Capital AudioFest 2024

[tony22]

Capital AudioFest 2024 Show Wrap-Up by Ron

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Great reports, Ron. To your last point, while I agree CAF is a fun show of a good size, I must admit that I think the Florida Expo in the last couple of years may have eclipsed it in the “great size, great fun” category. If you haven’t been to it yet, I encourage you to give it a try.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Great reports, Ron. To your last point, while I agree CAF is a fun show of a good size, I must admit that I think the Florida Expo in the last couple of years may have eclipsed it in the “great size, great fun” category. If you haven’t been to it yet, I encourage you to give it a try.

Thank you for this suggestion!

 

[Ron Resnick]

For me, the Joe Block Trio was my highlight of the show. Superb musicianship. Many thanks to Doug White for making it happen.

It was nice to see you again in person, Joe!

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron, I saw you in the tiny Soundlab room. You were so busy I just waived from afar.

I'm so sorry I was oblivious! Shoulder check me next time!

I agree about the Kharma. They were owned by a customer of Evolution 20\20 Audio. Brand new out of the box. The owner was hovering about.

Yes, I chatted with him extensively.

A word about Soundlab. They should be paired with an OTL. Preferably an Atma-sphere MA2.

I know that's an extremely common legacy pairing. But I would not be so dogmatic as to derail myself from trying other tube amplifiers.

I can imagine CAT triode amps doing a wonderful wonderful job.

I also took a selfie with Michael Fremer.

Fun!

 

[unboxed]

Capital AudioFest 2024 Show Wrap-Up by Ron

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Ron,
Thank you for your report and especially the excellent comments on Sound Labs. Without having been at the show, I will offer my thoughts that the lack of visceral impact you noted was probably due to insufficient power. Sound Lab impedance rises quite high at lower frequencies. I find my SL Majestic 545PX quite visceral paired with VAC Essence 80 iQ monoblocs at 85WPC. I would like even more power but weight constraints limit me. SLs are frequently paired with raw muscle from Pass Labs. Hopefully you will be able to hear that combination or other more powerful pairings sometime. Nevertheless, big props to Linear Tube Audio for building some of the most musical equipment I have ever heard. I had a Z10 integrated on other speakers and it was extremely engaging. I am enjoying their Aero DAC now.

 

[godofwealth]

Since I own the SL model exhibited at the show, I can fully relate to Ron’s reaction and find it quite understandable. Electrostatic loudspeakers, even the ones of this gargantuan size, will not deliver visceral impact of the type that multi-driver cone loudspeaker lovers crave. The reasons are complex. Some is undoubtedly due to the heavy and slow reaction time of large woofer cones. When you hear large subwoofers, their bass seems impressive, but in my experience that always comes at a cost of sluggishness. Large dynamic speakers sound exactly like that to my ears in the bass. They sound ponderous. Some of it is due to highly nonlinear phase response of large cone loudspeakers.

Large electrostatics like SL have very uniform bass thanks to Roger West’s innovative distributed resonance. They will never sound visceral in this sense. Also electrostatic loudspeakers load a room very differently. There’s almost no sound in the lateral plane. That eliminates bass anomalies that plague large multi-driver dynamic designs.

Here’s a measurement of the Wilson XVX Chronosonic loudspeaker in Mike Fremer’s listening room, as measured by John Atkinson for a review in Stereophile. You can plainly see that the entire bass region is quite exaggerated. If you hear the XVX in Fremer’s room, you will invariably develop a distorted sense of what bass is supposed to sound like. The SL’s in that very room, I would conjecture, would measure far flatter in the bass. Of course, Fremer might not like flat bass response, preferring this huge thumping bass response. Most audiophiles would do likewise. You have to recalibrate your ears. Live music will help. Bass in concert halls does not sound like subwoofer thumping bass. The colored curves below show three different loudspeakers measured in Fremer’s room all reacting the same way. It’s a fundamental problem for dynamic multi-driver cone loudspeakers that exaggerate the bass.

 

[Audiohertz2]

Many panel lovers of so called “fast Bass” is really referring to their fast artificial decay on bass notes , real bass in the real world carries a natural decay which is best captured , IMO , on dynamic box speakers, thumping poor designs not withstanding ..

