What were the best and worst rooms at RMAF 2009?

Hi Agear,
Ya, and after their (Intuitive Design) no-show last year, I was really looking forward to it. Two years ago I was blown away by the sound with those monster water-cooled muthas. When I heard them this year however, I was underwhelmed, to say the least. I'm not a fan of powered subs integrated into the design of speakers, and the amps that fit into those bases were MIA two years ago, and with just the monitors working, I thought they sounded magnificent. With that woolly, inorganic bass this year? No thank you.

All, I made a major factual mistake in my previous post, for which I apologize to all concerned: suite 589, where I listened to the excellent bel Canto Ref 500M mono amps, was completely wired with Cardas Clear, NOT with XLO. Hence any reference to XLO in my previous post is completely unwarranted and should be ignored

. The paragraph in question should have read:

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Regarding the Bel Canto room in 589-590. . . yes, the sound of the room was not 'warm' to my ears. . . rather, I found it to be rather neutral with a very slight overpressure in the treble region, and a minor tendency to intermodulate in harmonically complex sostenuto passages in the upper treble. The overall gracefulness of the sound was one of the reasons why DCSTEP and I remained there for the better part of an hour or may be even more, in spite of a slight tendency to tippiness in the treble that made the sound suboptimal. As I am not even faintly familiar with the Joseph Audio house sound, nor with the Cardas Clear wires, I have no idea about their relative impact on the overall result. However, being quite familiar with the sound of the suite from last year, as well as with the extremely graceful Bel Canto Ref series sonic signature, I am inclined to exonerate completely the BC R500M from being the origin of the very slight treble anomalies, which may have been caused by something as simple as speaker placement issues.

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PS. This morning I had requested via email that Audiogon staff nuke my previous post entirely, so I could resubmit it cleanly with the amendment above. Unfortunately, the duty administrator tersely declined my request, stating that removing posts is against policy. This of course is quite surprising in view of historical data. It is also a sad commentary about the apparent dualism still existing between the new and friendly image that Audiogon is fostering through its "Hub", and a much more basic reality persisting in the trenches, which makes me seriously consider alternate audiophilic climes.

Regards, G.

I can't remember what was what in most of the rooms we hit... mostly because I forgot to take notes of any kind and I forgot to bring music! However, I remember the benchmark room being one that I could sit and listen to all day without fatigue, I greatly enjoyed the Ayre/Wilson room (not the HT room, but the room using the sashas) most of the time I visited it (usually it was too crowded though). The Peachtree/Zu room was great fun and great budget sound and the iFi chairs were a hoot. We also enjoyed the MA recordings room with the Davone rithm speakers (plus I picked up a few fantastic recordings while I was there), the wavelength room and the TW room. The Nordost room sounded quite good considering I'd yet to hear a system cabled with nordost that I liked. For once they weren't overly bright, thin and bass light. Plus the demo was very entertaining.

My favorite room though, and my best of show, was the Luxman/Vivd/Synergistic Research room. Philip and Ted and crew were great company, the sound was outstanding and the demos were enlightening. I loved it so much in fact that every break during the show and after hours we had we seemed to end up sitting and enjoying the music.

Ah, so it was newlyweds I met at the Vivid/Luxman/Synergistic room? Don't go spending all your wedding gifts on the system! It's wonderful that you're getting involved in each other's interests. I hope auiophilia is a lifelong shared joy for you.

Lol! Yes.... :) All the wedding gift money and cards.. already spent. But I've been strongly hinting at several options for Christmas presents ;-P