I read everyone's comments wrt show conditions (especially acoustics) affecting the TT performance with great interest, but I have to admit I don't really understand how a room would affect the TT's actual performance. Are we saying that vibrations are fed back to the turntable that would not otherwise in another room???
...Throw in an unfamiliar room with iffy acoustics, poor power, ancillary electronics and speakers with which you may be unfamiliar (if you are sharing a room with other manufacturers) and it's easy to understand how even a SOTA turntable with well matched arm/cartridge might not achieve their potential... or even sound bad.
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I stayed for about five minutes and then moved on, the rep wouldn't play any of my music anyway. The table looked great but sounded marginal at best..OTOH,.I'm sure it was the room
Davey
What makes you so sure it had to be the room?
Turntable set up is both art and science. It takes time, ranging from days to weeks to optimize a vinyl set up. Throw in an unfamiliar room with iffy acoustics, poor power, ancillary electronics and speakers with which you may be unfamiliar (if you are sharing a room with other manufacturers) and it's easy to understand how even a SOTA turntable with well matched arm/cartridge might not achieve their potential... or even sound bad.
Hi
I try as much as possible to be diplomatic but let's be frank for a few posts we can then revert to being overly nice. if you price an item in the stratosphere... people please take a deep breath and then think 1 8 5 0 0 0 US Dollars .. A TT, something to turn an LP and make music ... ,It ought to overwhelm. it cannot be a ho-hum .. The room wasn't good enough the person presenting the equipment wasn't up to it ..etc.. it doesn't inspire confidence to part with let's not forget close to 200,000 US DOLLARS with a subpar presentation ... We have been committing in this thread and many others the sin of equating price with performance .. We are willing ourselves to think the Caliburn is indeed superior ..Is it? is it really? Based on what ? When you dominate head and shoulders in price you better dominate in performance? is it the case with the Caliburn? So far no one has come to the front and said so .. only conjectures to why it did not sound so great in shows .. Some other tables seem to have fared better in shows, same or similar ....
Hi
I try as much as possible to be diplomatic but let's be frank for a few posts we can then revert to being overly nice. if you price an item in the stratosphere... people please take a deep breath and then think 1 8 5 0 0 0 US Dollars .. A TT, something to turn an LP and make music ... ,It ought to overwhelm. it cannot be a ho-hum .. The room wasn't good enough the person presenting the equipment wasn't up to it ..etc.. it doesn't inspire confidence to part with let's not forget close to 200,000 US DOLLARS with a subpar presentation ... We have been committing in this thread and many others the sin of equating price with performance .. We are willing ourselves to think the Caliburn is indeed superior ..Is it? is it really? Based on what ? When you dominate head and shoulders in price you better dominate in performance? is it the case with the Caliburn? So far no one has come to the front and said so .. only conjectures to why it did not sound so great in shows .. Some other tables seem to have fared better in shows, same or similar ....
If a personor a company is producing any gear costing that much, said person must have the ability to judge the quality of the sound coming out of his/her gear. If you are asking me such an enormous amount of money it behooves you to provide me with a rationale when I am faced with the product. Else you allow me to forge doubts about your "audiophile chops" to paraphrase cjrrbw but also about your business acumen, something of importance when one considers that such purchase is unlikely to be a regular occurrence i-e a yearly affair ... I would like this company to be around when I need support at the very least, for repair, tuning, optimizing, updating since said performance may be surpassed by that of a much less dear gear... Since we, audiophiles, have proven to be a very tolerant and gullible lot, I can understand that we are expected to take a leap of faith from time to time, I know I have but the price tag make such a leap of faith more a quantum jump than a leap, with dangerous repercussions for mere mortals and that includes well-heeled audiophiles the other side of a billion worth.I don't think the rooms are the problem. I have set up a 11x12 room to sound fantastic at our Santa Cruz place, without any special treatments, windows behind the speakers and other verbotens notwithstanding.
Those setups at the hotels are expensive to rent and haul stuff around, a major undertaking just to get equipment in the room and working. Unfortunately, it would also take probably several days to a week to tune and optimize the systems to the room, time that the exhibitors often don't have.
That is unfortunate for the exhibitors, they have to rely on flash as much as substance.
On the other hand, if they don't have the roadies to make the stuff work in an expeditious schedule, one wonders as well about their general audiophile chops.
I read everyone's comments wrt show conditions (especially acoustics) affecting the TT performance with great interest, but I have to admit I don't really understand how a room would affect the TT's actual performance. Are we saying that vibrations are fed back to the turntable that would not otherwise in another room???
i don't think Jazdoc was referring to the ambient environment of the audio show room, or even floor feedback; i believe he was referring to the degree of tuning and fine adjustments (or lack thereof) that any tt can have at a show....and likely the degree of synergy of the supporting system.
the higher the potential resolution of any vinyl front end, tt, arm and cartridge, the more time and effort it takes to optimize it....and sometimes a very high resolution source that is 'off', is worse than a less capable source that is 'right'. i agree with Jazdoc that it can take days and weeks to really get things to sing sweetly.
personally i've listened to the Continuum Caliburn 5 or 6 times at shows. a couple of those times it did sound very, very good and i could understand what all the excitment was about. the other times it was all over the place.
I apologize, as I do not know your real name. That said, cjfrbw, you do not know just how correct you are with this. "Major undertaking" can be at times quite an understatement.Those setups at the hotels are expensive to rent and haul stuff around, a major undertaking just to get equipment in the room and working. Unfortunately, it would also take probably several days to a week to tune and optimize the systems to the room, time that the exhibitors often don't have.
There are shows, and then there are shows. The recent one in Melbourne was a typical one -- I didn't go to it but the reports indicated it was the usual fare in terms of SQ -- but we in the vicinity of Sydney have had slim pickings for decades now. The only relief was about 10 years ago, or thereabout; a special, all the stops out, showoff of how good audio could be using only the best of the best, set up by 3 distributors, taking turns to demonstrate. Even under those "ideal" conditions, meaning each system should have been fine tuned to the n'th degree, only 2 efforts came up to scratch: a vinyl rig did the Coal Train song brilliantly, the CD source was pretty lifeless. And the MBL with top of the line components, and the no. 1 ClearAudio TT for vinyl. They even had a female rep come over from MBL in Germany to make sure it was up to scratch. And it did a very fine job, enough to inspire me to get back into the audio game again ...Sad thing is these hyper expensive pieces of gear aren't going to be stocked at a local salon. So it NEEDS shows. To go through the expense of effort to go to show and then give a poor impression is tragic. I really felt bad for those guys.
Continuum is down
Returning to the OP.
Well I'm not sure where you get your information from but the US Continuum importer told me that the company is doing just fine, in business and building product. So I think that reports of issues with Continuum are greatly exaggerated and one should be very careful about spreading rumors.
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