2. speakers
  3. 1023078723

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
tubegroover
2,320 posts
 
Rwd- Talk about 20 year old speakers. I heard a pair of highly tweeked Infinity 4.5's and IRS Series 5. Thanks Bill Legal of MillerSound. Can you believe that Bill has 2 pair of the IRS 5's!! I must say the 5's were the best sound I heard on this trip including the systems heard at the show many of which you included. Of course Bill has had ample time to perform his unique brand of magic. The IRS 5's, talk about a disappearing act, realistic images, resolving and timbral accuracy. This system got closer to live sound than anything I've heard in recent memory. Only one small problem, I didn't want to leave.

The finale in the Joseph room "St James Infirmiry" was spellbinding. If anyone wonders why Joseph Audio does so well in the voting for Best of Show me guess is a well presented demo with good music. My biggest gripe with most of the rooms was some of the music being played, too much audiophile stuff and not enough variety. Conspiciously absent was full orchestral demos. Wonder why? I also throughly enjoyed the Merlin Room with the Joule amps, room 623. I should qualify these comments since I own Merlins but the sound was very refined and involving, just like at home. No the Berning ZH 270 amp doesn't best the Joules but it certainly does things the Joule doesn't and ditto for the Joules. Bobby was playing a Nancy Wilson recording and she sure enough was there all right.

Was very impressed with the seamless sound of the Piega's although not the multi-channel demo. Who listens to music in the middle of the orchestra? The bassonist for one. Maybe that's why Louis Lipswich of Stereophile fame loved the B&W 800 speakers in his 11x13 room so much. Anyone remember that review?

For budget sound the Epo/Creek room was excellent.

I won't mention the rooms that were disappointing as some of it could be attributed to poor set-up and other conditions. One thing I walked away with was a reaffirmation that proper set-up and synergy go hand in hand with great sound.
drjjpdc
80 posts
 
The irony this question presents is incredible. Here are all these audio nuts trying to hear the best sound of the show (music I presume) when only 1 person (theduke) mentioned LIVE MUSIC. That was the best sound of the show. Hearing Hyperion Knight do Stairway to Heaven on the piano. John Pizzarelli Trio and Noah Wotherspoon (Barely 5 ft tall and 20 years old blues artist with memories of Stevie Ray) were the best sound with any other room far behind.

PS just so you don't think I threw away my audiophile credentials, Lumen White room, Clearudio pipedreams and atmasphere room with classic audio horns (I think) were pretty good as well as being unaffordable to this audio geek. Also try the Acoustic sounds 45rpm vinyl blues series with Jimmie Robinson and Wildchild Butler.
cdc
1,786 posts
 
What was wrong with Thiel / Musical Fidelity??
Not on anyone's list at all. I thought it was really good for the price. Von Schweikert was good but pricey and lacked weight - not noticeable in small room with 5 speakrs though.
Joseph's $20K was good but no better than Nautilus 802's - not at the show but from what I remember.
drjjpdc
80 posts
 
The only complaint I have with Musical Fidelity is that when I went downstairs, they were playing CD's through their new budget DAC. But they couldn't switch it out. If your selling point is that the DAC makes CD's sound like SACD then you have to compare it in and out to hear what the thing does. Otherwise it is just a trust me thing. I have an old CD player and would have liked to hear it while I was at the show.
unsound
7,329 posts
 
My friends and I thought the Thiel 1.6 were perhaps the best value but not the best sound. I had to wonder about using the Musical Fidelity equipment. The demonstrator made a deal of how these Thiels were so efficient (90) db compared to previous Thiels. Why use 250 watt mono's that loose power as they drop into lower impedances (3.5 OHMs and not all that much higher with these speakers)in a fairly small room?
More to discover