Doctor's Orders-Part Two-The New Listening Room Of Steve Williams

This is so interesting and helpful to me. I'm in the planning and selecting stages of building my final stand and I would like to do the things necessary to get this part right, the things that you don't see or think about but can make a huge difference in sound quality. Thank you.
I love this site and forum. I visit often, I just don't have much to offer but I sure appreciate all of the information and opinions and especially following everyone's journey in this hobby (my wife says habit). Is there a perfect room size dimensions? Again, Thanks. Tra
 
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I've said here so many times before that one of the most fun things in this hobby for me is being able to meet WBF members and spend some meaningful time together where we can sitt down and listen to music together and get to know one another. Today was no exception as I got to put the faces with the names of members Mad Floyd and Al M. I had the pleasure of meeting both at the recent THE Show 2024 in Costa Mesa and was pleased to hear that they were staying on for a few more days to visit with Ron and Jeffrey_T. They arranged to drive down from LA today to spend the day with me and we had a blast. I always learn from meeting with other audiophiles as well as discovering new music. Suffice it to say it was a fun day . Both Ian and Al have such great knowledge about all things music that it was sad to have the day end.

Thank you Al and Ian for taking the time. I enjoyed every minute of it and look forward to doing it again. It is great sharing such a common bond


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Thank you, Steve, for the wonderful time we were able to spend with you today! I also enjoyed every minute of it.

You have great and emotionally engaging sound. Natural sound from all three sources, streaming, vinyl and tape. I may write up more detailed impressions later.
 
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What a pleasure it was to visit Steve, hangout and listen to his wonderfully engaging system! Coming from THE Show it was a breath of fresh air to experience such a non-hifi sound that one can listen to for hours without fatigue.

It’s always a pleasure to hear Wilsons setup so well and this is my first time hearing them driven by SETs, let alone Lamm ML3s!

Steve, your room is an exquisite and intimate escape pod where the ambiance matches the quality of the sound. Both Al and I were very impressed with your digital streaming and our conversation breaks were equally enjoyable.

Thanks for being such a gracious host!
 
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safe travels home guys.
 
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Here are some impressions on the sonics.

Steve's system beguiled with a warm, yet transparent and incredibly colorful presentation. The saturated colors in all their shadings were reminiscent of live music, and they had that character also from digital streaming. The streaming through Taiko switches and Taiko Extreme, as well as Lampizator Horizon, was just amazing. Natural sound, without anything remotely synthetic in the timbres.

There was great detail on everything, but never with any exaggerated emphasis; detail was naturally flowing instead.

Voices sounded beautiful. You were drawn into them emotionally, as they were presented with great expressiveness in inflection and phrasing, also helped by very good micro-dynamics. Liberty by Anette Askvik was perfection (like most of the music we listened to, from streaming).

Violin tone on Hilary Hahn playing Ysaye sonatas was to die for. When we streamed Bruckner Symphony 3 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Barenboim conducting, there was gorgeous string tone on orchestral violins, very velvety. There was very good separation of instruments, and macro-dynamics were good as well, quite remarkable given that those large Wilsons are driven by only 32 W/ch Lamm SETs. Again, all the colors and the emotional sweep of the music were conveyed very well, and the presentation drew me in.

Transients on the system were sometimes slightly on the softer side, but this blended beautifully with the lush tone, which made it really work for me. I prefer that to tilting of transients towards an exaggerated harder side.

Scheherazade (Reiner, CSO) on vinyl sounded very good as well. On tape we heard Beethoven piano trios op. 70/1 and 2. It was an Ed Pong tape, again wonderful tone.

The room designer did a fabulous job with creating a space where those large speakers really sing despite the relatively compact room dimensions. On all music the sound was very open, despite the somewhat dampened acoustics. Coherence of sound was amazing, despite the listening seat being very close to the speakers (you sit within the equilateral triangle resulting from the distance between the speakers). Coherence was also maintained on the higher chair behind the main listening chair, belying the notion that the speakers need to be adjusted to the height of the listener.

The soundstage was incredibly immersive, to my ears another highlight of the sound. Due to the speaker position right against the front wall there was not much spatial depth, but this was of little importance given the immersive nature of the soundstage.

The bass could be a little thick at times; for rock and jazz this would work less well for my preferences. Yet we listened most of the time to classical and to voices, and I loved it. I enjoyed every minute of it!

Well done with your system and room, Steve!
 
