Rmaf 2017

[For The Love of Music]

For my first audio show, I was able to see a lot of gear you read about and more importantly hear what the systems can do. Also, as a business owner, I enjoyed meeting owners and head designers of many companies - all who where approachable, friendly and passionate.

Yes, the setups may not of had the ideal space in a lot of rooms, but the companies that were doing A/B comparisons either as a presentation or those that did when asked allowed you to hear the systems capability - this to me was a large value of the show.

Nordost stood out taking you through the line and themed their attitude as “performance over price point”, meaning if it does not sound better they don’t do it. Their distribution, ground isolation, conditioning system and cables are a no brainer, we all heard this with no doubt and this interaction was what to me makes a show, and something that should be considered if Ivan and crew does Denver.

One only negative thing the show did to me a few times was make me reconsider what I have just done on the upgrade path, but several people, including the owner of HRS assured me I’ve assembled a great system, so in short do your research, get to a show if possible and know much like your wife that theres always better, equal to and worse but at some point make the decision and work on being happy!

I never thought I would be on a forum, let alone tell my wife I’m going to Denver to meet people from the internet, but glad I was able to meet the guys in the dinner photo, along with others on the forum. We all were able to get along and share many views.

Yes, I would go again and considering Munich.

[For The Love of Music]

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[For The Love of Music]

For curiosity and what’s it worth, I just pulled up the 2017 rates, and back to an earlier comment I made. Scoring a room(s) now allows you the best platform to meet your objective. Case in point was Tidal, first I came across them with Marc taking the lead and even at low volumes you heard magic, albeit $500K, but they may of benefited more with a larger room, however, the representative was informative and I am sure after speaking with him he knew how to use his time following a plan. (System pictures posted within this strip by other members)

While I am in a different industry all together, I have put on several shows, stumbling through the experience factor at the onset that just made for a $30K good ‘ole boy party, (high level statement; you cannot confuse business with friendships unless you want to pay), after this I quickly learned you really need to know your market and one order can pay for the show. So its important to know what you want to get out of the show, the objective and compare to a budget, and implement a follow up plan and above all else, be genuine, helpful, fair and informative - I do see a lot of opportunity in this field, despite it being small and a lot of items can be expensive much like automobile makes and models. In short, like an audio purchase, break it all down - as always, I am here to help.

Enjoy Your Sound, it Was Not Cheap!

[audioguy3107]

I agree with Ed here about opportunity......the key here is making it a fun experience for show goers.....I have heard and read about complaints on other sites about horrible music taste, "stiff" for lack of better words hosts, unwelcoming rooms etc. I would be able to remedy that in about 2 minutes. The key is girls in bikinis........, no I'm kidding of course......

- Buck

[2fastdriving]

Here is one more pic, this is of the Zu/Peachtree room. I don't believe anyone posted a pic of this one yet. Great sound from a relatively inexpensive setup.

[W9TR]

I just got back from the show after a side trip to Minneapolis.

I'll echo the comments of Steve, Buck, Marc, and Ed. It was great to meet them, and almost uncanny that our opinions on the sound of the rooms lined up pretty well.

Best sounding rooms were the Wilson/Constellation and Wilson Nagra rooms. The Alexia V2's in those rooms just sounded really together. I especially liked the visual presentation of the Wilson/Nagra room - beautiful!

The B&O room with Beolab 50 speakers sounded great as well. You would be hard pressed to find a less audiophile like speaker. No cables needed, no DAC, just plug the digital output of your streamer into their wireless interface puck and away you go. Very impressive. Jury's out on finesse and long term listenability, but I liked what I heard.

I was looking for headphones and a small pair of floorstanders for the loft at our lake home. So that was my focus.

Best inexpensive Floorstander: Andrew Jones does it again with the The ELAC Debut F5
For less than $600 a PAIR you get a fine sounding speaker that is well balanced. It hits way over its price point.

Best headphone rig: HiFiMan HE-1000V2 driven by an Exit Level Audio Annapurna 20B headphone amp and the Mojo Audio Streamer and R2R DAC combination. This one surprised me. It just sounded better than all the other systems I listened to. The Annapurna amp was very weird - big enough to ride, big triode tubes sticking out the top, and a wooden volume control the size of a baby's head. Not my cup of tea, but sounded great. I'd never heard of Mojo before but they make a very nice R2R DAC.

General observations:
* Most of the rooms had big bass peaks between 60 and 90 Hz.
* Most rooms had over-hyped and unnatural sounding bass.
* Really big speakers in small rooms just didn't cut it.
* The rooms with active room compensation sounded very good.
* Most of the people in attendance were aging white males.
* A lot of the booth hygiene was poor; old food lying around, booth denizens talking with each other instead of customers, unorganized collateral material strewn about, etc.
* It was great to have Tidal as a source, especially for headphone listening.
* A lot of the booths were playing really weird music. What am I supposed to learn from systems that are playing esoteric ambient electronica? Yep, I get it, I too want to puke when I hear Diana Krall over and over and over again and again. But at least I know what she sounds like and can compare stuff.
* The CanJam format was not okay because you couldn't compare open back headphones due to the high ambient noise level. Many of the headphone manufacturers had other quiet listening rooms. For the ones that didn't, well, sorry, you lost a sale.

It was real, it was fun, looking forward to next year!

Tom

[W9TR]

The Paradigm Persona 3F floorstander. I thought these sounded very good. Definitely a contender in the $10,000 bracket.

[j3brow]

Any thoughts on the sound of Sonus faber Amati Tradition with McIntosh gear?

[W9TR]

Jason,
The Amati Traditions were very close to the rear wall of the room, which had windows covered with some thin drapes. The speakers were too close together and too close to the racks for my liking. The right speaker was really close to an untreated wall.

Frankly the sound was not very good. The tonality was ok, but there was a big bass hump, and with hard walls adjacent to the speakers and no acoustic treatment in the room the imaging wasn't what it should be either. I'd have to give these speakers a listen in another venue to see what they can do. Like a lot of other gear at the show, I suspect it would sound stellar in a better environment with proper setup.


Here is the picture Buck (audioguy3107) took of the room:

[audioguy3107]

Jason - Tom is 100% correct with everything he said. I would have loved to hear that system properly set up with room to breathe, but it was basically backed into a corner. If I was a prospective buyer, I would've asked them if I could come back a few minutes after hours to pull the speakers out into the room a bit where they could be more centered. IMO, it was pretty much impossible to get an idea of how it would or should sound.

- Buck