Photo Highlights Of RMAF 2011

[Lee]

Great pictures Steve. I had meant to comment earlier but have been working around the clock on a huge consulting project.

I would say the EAR/Marten, ARC Ref 250/Vandy 7, Absoluta/Ray Davone, and Magico Q1 rooms sounded among the best in my listening this year.

I would also say that the CanJam sound on the better headphones was just as good. The new Stax 009 and Audeze LCD3 were spectacular.

 

[Lee]

Also, Gary did a comparison of the Original UK Island Tea for Tillerman versus the new QRP and I agreed that the Island was a bit better in warmth.

 

[naturephoto1]

Part of the problem with all of the comparisons of each pressing and version of the albums I am sure in all likelihood is the sound for track to track and side to side for the vinyl pressings. Many that have made comparisons, like Tom Port of Better Records have found this to be the case for all of their comparison testing to find what is the best copies.

Rich

 

[Lee]

I should add that the Peachtree Audio room was sounding great in spite of the B&W speakers employed. I generally hate B&W speakers and find them to be bright, hard or both. The tubes in the Grand Pre must have a good synergy there.

 

[amirm]

Interesting read from John Atkinson on the PF soon to be release, although 106 dB is tame. For about 3 hours last Saturday I demo'ed the same Wisdom speakers that Amir has in his showroom and we were hitting peaks of 138 dB without breaking a sweat. One day I hope to visit your showroom, Amir. I have the WYWH Immersion box on pre-order.

The Wisdom subs are quite good and we have measured them going down to 16 Hz at pretty high SPLs. Alas, the rest of the speakers didn't turn out so hot. They use traditional bass drivers to get down to low frequencies and we could never get the ribbons and those speakers to integrate. We would have odd artifact such as moving your head a few inches forward and back and hearing completely different sound! Clearly there was some destructive interference going on. Added to that was the required Audyssey Pro which almost always added more harm than good. Last nail in the coffin was amplifiers which were based on ICE modules and never sounded quite right.

After more than a year of messing with them to get them to perform, and most of the time not playing them because they underperformed the much cheaper JBLs next to them, we took them out of our showroom and no longer carry the line.

I am taking the subs home though and putting them in my new theater . We have the custom curves for that so I plan to drive them with JBL Synthesis processor.

 

[Steve williams]

Wow Amir

I am surprised

 

[amirm]

It was a sad moment for us too, having invested so much energy and dollars to do it. I had Gary come over months ago as he also uses planar speakers. And he also shook his head on they worked. Gary uses the planers as a mid-range in his speakers so he doesn't run into some of the problems here.

For a while we had hopes of using the JBL Synthesis, it just turned out to be too much work, too late.

We are pumped though about the next rev of our showroom as we work with Keith Yates to break some new ground yet again. More on this as it evolves . For now the JBL system is doing an incredible job. It was this superlative performance that shone a poor light on Wisdom. On some material the Wisdoms sounded great with really tall and wide soundstage. But consistency is important here as you can't control what source is being played.

I think the above is a key issue here with speakers. It is easy to make a speaker sound good some of the time with some content. The trick is to make sure it never falls apart in any situation or any content. This is where I think good science of speaker design gets us.

 

[microstrip]

(...) On some material the Wisdoms sounded great with really tall and wide soundstage. But consistency is important here as you can't control what source is being played.

I think the above is a key issue here with speakers. It is easy to make a speaker sound good some of the time with some content. The trick is to make sure it never falls apart in any situation or any content. This is where I think good science of speaker design gets us.

Amir,
Very true, but not only with speakers - consistency must be a system approach. The big issue is that usually to get consistency people have to make compromises and you do not manage to optimize the system for all contents.

 

[Ron Party]

Thanks for your observations, Amir. While they hit the high dBs effortlessly as I posted I also found that the inwall Wisdoms had no soundstage depth, i.e., a very 2 dimensional soundstage. I am going to demo the freestanding Wisdoms this afternoon.

