T.H.E. Show 2022 Long Beach
- Thread starter chuck
- Start date
I enjoyed the Verity/Vitus, Graham/Moonriver, and DeVore rooms. Also the Boenicke/Nagra was very musical if a bit different experience because the speakers are so small!
fwiw, the attendance seemed pretty poor - although this was the first show I've been to where 25-30% of the audiophiles were *under* the age of 50.
Zingali, Pear, Topwing, JMF.
Ultimately the room sound was too warm. I'd like to know if it was the speakers or the electronics/TT or the cables causing the excessive warmth because otherwise it was a nice sound. The blue Topwing wasn't warm when I had one.
Alma room 1. I wish I could remember what this stuff was... Zenmini, Innuous, but what were the speakers?
This room wins my best simple, "low cost" system award for the show. Great tonality, detail, spacious sound with big scale relative to the speakers' size. Also, the power conditioner seems to be one of the few good ones I've encountered.
In general, props to Alma. All Alma rooms were well executed.
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Alma room 2. Boenicke, Nagra, MSB, Innuous.
Immediately upon walking in the room, you're wowed by the big sound emanating from the small Boenickes. Another very nice sounding room. Ultimately, I'm not sure I'm sold on the multi-driver integration in such a small cabinet. But I'm intrigued enough to want to hear the bigger models at some point.
PBN, Voss Audio, Garrard 401, cable smorgasbord.
Easy to listen to. A bit smooth and laid back for my tastes overall. This is the second time I've heard Voss now. I am piecing together an impression that it's pretty good stuff.
Borresen, Aavik, Ansuz.
Liked the sound in this room generally. The sound stage was perplexing at times, though. The sound floated up by the ceiling somehow at times. But I think Borresen speakers were successful in improving upon Raidho. Aavik and Ansuz seem quite good to me. Would have preferred full range speakers in this room.
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Devore, Qualitron.
Other WBFers liked the room, but I didn't care for it. I feel the Devores had a bit of hardness to their sound. I couldn't stay engaged.
Nagra, Kuzma, IQN.
Surprise, surprise. This was my best in show room. Even though the IQN speakers were working too hard in this room, and producing a bit of bass distortion, there was just so much to like here. The Stabi R, at $10,900 MSRP, is superb. It easily outclassed the Nagra tube DAC. The Stabi R had a Dynavector XV-1s mounted to a 4 point. And when I finally convinced the Common Wave "digital guy" rep to switch from the DAC to vinyl, I looked back at him after a couple songs as if to say "come on!". He nodded and said, "Yes, it is better." With that said, the Nagra Classic amps and preamp were in at least a couple rooms which all sounded good and I'm sure there's a correlation there. I also want to hear larger IQN speakers now. They don't get have a 3-way model but supposedly that's in the works.
Also, props to common wave for having good music on hand. The Alternate Blues was great. I took the picture to remind myself to make sure I have it at home.
Infigo.
Nice stuff! This is one of those supposed Class A high wattage amps that don't get hot via some sort of dynamic biasing scheme. Overall, it was a pleasing and musical sound but too warm for my preferences.
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Verity, Thrax, Vitus.
A good sounding room. It didn't quite win me over in the end. I just couldn't quite connect with it. I heard from WBFers that the other Verity / Vitus room with smaller speakers actually sounded better. I didn't get to hear it because the guy locked himself out of the room in the afternoon. But I'd like to hear Verity on Vitus. I'm suspecting the Thrax 300b behemoths are not up to the Vitus level for my preferences.
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