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RMAF 2012 Postmortem

Doesn't seem to be an RMAF 2012 thread yet.

Wondering what people thought, so I'll make a start.

Best in Show:

The big Ventures. Hard to describe how good these speakers sounded without being sappy. IMHO, embarrassing to other "statement" speakers at the show, like the big TAD and Lansche.

I was mostly interested in high efficiency speakers. Especially good were:

Zu Defintion IV
Devore Gibbon 93 and 96
Sonist C4

The Sonists, playing in the Snake River system, sounded especially good considering their (comparatively) reasonable price.

A few other noteworthy speakers were

Vapor's new 3 way

Vivid's space alien rendition of a mini-tower in the Tweak geek room

The Evolution mini-monitor was the best (reasonably) accessible speaker I heard, at 2500. Very good.

Opinions based on information overload, over a day and a half of listening.

Any other impressions?

John
jdoris
dpe
60 posts
 
Sorry about the double post. Not sure how that happened.
jdoris OP
972 posts
 
Dpe: Wondering if you'd elaborate on your issues with tinnitus and ribbons? Too edgy? I find this sometimes (eg Salk HTL-TL w/Van Alstine, RMAF 2010), but not others (Vapor on a number of occasions).

Mrtennis: I heard various people comment on how well the Sanders integrated this year; maybe they've cleaned things up a bit.

On the topic of integration, anyone hear the Rythm -- a single driver augmented with a bass unit? I only heard it briefly, but I wondered about the integration.

The Joule Black is my favorite of the Vapor line as well Petrakis; punching above its weight is you'd move from the C4! I think the pro audio based Acurus is a really neat design too; might be my choice, if I were more of a headbanger.

John
stickman451
553 posts
 
I think the Sanders sounded good, especially in the bass; but overall they cannot match the Magnepans in the mids and highs...overall I still think the Maggies sound better, especially the 3.7 and 20.7's...
dpe
60 posts
 
John,

I can hear to 18 kHz no problem. Old CRTs, and whatever is going on in the fluorescent lights or hard drives I can here a continuous high pitch sound. Having worked near wind tunnels for 25 years I've undoubtedly broken off some of the tiny hairs in the cochlea. Thus a small portion of my midrange has dimensioned. Unfortunately this accentuates the highs, which means that any persistent frequency between 10 to 13 kHz will cause extreme listening fatigue for me. I can easily hear a 10-12 kHz buzz from and ribbon or electrostatic tweeter and ribbons can produce sound way beyond 20kHz (hardly anyone past their teens can hear or ever heard 20kHz). I'm more amazed that other people don't have similar issues.

When I say that there’s a pop or punch in the highs I’m just referring to a sudden seemingly uncontrolled burst of energy that doesn’t dissipate well at 10-12 kHz. This is different then the constant buzz of a ribbon; rather it’s punctuated. I can tell you within 30 seconds whether a cone tweeter has this tendency. The buzz of a ribbon tweeter will fatigue you over time because it’s sustained. Just my opinion…
ohlala
1,238 posts
 
Analysis Audio, I was told, is having 25% off for RMAF that is good until the end of this month.
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