Had an excellent day there Friday. I do regret missing the Wilsons.
My favorite room had Silverline Bolero Supremes with a 1/4" tape source. Went back a 2nd time.
Venice Audio's setup was very nice.
Ocean Way (never had heard of them) had these big audacious things, but they sounded great.
Liked the Larsens really had their own sound that I liked a lot.
I was hoping to like the Ryan Speakers. High quality, but when I was in there their was a lot of chit chat. I couldn't really listen.
I am surprised how much loud talking goes on in the rooms,
but most of the morning we did have an excellent time with many
rooms very sparsely filled and good music selections.
Somehow after lunch, the music selections went south. We'd be in rooms where something nice drew us in, then the guy says "check this out" and changes it to some awful thing designed to show off the speakers. It was terrible.
In one room, they had some tube amps (the largest amp tube you can get or something). They were gold and ridiculous. Sounded nice. I forget how many tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars they were, but two dudes walked in and blabbed on and on about them. Talking about all the technical stuff, but wouldn't even listen to them. Finally I thought I'd get relief when one of them sat down, but then he leaned in close to me and said, "I just CAN'T get my eyes off those tubes." Shut up, already.
Most of the rooms were very relaxed. No sales B.S.
All morning we heard jazz and female jazz singers, which was great, but in the afternoon we started asking for rock. Oof. They don't know how to pick stuff. It all becomes, soundtrack rock.
We saved the first floor for last, which was a good idea. It has all the pomp. This one room with big horn speakers had beautiful opera on. It was amazing. but then he switched to pipe organs to show off the power. Bye-bye.
There was one first floor room that sounded good. The speakers looked like they had gold plated football for drivers. I don't know what they were called. They were hysterical looking. And the room had great people watching. But they sure sounded good too.
The Fritz room sounded good too. Very small time looking business with a "losing lease" sale going on. But they DID seem like a good deal.
It was my first time really sitting down with electrostatics. Didn't love them.
The Vandersteen Sevens sounded solid and he picked great vinyl, but I wasn't knocked out.
Zu Audio room was interesting, but while I was there they only played really experimental stuff. So in the end, I couldn't really judge the system.
On these really beautiful revealing systems, I heard a lot of Steely Dan. Which was a bad choice. I like Steely Dan, but wow, on these systems the recordings fall flat.
That's what I can remember. Very quickly in the morning, it just became a day of listening to music on great systems. Totally worth it.
