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Best sound at Stereophile show.

I got to rate the Dynaudio room as the best sounding Room. They used the Dynaudio C4 speakers which listed for 16,000. All I can say is, they sounded incredible. They sound very smooth with an amazing soundstage. Bass was really good.

I also liked the Gamut Room. Gamut used probably the largest Amp I'v ever seen. The Amp weighed 400 pounds. Speakers were the Pipedreams with the Gamut CD Player. The system sounded very 3 dimentional with a good bass response. I also got to thank Ole Lund Christensen. He's the designer of Gamut. He played by far the best music. He played upbeat classical, where you could judge the midrange and bass of the speakers. He also played brick in the wall by Pink Floyd. I felt to many rooms played to much Jazz and violin music, where you just couldn't judge the speakers. Also, Ole played what ever CD you gave him.

I also loved the Wilson Watt Puppies 7. What totally amazed me. Wilson played alot of the time, the Watt Puppies 7 with the massive Wilson Sub. I thought that Sub would totally boom up the bass on the Watt Puppies. But it was the exact opposite. The Wilson Sub blended in so perfectly with the Wilson Watt Puppy 7 speakers.

I also liked the Tact room. They had those new Tact speakers that must have been 7 feet tall. They sounded great.

Most amazing home theater performance had to be in the Audio Video Creations room. They used a Pioneer 50 inch Plasma TV. Krell multichannel Amps, Krell Preamp processor, Krell DVD Player, Piega speakers and Piega Sub. They played clips from Jurassic Park and Matrix. Holy Moley did this system sound unbelievable. It was so incredible sounding.

Another thing that really impressed me. In the NAD room, one of the people there downloaded a Jewel peformance from the Jay Leno show on High Definition TV. They downloaded the Jewel performance to a hard drive, then transferred it to a DVD recorder. This picture quality was amazing. It was so perfect the picture.

I also really liked this Antique Sound Headphone Amp with Senheiser headphones. It listed for 1200 dollars. You could also used this as a preamp. The Antique Headphone Amp used 2A3 Tubes. It sounded so perfect and could go very loud without breaking up. Plus it had that nice tube sound.

Also alot of the designers were really nice. I mentioned Ole. Al from Dynaudio, Mark O'brien from Rougue Audio, Dale Fontenot from Roman Audio speakers, Alan Yun from Silverline, Tash Goka from Divergent technologies and Gilbert Young from Blue Circle were really good guys.
twilo
kevinkwann
85 posts
 
The reason so much variety of opinion is most of people who attend these shows are ony hobbyists and therefore not experience or competent to judge. That include orginal poster. It not that "ears are all different." It that most have no idea how/what to listen for and have no qualification. Hobbyist does not = competant or qualified.

One persin that does "get it" is czapp. Grand Utopia/Lamm set up ony one at show that remotly soun like live, intead of canned, music.
unsound
7,329 posts
 
Kevinkwann, are you suggesting that manufacuters are marketing equipment to compentant, qualified judges and not to hobbyist? Who cerifies these "experts"? Who determines the criterion? Do you think that these "experts" could carry the tab for all the rooms at the NY Hilton? This forum is designed for hobbyist to do exactly what you seem to be objecting to. I think that most hobbyist realize that this type of venue is inappropriate to make any real judgements and are only sharing their impressions cognitive of the compromised situation.
kthomas
911 posts
 
Thank goodness we have a real expert amongst us now :-)

I find the differences of opinion not only refreshing, but insightful. The discussions of why there are such varied opinions has taught me a lot more than the show reports that show up in the magazines. Anything lost because the people on this forum aren't "experts" is made up in the fact that there's not a lot of reason for commercial bias. And, FWIW, I consider many of the people who post here to be on "expert" par with many of the reviewers I read. -Kirk

theduke
372 posts
 
Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me? It seems the bigger the speaker the lousier the sound. For me, best sound at the show for the second year in a row was the Legend speaker driven by their Nirvana tube monoblocks. I heard incredibly real, almost organic, liquid sound out of these small speakers.

On the other hand, every horn speaker (and they were all big) sounded very colored, very honky. Also, huge dynamic systems like those demonstrated by Dynaudio, Viola, Airfoil, and Pipedreams were, at best, average sounding.

I'd say the somewhat large speakers by Piega and Joseph Audio were terrific. The Joseph speaker was wonderful playing "St.James Infirmery" by Louis Armstrong. The Innersound electrostatic ranks as well.

As for video, why do exhibitors insist on showing noisy and explosive blockbuster scenes? The Krell video presentation gave me a headache. I found the rooms showing musical fare like the Eagles and Talking Heads videos much more revealing of audio quality. A dramatic scene highlighting spoken voice would also be demonstrative of true audio quality. And while we're on video, I think animated films are cheating a bit. The real way to determine video quality is in judging fleshtone accuracy. In this regard, the Loewe flat screen direct tube monitor was stunning.

All in all, I liked the show but exhibitors need to stop being so juvenile with their software choices. And bigger is not necessarily better.

Finally, did anyone catch "Dave's True Story" live performance on Friday? Wow, I'm in love with Kelly Flint!
rlb61
789 posts
 
I thought the Dynaudio and Phoenix horns were the best sounding. The Dynaudio (powered by the Naim electronics) had a palpable sense of air, space and a huge soundstage. The Phoenix horns (tied with the MBLs for the butt-ugliest speakers I've ever seen) sounded fabulous with a realism in sound I've not quite heard before.

Was not at all impressed with the Pipedreams (average sounding) or the Kharmas (thin and simply awful). While room acoustics may have something to do with this, I think it plays a very small part.
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