Amir, to which model JBL speakers are you referring?

 

[garylkoh]

It was a sad moment for us too, having invested so much energy and dollars to do it. I had Gary come over months ago as he also uses planar speakers. And he also shook his head on they worked. Gary uses the planers as a mid-range in his speakers so he doesn't run into some of the problems here.

For a while we had hopes of using the JBL Synthesis, it just turned out to be too much work, too late.

We are pumped though about the next rev of our showroom as we work with Keith Yates to break some new ground yet again. More on this as it evolves . For now the JBL system is doing an incredible job. It was this superlative performance that shone a poor light on Wisdom. On some material the Wisdoms sounded great with really tall and wide soundstage. But consistency is important here as you can't control what source is being played.

I think the above is a key issue here with speakers. It is easy to make a speaker sound good some of the time with some content. The trick is to make sure it never falls apart in any situation or any content. This is where I think good science of speaker design gets us.

Amir, I am truly sorry to read this. I thought that they could do it eventually, and I recall that you were willing to work with them to do it. The drivers themselves are great. David Graebner is also the designer of the midrange ribbon I use, and he solved many of the problems of the previous ribbons with his current designs. In particular, power handling capabilities.

 

[amirm]

Gary, there is no question that David is very talented when it comes to ribbon speaker design. It is just that the company as a whole seems to want to sell a lot more than that (amps, EQ, etc) and their efforts there, are less successful.

Ron, I would be interested to hear your observations on the free standing speakers. I heard the prototypes at CES and was disappointed that it did not solve the fidelity issues I have had with this line. I had a lot of hopes though as with elimination of the cone drivers, i thought they had solved the problem. I have to think the eq still has something to do with it but not enough time to be sure. I am also hoping that the prototype was not representative of production product.

 

[amirm]

Amir, to which model JBL speakers are you referring?

The ones that were always there. We had two completely parallel (20-channel) audio systems in the showroom. Here is the picture:

They are the SAM2LF and SAM1HF drivers and horn element respectively.

 

[jtinn]

Wow, JTinn you are going to be very popular with the rack manufacturer's, LOL

Please elaborate a little as to what the A10-U8 Component Control Systems are and how they work..

If you visit http://www.wavekinetics.com all the information is available. If you have any questions, let me know.

I would be more informative, but I do not necessarily think it is proper for me to do so in the forum.

 

[jtinn]

It would interesting and I believe the micromini one would give it a noble run but bear in mind the Q1 is $25K a ten fold increase in price over the micromini one

Steve, what does retail price have to do with it?

 

[DaveyF]

Thank You Jonathan, very interesting product.

 

[KeithR]

You know it's funny---Vandersteen wins a lot of these shows, yet I don't have a single audiophile friend who owns them.

Perhaps there are more hidden Vandy guys than those of the Wilson, B&W, Magico crowd.

 

[MylesBAstor]

You know it's funny---Vandersteen wins a lot of these shows, yet I don't have a single audiophile friend who owns them.

Perhaps there are more hidden Vandy guys than those of the Wilson, B&W, Magico crowd.

So does Joseph Audio and I don't know anyone who owns them But Jeff been in business for what, 15-20 years. Someone must be buying them; maybe music lovers, not audiophiles As a matter of fact, Joseph often sounds good at shows and think they're one speaker that kinda flies under the radar

 

[amirm]

You know it's funny---Vandersteen wins a lot of these shows, yet I don't have a single audiophile friend who owns them.

Perhaps there are more hidden Vandy guys than those of the Wilson, B&W, Magico crowd.

I had a friend that bought one about 15 or 20 years ago .

 

[flez007]

After my better-than-expected experience with the Odyssey Khartago power amp, and a great conversation with Klaus Bunge, I ended up buying this same amp at the show, brought it with me and after a couple of days re-tunning my system, this Symphonic Line amp has a great story to tell!

 

[Steve williams]

I can't see the photo Fernando but congrats on that