What were the best and worst rooms at RMAF 2009?

Dgarretson, right you are. Friday is useful only to see what you need to come back to hear, to buy software, and to visit with old friends. It is dead on Sunday night, but there are a few of us still around.

Incidentally, this is true at CES also.

Norm, my feeling about underpowered amplification exactly. . . I felt that the Vandy 7 could have used the more powerful Ref 220s to shine. Guido

Tbg, I see your point, but it doesn't explain how many exhibitors manage to obtain great sound from the get-go on Friday. If "big" room showcase exhibitors take several days to sort things out, then they are failing the majority of attendees. And if the "true" sound of the show is available to just an exclusive few on the last night of the show, this accomplishes little for the industry or for the state of the art.

With respect to GamuT, any casual visitor walking into that auditorium-sized room on Friday would understand that speakers positioned 25' apart are challenged to produce minimally acceptable performance.

For me the treasure at these shows is off-piste in the small rooms.

Dgarretson, I did not visit the GamuT room until Sunday, but I don't believe any of the first floor or mezzanine rooms sounded at all good on Friday or even Saturday. Some never! The Acapella room, the YG room, and the Synergistic Research rooms were examples of what I am saying. I would concede that the YG room sounded better than I have ever heard YGs sound, but on Sunday they were much better.

You are suggesting that manufacturers are failing those that attend. I agree, but most can do very little about this as they cannot install until Thurs. and often the equipment has just been finished up for this show and even CES.

I have been to at least forty "shows" and have never heard any exception. I must say that this is only one of the problems, however. Lousy rooms are another. I remember that Quad 57s always sounded good as they did not overload their room and took very little time to breakin. So I entirely agree with your last sentence, but neither problem has a likely solution.

Last year, Guido and I watched Sumiko and Soundings try to set up their De Muzik Vienna Acoustic speakers in a small room. It was painstaking, backbreaking work, in the end dealing with fractions of inches. After all this work, tweaking continued into the night and into the next morning. The speakers were impressive, but they really didn't show their true potential at the 2008 show.

This year Soundings elected to have a table at RMAF and steer interested parties over to their shop just two-blocks away. The De Muzik's had been tweaked for over a year. Despite this, Guido and I heard some sloppyness in the upper bass, particularly when driven with the massive Boulder 2060. The owner of Soundings and the Sony speaker designer worked further on placement and fixed the issue and greatly improved the top to bottom smoothness and integration before guests started showing up in volume on Friday.

That just shows you how tough the issue is, even in your home. Mike Lavigne even talked about how he's refining his bass absorbtion in his dedicated room that he's been in for years and seems overdamped. One last comment, Lars, the GamuT designer told us after we complained that he knew how to fix our complaint and asked us to come back in a little bit on Sunday. When we came back, the bloom in the bass was replaced by bottom to top coherancy and great inner detail, in that HUGE room. Lars said that he moved each speaker about 2-inches!!!

It's really tough for the exhibitors. At one show, I think it was CES in early 2008, Jeff Rowland struggled with his room for hours and finally elected to do a static display. Maybe more people should do that, but it's easy to understand their reluctance at such an event.

Dave