Amir's RMAF Day 2 teaser

[Hi-FiGuy]

Clear case of Tube Envy

Hi guys. Another teaser for day 2. Best sound today was the Wilson room.

Neatest thing seen was these massive tubes:

Here is a close up:

Someone needs to educate me on what they are.

1. Happy to report that everyone read the #3 in my last report and took showers this morning. I say only 10% of the rooms smelled so bad you had to walk right out.

2. Whoever said manufacturers have been making brighter and brighter loudspeakers because older folks like us lose high frequencies was darn right. I have a headache the size of Manhattan from listing to nothing but high-pitched sound reproduction. I think the problem was that in all cases, the guy doing the demo has more white hair than I did . What happened to nice and mellow high frequencies?

3. Went to the Kii room again. Sadly nothing was fixed. The guy was there playing the same European tunes. Highs were sharp, vocals depressed and lispy. Michael said maybe the second row may sound better so I sat there too. It took a bit of the edge from high frequencies but that was it. These loudspeakers are just loud bookshelf speakers sorry to say. Power delivery is not a problem. The speakers are small and sound small. They said there are 12 settings on them to adjust for distance from the corners and such. Maybe someone else needs to mess with them. I don't know. I really feel bad about being so negative but for a speaker with so much potential, a very faulty experience was presented in my opinion.

4. What a relief it was to go to the Wilson room and a) hear digital instead of LP , and b) mellow sound with excellent bass. The two passive subs really helped there.

5. Reel to Reel is completely missing in action! I only saw one Studer there for decoration and that was it!!!

6. Went to the PS Audio room with YG loudspeakers. I highly recommend people instead go to the YG room itself to hear the smaller version sound better in that room. Mind you, the room sounded good but not reference quality like YG's own room.

7. I have shot 188 imaged for day one and 291 for day two . Heaven help me as I go through them all and clean them for uploading. I don't know how people do this kind of work for a living. Every room was pitch black. My new Canon 5D Mark III struggled at 3200 ISO to take these pictures. They are all 100 times less bright than what you see. Don't these companies want decent press for their work? Why have the dark gear in dark rooms???

8. Met with John Swanson and Alex and chatted for an hour about Regen....

9. I am too tired and going to sleep. Good night guys.

 

[DaveC]

@amir - anytime

@davec - if Amir is using his Canon then yes it has a function that may not combine different exposures but rather take a burst of shots at exposure/ f-stop intervals. It's called bracketing and it can be performed by most if not all DSLRs. AFAIK however it has to be manually set and is not a mode or scene selected.

Now you're making me look for my RX1 manual to see if it has that feature or not!

It's not HDR, which brackets then combines the pics when there is too much contrast. This is for low light shooting without a tripod and it works really well. The camera takes a series of pics, I think 4-7, then combines them to increase exposure, I'm not sure exactly what's going on with this feature, I'm just a casual photographer... It is nice because there is no disturbing flash and you can see the way the room is lit.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Dear Amir,

Thank you for your reporting!

Have you heard the MartinLogan Neoliths yet (demonstrated with EMM Labs, I think)?

 

[amirm]

I found some photos online of the PS audio/YG room. The only components I see visible for the front end are the Perfectwave memory player, preamp and Directstream DAC. But in the close up shot I noticed that the Directstream is on the USB setting. Since the memory player transport has no USB output, was there a general purpose computer hiding behind connected via USB and a REGEN? If so, did you get a chance to hear with REGEN, without, and comparison with I2S from the transport, and Ethernet via the bridge?

I would have been in heaven in that room comparing all 4 configurations. Hearing your subjective opinion of "what's best" out of the 4 would be priceless.

I ran back to their booth to ask but they were already packing everything. I asked Paul about the data path and he said it was: "Mac USB to zcat (?) to Regen to directstream." I took a picture of the Regen that was by then unplugged and sitting on a chair.

 

[Blizzard]

I ran back to their booth to ask but they were already packing everything. I asked Paul about the data path and he said it was: "Mac USB to zcat (?) to Regen to directstream." I took a picture of the Regen that was by then unplugged and sitting on a chair.

Did you ask if it sounded better than his transport connected via I2S? Or MacBook Ethernet to bridge?

 

[amirm]

Did you ask if it sounded better than his transport connected via I2S? Or MacBook Ethernet to bridge?

Not directly but I recall him answering as if it did make a positive difference to not having it in the same chain.

 

[Blizzard]

Not directly but I recall him answering as if it did make a positive difference to not having it in the same chain.

What I meant is MacBook-REGEN vs transport I2S into the Directstream. He can't possibly be telling people that a MacBook-REGEN combo will smoke his transport via I2S. Or his Ethernet bridge.

 

[Superdad]

What I meant is MacBook-REGEN vs transport I2S into the Directstream. He can't possibly be telling people that a MacBook-REGEN combo will smoke his transport via I2S. Or his Ethernet bridge.

Well Paul McGowan did buy it from me and demoed with it for all 3 days. It was a Mac mini BTW. I am going to be shipping him our Mac mini DC-conversion/Linear Fan Controller Kit (MMK) and JS-2 choke-filtered, dual-output, 5-7A linear power supply to upgrade his server with.

Ted Smith and John Swenson really hit it off too. They spent almost an hour in a corner swapping board-level secrets. They certainly are a sharp pair.

 

[Blizzard]

Well Paul McGowan did buy it from me and demoed with it for all 3 days. It was a Mac mini BTW. I am going to be shipping him our Mac mini DC-conversion/Linear Fan Controller Kit (MMK) and JS-2 choke-filtered, dual-output, 5-7A linear power supply to upgrade his server with.

Ted Smith and John Swenson really hit it off too. They spent almost an hour in a corner swapping board-level secrets. They certainly are a sharp pair.

View attachment 22559

Perhaps he wants to test it and see if he can pinpoint what it's doing so he can use the data to improve upon his USB interface.


Did you guys do a shootout between REGEN/USB and the I2S from his transport?

If he admits the REGEN/MacBook sounds better than the I2S out of his memory player, or Ethernet bridge publicly, I'll buy 10 of them.

 

[Blizzard]

Well Paul McGowan did buy it from me and demoed with it for all 3 days. It was a Mac mini BTW. I am going to be shipping him our Mac mini DC-conversion/Linear Fan Controller Kit (MMK) and JS-2 choke-filtered, dual-output, 5-7A linear power supply to upgrade his server with.

Ted Smith and John Swenson really hit it off too. They spent almost an hour in a corner swapping board-level secrets. They certainly are a sharp pair.

View attachment 22559

I see you got an solid endorsement from Paul on his blog. Congrats!

"The Uptone Regen, highly recommended for any DAC"


But then he says:

"I still think Bridge II outperforms even the best I have heard through USB."

And:


"USB is perhaps the worst of any of the formats – optical the best, if only it was glass and not TOSLINK – and Ethernet is probably the least intrusive, if you have a Bridge or something worthy to decode the Ethernet signals"

And:


"On a pure sound basis and without regard for available sources that can do more than stream CD quality, Glass is the best, followed by HDMI, XLR and RCA. USB falls lowest on the list just from this single standpoint because of noise issues."


So I wonder if USB/REGEN takes over 5th place skipping USB to 6th, or if it takes over RCA's position at 4th?