 

[LL21]

Personally, I do find that the wholeness of music and the depth of a note can be very well reproduced by cones. The speed is not always there but the depth of note is very satisfying. Meanwhile I have found some electrostats often have wonderful alacrity but not always that full depth of note.

Specifically on deep propulsive bass, I have not heard much panel deep bass but could well imagine your observations would match my own higher up in the spectrum.

 

[Audiohertz2]

Soundlabs In room bass response ...!

 

[LL21]

Soundlabs In room bass response ...!

Fascinating! I imagine the simple frequency measurement does not reflect the bass qualities of cone vs panel in the room?

 

[Joe Whip]

It was nice to see you again in person, Joe!

Likewise Ron.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Capital AudioFest 2024 Show Wrap-Up by Ron

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In my rapid, stream of consciousness reporting, I forgot to include Doug White's room, The Voice That Is, as one of my favorite rooms, including Tidal loudspeakers and Dohmann Helix turntable.

 

[LL21]

Capital AudioFest 2024 Show Wrap-Up by Ron

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Great work as always Ron! A lot of hard work! I found your comments about electrostatics, coporeal body/physicality and SL interesting. See my post 88.

I have never heard the big Kharmas and will look out for those. Was AG showing their Trios?

 

[godofwealth]

Many panel lovers of so called “fast Bass” is really referring to their fast artificial decay on bass notes , real bass in the real world carries a natural decay which is best captured , IMO , on dynamic box speakers, thumping poor designs not withstanding ..

As always, everyone is entitled to their opinions. The vast majority of audiophiles listen to cones in boxes, just as the vast majority of folks drive internal combustion engines and pay $6/$7 a gallon for gas in California. One cannot change the world. Either you understand the science behind electrostatics (or EVs) and see the logic behind linear transducers or you stick to your views that there’s only one way to design loudspeakers ( or cars).

 

[Audiohertz2]

Agree all are entitled ..

I do Understand the science very well hence my opinion and comments , i also choose not to destroy lives and the planet by driving superior ICE powered cars..

So no there is no such thing as fast bass from panels the perception of speed comes from higher frequencies, bad cones in boxes sound bad like badly designed plasticky sounding ESL ..!

 

[Audiohertz2]

Fascinating! I imagine the simple frequency measurement does not reflect the bass qualities of cone vs panel in the room?

No differently than one of an XVX , what your ears perceive , likes and dislikes cannot be determined from measurements, that comes only from a careful study of what measurement reflects your tastes or not ..

Panel speakers with powerful bass will have an in room response very similar to what is shown as much as 15-20 db higher in the lows vs center frequency ..

To avoid a thin bright sound there is no flat bass ..!

 

[godofwealth]

The Quad ESL 63 was measured 35 years ago by Stereophile. In every respect it remains superior to almost every loudspeaker designed today. It’s much flatter in frequency response and it’s phase linear. Its distortion and impulse response are so good that microphone makers like Bruel and Kjaer used it to calibrate their microphones. Quads were tested on the assembly line by having the test model cancel the square waves played back on a calibrated model. As I said, either you understand the science behind acoustics and see why this brilliant design is still hard to match, or you stick to dogma. I like to see Stereophile report on these measurements for cone loudspeakers. John Atkinson never does because he knows what they will show.

Quad ESL-63 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 2: Measurements (from June 1989, Vol.12 No.6) As I had dragged my motley collection of test equipment (footnote 1) over to Larry Archibald's listening room to carry out a set of measurements on the Mirage M1 loudspeaker he has reviewed elsewhere in this issue, I thought it might be a...

www.stereophile.com

 

[Audiohertz2]

Excellent measurements for sure , a bit cherry picked ..

Now , are we talking Quads or SL’s , i owned 57 singular and double stacked, also 63 , ultimately preferred 63 with subs designed specifically for them both had short comings a bit much IMO, so i moved on but do understand what they bring to the table ..

BTW said measurements were done on Thiel loudspeakers look it up , as well as others, JA changed measurements policies to protect the innocent like you did by not including waterfall plots showing fast decay ringing and noise ..!

Not to mention the impedance curves and phase ..!

Come now lets keep it real, glass houses aside ...

 

[respected_ent]

Any video showcasing the sound of the new Von Schweikert VR-30 speakers?

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...no video, but I spent five hours in there, and really like the sound. I sat and stood all over the room, listened to all kinds of music at various levels. Feels like the next logical and emotional choice for me.