Final Thoughts RMAF 2010

[Still-One]

The Show
I hope I do not ramble too much as I attempt to summarize my thoughts after spending the good part of three days roaming around RMAF ’10 in Denver. I have posted many of my photos in another thread here so this is more of a wrap-up plus a few general comments.
First, the show this year was really large. By my count there were about 170 rooms with gear and accessories. For those of you who have never attended, most of the larger rooms are located on the main floor or on the mezzanine level. The hotel has two towers. One tower had rooms set up on floors 2nd, 8th , 9th , 10th & 11th . The other tower had rooms on the 4th and 5th floors. Somehow I missed the 2nd floor altogether.
In general there was an open room on each side of rooms displaying gear so there was not a great deal of sound leaking from room to room as long as the doors were kept shut. Some rooms were very hot (Magico), some had no room treatments (Revel/Mark Levinson), some were over-treated (Kaiser/ Lessloss) and some were oddly treated (Hegel). Of course I would hope no one would make a purchasing decision based on just listening in this venue.
I arbitrarily skipped over some rooms when I saw product that did not interest me (tube gear or cables) or might be considered mainstream (Marantz) . That does not mean they did not sound good, just I did not have enough time. I did spend about 14 hours over the three days wandering the hotel. Some of the rooms were always crowded and if you did get a seat if probably was not going to be in the prime listening position.
One fun part is meeting the people who actually design some of this gear (Sanders and his speakers, Larry Walker and his tables, Nick Doshi and his gear) Fun people to talk to.
No show of this type is the best place for those of you who love vinyl playback. It takes too much time to set up a table properly and crowded and often noisy rooms are not optimum for showing of the nuance of vinyl. That said most of the demos used CD’s or server based playback. New CD players were pretty scarce too.

Final Thoughts and The Future

There is a lot of great gear out there and it is rather easy to put together systems that fulfill most of our needs. Surely there are differences in the sound amongst them but that doesn’t mean one has to be better than the next. It is a matter of individual preferences and those can change over time.
What is scary is the prices being asked for a lot of this gear. My system is not inexpensive by most accounts and I am sure that less than 3% of the country would consider spending those dollars on audio. Yet I saw room after room of gear from companies , some who I had never heard of, with prices significantly higher than what I spent. Who is really going to buy this stuff? Tube amps from Win Analog (who) for over $100K, ss amps from Technical Brain for ~$130k, Jones (who) amp for $25k, wonderful speakers from a two year old German company called Kaiser (who) for $64k, Critical Mass racks for $50k. Don’t forget the high price stuff from TAD, YG, Solution, Vitus, Mark Levinson’s and on and on.
Gear will continue to improve but the improvements and differences are becoming less important to me. I plan on looking for more new artists to keep my interest in this hobby going. I will continue to consider new products as they are released and I will continue to look for ways to tweak by system , but at these numbers I am off the Merry-Go-Round.
Jim

[jdandy]

Jim.......Good wrap up. I agree with you on the sticker shock. Off the deep end as far as I am concerned.

[cmalak]

Jim...thx very much for the coverage with pics in the other thread and your wrap up here. I agree with you on pricing at the bleeding edge of this hobby. But you are right, after a certain point, it's more about stylistic differences in presentation and minute differences in sonic quality, and so when you hit that point it becomes less about upgrading and more about fueling audiophilia nervosa or just plain boredom after you live with a system for a while. For some, the challenge of switching out gear/brands to build new systems from new brands or system topologies that get you to that point of diminishing returns we just discussed, is more interesting than living with one system indefinitely. To each his own I guess. We all have different motivations (as well as different resource levels) that fuel our interest in this hobby. The concern as you point out is that the industry might be pricing itself out of the reach of most existing audiophiles and certainly of any new entrants into the hobby, which will only continue to shrink the industry's reach/appeal to existing and new consumers.

[Tonepub]

Jim:

Do you have a shot of the estelon room and perhaps a lobby shot? I had a camera malfunction. I'll throw you a few bucks for the record fund if you are interested..

thanks!

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by tonepub

Jim:

Do you have a shot of the estelon room and perhaps a lobby shot? I had a camera malfunction. I'll throw you a few bucks for the record fund if you are interested..

thanks!

I do not have a shot of the lobby. Here is what I have of the Estelon room. PM me with your email if if is good enough.

I reduced the resolution on the camera I was carrying so I could post. No separate flash either.

Your issues of Tone that you provide here is all I need.
Jim

[two dot]

What did you think of this room Jim?

Like all have said. Thanks for all of the work you put into this. Your comments are very helpful and spot on in my opinion.

I completely agree with your thoughts on the stratospheric prices on the upper end... wake up people... it does not take spending this kind of money to have a excellent HI-FI.

[Tonepub]

Jim: Thanks!

Can I at least send you something from MoFi? PM Me and I'll send you something fun.
Much appreciated...

[vintage_tube]

Nice recap Jim & enjoyed tagging along part of Sat & Sunday.

IMO, there were soooo many good systems that I find it nearly impossible to pick a best of show.

Some surprises -- the South Korean Emille amps, a modded OPPO 83 w/two 12 volt tubes, the proposed $120K Intutitive Designs speakers finally showed up at 2PM on Sunday, and some nice wall treatments made by Acoustical Surroundings.

It was a great show this year and sadly, with all the TT's set up -- there was only one that sounded like it deserved to be there -- the SME 20/2 w/V Tonearm.

Bob

[cmalak]

Bob...did you hear the modded Oppo? I am assuming that's Modwright's tube mod for the Oppo BDP-83SE. There is a separate power supply as well. It's supposed to be quite the upgrade in sonics. Here is a link: ModWright

[vintage_tube]

Originally Posted by cmalak

Bob...did you hear the modded Oppo? I am assuming that's Modwright's tube mod for the Oppo BDP-83SE. There is a separate power supply as well. It's supposed to be quite the upgrade in sonics. Here is a link: ModWright

It was a mod performed by Exemplar Audio -- to be perfectly honest, I returned to the room twice to listen to it and did not have enough time to digest it's sonics. I didn't ask or forgot to write down the cost of the mod. I believe this was their first...but I'm guessing at that. It would be ideal to A/B it against a stock unit.

Bob