Join Date: Mar 2016
Location: Nashville, TN.
Posts: 57
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Venere
Thanks for all the pics, but would also love to hear folks opinions/reviews of the products and the show in general. This was my first audio show and I think I picked a good one. All the brands I've read about for years but never heard were there. I met many legends of the industry in person (special mention to Frank VanAlstine who made the shuttle trip from airport to hotel a memorable experience). Great attendance, which is good for the industry but makes visiting 111 rooms on eight different floors a bit tricky. Used the stairs a LOT. Also, glad i got there thursday. Could see some of the exhibitors setting up thursday night and friday morning which was interesting. And Friday was by far the least crowded day. Favorite rooms in no particular order were MBL ( as it should be for roughly a half million dollars), Wilson Alexx (no surprise there I suppose), both large Sonus Faber rooms ( the Lillium is amazing in every possible way), Naim/Dynaudio, Raidho, Volti horns (incredible on orchestral music, now I fully understand how people get hooked on horns), Scaena line array (BIG system, HUGE sound), and KEF ( the LS50 is by a wide margin the best speaker for the money I've ever heard). The only room I heard that sounded truly bad to my ears was Gauder Akustik. There was treble, treble, and more treble and not much else. Sounded like a really extended ribbon tweeter connected to a clock radio for the bass. Anyway, after a while (like the third day) you sort of just lose your bearings on what sounds right and it all just blends into a sonic stew. My general conclusions were this: there is a huge diversity of different "flavors" of sound available, and the more of them you hear the more you realize its less about right and wrong and more about which flavor you prefer. The various live performances amply displayed the fact that even with all these megabuck systems available for comparison none of them could recreate the sheer sonic energy of a live band. They are all just a facsimile of the original. So you pick the flavor you enjoy the most and run with it. For me its clearly on the slightly warm side of neutral. Lastly, after one hundred rooms the other obvious conclusion was that you can't get big sound in a small room. The illusion of live music works best in a large room where the "image" is to scale. You can't trick your ears into believing there is an orchestra in your living room unless you have a REALLY large living room. Thats why the big systems in the big rooms like MBL, Wilson, and Sonus Faber sounded so amazing and likelike and different from what most of us are accustomed to (MasterLu and Apexorca nothwithstanding). None of the smaller room (including the amazing Raidhos, which were just begging for a larger room IMHO) could create that same magic. So get a speaker that fits your room both sonically and spatially. Too big or too small for the room is a fundamental mistake that no tweaking can overcome. These are all just my opinions as your humble show-reporter (Stereophile and Absolute Sound, I am available for next year at a very reasonable fee....) and would be happy to hear other opinions or views on the show. I had a great time and will use the experience as a guide for many future purchases. If you've never gone to one of these shows consider this a very strong recommendation for next yeat's AXPONA.
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I'm a little late to this discussion but for what it's worth I agree with your observations. The Raidho equipment (including the Aavik electronics) sounded just fine and made me hanker for a pair of XT3s. I was impressed by the little integrated Aavik (although not by its price) as well.
The MBL room was big fun. The sonic presentation was of a quality you'd imagine of the highest resolution, large scale PA system and produced the biggest sound I heard at the show seconded only by the Paragon (Alexx) room. Easy to overlook in the MBL "palace" was the unique and high performance reel to reel tape recorder used as a source for many of the MBL demos. Greg Beron's UHA Tascam based (very loosely) half track has to b one of the quietest tape machines I've ever heard. Excellent sound and appearance from this virtually hand built machine.
For pure balance of sound that catered to my tastes, I thought the Sonus Faber 12th floor room was one of the sweetest sounding and smoothest of the show. We can easily agree on that.
I forgot, unfortunately, to audition in the KEF room as I was very interested in hearing the Blades. One of the major oversights on my part, and it was only after I left that I realized I hadn't stopped in to hear them. I have a lot of respect fro KEF's engineering and have owned their products in the past. I guess it leaves me something to look forward to.
I'm just skimming here, not having mentioned rooms that I eagerly anticipated but were disappointments for one reason or another (not always attributable to the products), nor have I remotely mentioned everything I liked or thought was really promising (Vapor's speakers for instance). There was a lot to take in and not as much time as I would have liked. I ran into a lot of old friends and seeing them was as much or more fun than getting to all the rooms, but being social absorbed time that ate into my allocation.
Also wholeheartedly agree that a lot of demos used material that was of no interest to me musically speaking. I won't get into the whys and wherefores of that, but it is a matter of interest to me that exhibitors might go to all the trouble to come to a show without the broadest possible selection of high quality musical material that might cater to all tastes. Not a lick of Alison Krauss anywhere. C'mon! By exception, MBL had some of the best material in the building.....and the press of warm bodies in their room attested to that.
I had a great time but wouldn't necessarily base my buying decisions on what I heard and saw there, although the show definitely added another data point on several items for me. I learned a lot too!
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