Yes, Bondmanp, the Cambridge room seemed to be enamored with pop/rock recordings that had very little to offer in the way of tonal or dynamic variety...hard to judge a system that way. Acoustics overall just seemed to be working against vendors in most rooms, but as you point out they weren't helping themselves much by turning it up to 11. The Pure Audios were interesting, and certainly dynamic, but harsher than what I'm used to with my Spatials, which are a quarter of the price and sound much more natural (to my ears, anyway). What I did take away from that room was an amazing movie score by Henry Mancini for a John Wayne film called Hatari (which I had never heard of). There's one particular track on it that's called "The Sounds of Hatari" that should be on everyone's audition lists for evaluating systems...it throws just about every sound you can think of at you. Amazing to hear.
Ohm 2000s at NY Audio Show
Felt compelled to write for the first time in a while after visiting the NY Audio Show today. There were some very good sounding systems (the Audio Note room comes to mind), some other systems that you could tell were good but struggled with room acoustics (The Linear Tube Audio room was saddled with a square room and suffered for it with some boomy bass) and many disappointments (won't bother to list). But the one room that really stood out for me was the Ohm Acoustics room. It's a shame John doesn't show more...his $<4500-all-in system (he paired his 2000s with an $800 Outlaw receiver and a $200 Oppo CD player, plus cables and a streamer) may not have achieved the dynamics of the $100K+ Alta room or the perfect timbres of the Audio Note room, but for my money, it was as enjoyable to listen to as anything in that show. I have no $$ interest here...just giving credit where it's due.
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I was there yesterday...and recall the Hatari soundtrack as well. Typically I am kinda bored by the same demo tracks everywhere, but it's true that they do show off the equipment more than modern pop/rock tracks. My favorite rooms were actually the Adirondack Luxman room and the Accuphase/Soulution room. But I was there to mainly check out equipment and the sounds in both of those rooms impressed the hell out of me. I love the Luxman tube amp, as well as the entry level Accuphase integrated. I liked the Mark Speaker room as well, though I didn't stay long as I wasn't speaker hunting. The Margules tube amp was very impressive as well, and it's pretty affordable. I mainly went to check out Metrum gear, they were supposed to be in the Pure room, but I guess things fell through, and I didn't see any Metrum dacs. |
http://ohmspeaker.com/news/standing-room-only/ John Strohbeens summary of OHM at the show on OHM website. |
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