was a suprisingly busy day for us. There was a lull around 2:00pm (start of the Broncos game?) but otherwise the room was usually full.

I did get to go play a few of my CDs on the Kharma Midi Exquisites / MBL system and listen some more to the Isomike 12 SoundLab system.

We stopped playing music around 4:30 (show ended at 4:00pm) , which is earlier than usual for us but we had a lot of packing to do. Even with help we were still packing at midnight and have a few more hours of packing and loading the truck later this morning.

My personal overall impression of the show was that most things sounded pretty good – which is to day that most rooms did not sound so horrible that I had to grit my teeth taking pictures of the room (there is a lot of gritting of teeth at the Stereophile shows and even some at CES).

That said, there wasn’t much that was spectacular either. My favorite non-Audio Federation room (though we do carry Kharma, we do not carry MBL) was the Kharma Midi Exquisite room… the new bass drivers work for me.

The show report is going to be a little strange this year. For one, I didn’t get a heck of a lot of time to listen to things. Second, many of the rooms that exhibited speakers we carry sounded better than most other rooms. There are several reasons for this – one is that we carry a lot of gear that we heard sound good at shows, figuring that if they can sound good in hotel rooms at shows they should sound good in people’s listening rooms. Another is that we only carry what sounds good, at least to our ears, as opposed to the myriad other methods dealers use to pick which equipment they sell.

This is all to say that show report will talk about these rooms and provide updates / opinions on others that we have recommended / panned in the past. If something that we have said sounded great at other shows but wasn’t up to its normal greatness this time out, we will say so (Starsound’s Caravelle speaker room and Cogent True-to-Life horn speakers… sorry guys, you’re still two of our favorite speaker designs, but…). And things we did not like sounded pretty darn good at this show, we will also say so (Can’t think of anything). The other rooms, not only of local dealers who we never cover – great or not, but others that, yes, have this flaw or that, will not be critiqued.

As far as Audio Federation’s two rooms goes…

The Audio Note room seemed to be an excellent example of just what can be done with Audio Note equipment, and we and the show goers seem to be very happy with the sound.

The big room seemed also to really knock people’s socks off – which is to say that they loved it – even though I personally agonized over a few sonic artifacts related to the fact that both the Marten Coltrane Supreme speakers and the Audio Note M10 preamplifier were not yet really broken in. Maybe I am just pickier with our rooms than I am with others – and perhaps I should be 🙂 But I can’t wait until a few months have gone by and these two REALLY start cookin’ – and then everybody who heard our system at the show can come up for another listen if they get a chance (yes, you are all invited). Or, there is always next Fall at RMAF 2007!