A few systems heard at the Rocky Mntn. audiofest

Golden ears,

Thanks for the support for my visit to FMAF. As perhaps you can guess I was not in a position to assert myself. Not even in this thread. My post honestly said it all.

Having spent a lifetime earning my living in retail sales I know how to behave if I want to peddle something. I also have a profound understanding of sales behavior when one is less than confident in their product or themselves as salespeople.

For myself the over-riding factor in not being assertive (beyond my physical limits) was there were plenty of other rooms to visit where my needs were satisfied. Perhaps at a different time I would have worked harder to get them involved in my interests.

I'm not upset with anyone there showing gear. These were just my honest observations. I did not shake my head nor bitch about the music being played within earshot of anyone and I certainly don't consider myself any kind of audio expert. I got as much out of this event as I wanted. Nothing more, nothing less.

One point where even my critics will support me is that Lugnut is never ambiguous. If I take the time waiting to sit in the sweet spot, with my wife no less, and no interest is shown in me as a potential buyer then I guess I'm guilty of being less than physchic in answering questions that are not asked of me. If one is in sales it behooves them to understand, meet, greet, qualify, demonstrate and close unless the customer is supposed to be responsible for everything.

There is nothing more ambiguous than standing there having nothing to say to a customer. But then, perhaps I'm a dinosaur.

Golden, I wasn't there to hear every system in every room. I was there to see and re-meet a couple manufacturers who have turned into friends over the years, to attend several seminars that looked (and were) worth my time, and to hear some systems that seemed worth my time. I also think I was looking for a little validation of my goals in reproduced music. For instance, does my system really sound as good as I think it does? Have my tastes tilted the frequency balance* significantly? I had no responsibility to listen to all or even most systems there--I'm no reporter trying to cover everything and perhaps discover a jewel among the stones. I was there to enjoy myself, and 'enjoy' didn't include entering rooms with obnoxious music playing at too-high levels. We didn't walk the halls bitching about anything, we just went down the hall to the next rooms.

I found the people in the rooms I got into to be friendly and accommodating.

* My biamped system is HIGHLY adjustable in frequency balance, and I love to tweak, so 'adjustable' can be as much for the worst as the better.
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I think this thread is very useful and potentially even more so if we can get past the personal issues. I'd appreciate other people sharing their listening strategies.

I find that I'm unable to assess an audio setup when the recorded music is amplified, synthesized or highly processed in its origin, since in that case it is much harder to know what the original performance (if any) would have sounded like. Therefore, I'm also one of those people that won't stick around unless the audition software is classical or acoustic music of some kind, played at a natural volume. How many people feel the same way about evaluating equipment, even though their listening tastes might embrace a much wider selection of recorded music?

Even in the case of classical and other acoustic music, modern mixing practices often result in a sound picture that is significantly different from the live performance. Especially in the categories of "soundstage" and "balance", what you hear is partly the recording engineer's re-interpretation or manipulation of the sound. I sometimes have trouble knowing what the playback equipment is doing or not doing in those areas, even when listening to what I consider to be an optimal source for evaluation, such as chamber music or a jazz ensemble.

Feedback welcome from anyone who has worked through any of these issues.

One way to eliminate one variable--an unfamiliar piece of music or recording--is to bring your own. That's what I did. The Rutter recording played in the Herron room sounded very nice, but I had NO idea what it sounds like on ANY other system.

Because I am HIGHLY familiar with the recording I brought, the first 10 seconds in the AvantGarde room gave me a good idea how that system sounded, and 15 minutes of it told me the system sounded VERY good. This Boult/Holst Planets is simply my favorite piece of evaluation music--I LOVE the work AND the performance AND the recording.
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I went to the show as well.It has been many years since I went to one.approx.10 years ago at a Stereophile show in S.F.CA.
My reference is live classical music since thats what I've been playing in our local symphony for the past 15 years as a bass trombone player for The Skagit Symphony.
I had spoke briefly to Albert Porter about my lack of enthusiasm I heard with the sound of most the sytems at the show.
Almost none of them generated any true acuarate deep bass or mid bass foundation to the music.Most sytems were tipped up on the top end,and lean and light in the mid bass and non existent in the deep bass with a couple of exceptions.
The Herron room presented music with its proper weight in this area as well as the Sumiko room with the 5k Rel Sub in the corner of the back wall.One fellow asked to play a chinese drum CD I beleive and the whole room was shaking and vibrating with so much undistorted dynamic slam.What a treat it was to hear and feel that.
I was dissapointed with the sound of the ZYX Universe.I know I might be stepping on peoples toes by saying this,But it just was not acurately portraying the acoustic trail of the reverberation surounding individual instruments or voices.Oddly the cartridge sounded lean and bright in the upper mid band with the sound to forward sounding even more so on the ZYX 3B.It also lacked power and depth in the deep bass and midbass.But this is coming from my trained ears as a musician for 35 years.If you want high fi sound then I guess that is what this cartridge does,But IMO I'm a Raul converter and just simply love the Dynavector XX by a very wide margin over the ZYX Cartridges.
But I still had a great exausting time at the show.I had the 3 day pass and needed all of the 3 days to hear a little from most the rooms.I missed the AG horns .I guess I need to go next year and hear that.
The other room I liked was the Oracle V Turntable with their own special made preamp.The Oracle table sounded so much like real music being played.It had the coerence from bottom to top that all the other tables were missing by a wide margin IMO.
Well if next year is anything like this year they will need to extend the show and extra day and getting larger rooms would help acostically the systems being shown.