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Thanks for the kind words Al. It was a fun day meeting you and Ian. It has been a lengthy journey taming that room and making my Lamm Signature electronics work in the room and with those speakers. So yes some of the dynamics had to be tamed for the size of the room and the depth of sound stage is unquestionably not as deep as most which I have compensated for with the immersive effect coming from my use of Center Stage footers under all electronics as well as speakers. It habeen truly a long journey but all I do now is listen to music. Your comment about imaging sitting behind and above the chair I also thought was spot on. People have said that there is no way to meddle with the Wilson algorithm by raising the speakers without changing the sound. I have clearly proved that to be wrong

For me now it’s finally all about and only about the music. I appreciate your feed back which corroborated all of my endeavors. It has taken a lot of years to get to this place
 
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Members have been reaching out to me as to how I was streaming. Al was correct to mention that the server was the Taiko Extreme (soon to be Olympus/IO) but I was not using Roon as many were thinking. Rather as always I continue to prefer by a wide margin Taiko XDMS-NSM and that was what Al was hearing. XDMS is still in it's alpha infancy but for my ears I very much prefer it over Roon
 
Steve, thanks for a very enjoyable repeat visit to your listening room. The new Horizon engraved with your name along with the new Olympus (after it arrives!) should be a great combination. Looking forward to hearing those components in your always great sounding system.
PS: Looking forward to your visit in August for the ELO concert!
Jerry
 
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Hi Jerry....it was fun catching up on everything good with you. I cant tell you how much I am looking forward to that ELO concert. I dug out some memorabilia and I can tell you that the first time I saw them was at an early age when I was still living in Toronto. The records show that I saw them April 4 1977 at Maple Leaf Gardens and I was even able to find the set they performed that night. I will never forget that concert...For those who might even be remotely interested here is that set

Screenshot 2024-06-16 at 9.04.47 PM.png
 
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steve williams said:
Hi Jerry....it was fun catching up on everything good with you. I cant tell you how much I am looking forward to that ELO concert. I dug out some memorabilia and I can tell you that the first time I saw them was at an early age when I was still living in Toronto. The records show that I saw them April 4 1977 at Maple Leaf Gardens and I was even able to find the set they performed that night. I will never forget that concert...For those who might even be remotely interested here is that set

View attachment 132710
Click to expand...
What a perfect set list, opening with Fire on High was a brave move, my favorite ELO tune!
 
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Al M. said:
Here are some impressions on the sonics.

Steve's system beguiled with a warm, yet transparent and incredibly colorful presentation. The saturated colors in all their shadings were reminiscent of live music, and they had that character also from digital streaming. The streaming through Taiko switches and Taiko Extreme, as well as Lampizator Horizon, was just amazing. Natural sound, without anything remotely synthetic in the timbres.

There was great detail on everything, but never with any exaggerated emphasis; detail was naturally flowing instead.

Voices sounded beautiful. You were drawn into them emotionally, as they were presented with great expressiveness in inflection and phrasing, also helped by very good micro-dynamics. Liberty by Anette Askvik was perfection (like most of the music we listened to, from streaming).

Violin tone on Hilary Hahn playing Ysaye sonatas was to die for. When we streamed Bruckner Symphony 3 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Barenboim conducting, there was gorgeous string tone on orchestral violins, very velvety. There was very good separation of instruments, and macro-dynamics were good as well, quite remarkable given that those large Wilsons are driven by only 32 W/ch Lamm SETs. Again, all the colors and the emotional sweep of the music were conveyed very well, and the presentation drew me in.

Transients on the system were sometimes slightly on the softer side, but this blended beautifully with the lush tone, which made it really work for me. I prefer that to tilting of transients towards an exaggerated harder side.

Scheherazade (Reiner, CSO) on vinyl sounded very good as well. On tape we heard Beethoven piano trios op. 70/1 and 2. It was an Ed Pong tape, again wonderful tone.

The room designer did a fabulous job with creating a space where those large speakers really sing despite the relatively compact room dimensions. On all music the sound was very open, despite the somewhat dampened acoustics. Coherence of sound was amazing, despite the listening seat being very close to the speakers (you sit within the equilateral triangle resulting from the distance between the speakers). Coherence was also maintained on the higher chair behind the main listening chair, belying the notion that the speakers need to be adjusted to the height of the listener.

The soundstage was incredibly immersive, to my ears another highlight of the sound. Due to the speaker position right against the front wall there was not much spatial depth, but this was of little importance given the immersive nature of the soundstage.

The bass could be a little thick at times; for rock and jazz this would work less well for my preferences. Yet we listened most of the time to classical and to voices, and I loved it. I enjoyed every minute of it!

Well done with your system and room, Steve!
Click to expand...
I agree with all this with the exception of the bass being to thick, never happened utter nonsense! ;)
 
It's been a long time since I posted anything new in my blog....here is the latest

The End Of A 35 Year Journey ---Zellaton The Ultra Frontier

It was a long time ago in a Galaxy far away when my audiophile journey began. Ive been in this hobby now for probably more years than the age of most readers of this thread. Over the years I have owned many, many different speakers but about 35 years ago I developed a fixation for Wilson Audio...
whatsbestforum.com whatsbestforum.com
 
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Time to start a new thread/blog or?

This is a significant change.

Tom
 
Big congrats Steve and as it goes - the better is the enemy of the good....
These guys just know their craft.
 
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It's been a while but the end of the tunnel is getting close. Loaner pair of Zellaton Plural Evo arrive in LA on Wed and hopefully hit my house on Thursday but certainly by the end of this week. I'm looking forward to this new era of sound
 
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The present state of my room since February 1/2025

Maybe I should call this Doctor's Orders Part 2.5-The Newest Listening Of Steve Williams-INTERMEZZO-

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Those Zellatons should slip right in very nicely
 
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