DAY 2
OK, first, I’m now ready to nominate my joint best of show: Daedalus Zeus, and IMC Audio Forty-10.
Also, my joint best value for money of the show goes to: Salk Song3 BE-AT, and Odyssey Liquid.
General observations.
Nothing new here. The preponderant demographic: middle-aged and elderly men. I felt right at home. Systems: just about every room was offering *both* vinyl (high-end turntables) and streaming digital. General trend: no surprise here either, expensive and very expensive components, “value” pieces being relatively few and far between. Another general trend: playing demo systems/pieces in rooms at too loud a volume. Almost ubiquitous. It drove me out of a couple of rooms. In several others, I’m sure it negatively impacted the sonic presentation—surely people want to hear timbre, musical lines, etc., and not just how loud it can play before smoke starts issuing from the amp or the speakers.
Top picks of Day 2
I covered all the remaining room and revisited a good number of the others.
GAMUT RS3i. What a speaker! Beautiful. Within 5 seconds of walking into the room, I could tell this was a quality product. Bass remarkable for its small size, if a bit bloomy (room). Overall superior sound, good imaging, difficult to judge soundstaging (positioned close to front wall with lots of windows). Expensive! If I had the $$$, I’d be seriously considering the floorstander that’s the next one up in the line-up. Color me impressed. These Danish speakers run rings around Dynaudio.
HARBETH 30.2 Anniversary. Wow! Paired with a full suite of Rogers electronics, and newcomer Accusound cables, this system rocked. Yes, Harbeth and rocked in the same sentence. Yet it was natural and balanced, definitely not polite but also not technicolor (this is a negative term in my improvised audiophile vocabulary). A difficult line to walk, but pulled it off. Fine imaging, perfect timbre, dynamic, vivid, and decent bass for the size. Volume getting cranked up excessively/needlessly towards the end, and I had to leave.
ODYSSEY LIQUID. I stumbled into this room at around 5:45 pm, but what I heard immediately perked up my ears. This is one impressive speaker. Natural, good timbre. Excellent bass. Fine imaging (on one sample, I would tend to blame the recording, when images seemed to be leaking from the center to the sides). Dynamic. I really need to hear this again (tomorrow morning, I hope) with some (classical) material I’m familiar with, but for the moment I’m struggling to find anything to criticize. A real surprise. $5900. Good sized floorstander, 2 ½ way, quality drivers. This could be a real winner, but relatively few people will ever hear it, given the sales model (cf. Daedalus and Salk).
Revisited…
HARBETH 40.2: one of the few rooms I’d characterize as producing a “human” sound, rather than a mechanical/electronic one. Along with Gamut and Daedalus Zeus (but not unfortunately the other Daedalus Apollo room, where something was amiss). In the Déjà Vu room I could immediately feel my body relaxing, rather than tensing up in the face of the sonic assault.
Middle of the pack
MURAUDIO SP1. Good imaging and soundstaging, good timbre, but presentation a little “technicolor”, and depending on the recording and the playback volume could be overbearing/piercing. That impression of being overly insistent was less apparent on my second visit.
BACHE TRIBECA-001. Just missing my nomination for triple tie best bang for the buck. This is a fine speaker for the money. Presentation is natural, balanced, full, solid, has body, bass was not overdone but definitely there. Unlike most other rooms, I thought it perhaps was a touch over-polite (rather than the reverse). Doesn’t have pinpoint imaging or soundstaging. Instrumental images were natural sized. Massed strings were beautiful, not steely at all. Good prices and definitely worth an audition. I lingered here.
PARADIGM PERSONA 5. Being demo’d with Anthem integrated with room correction, which effectively dealt with the ubiquitous room bass boom. Impressive. A fine, very competent, mainstream, modern speaker. Image size correct, good imaging and bass “just right”. Timbre not quite as rich as I’d have ideally liked.
FRITZ CARRERA Be. Impressive stand-mount. Imaging and soundstaging very natural. A very listenable speaker (what a relief!). Nothing exceptional, well balanced. If this could be well integrated with a quality sub-woofer it could be a real winner.
MARTIN-LOGAN RENAISSANCE. A brief listen. Falls into my category of mainstream, more than acceptable presentation, but like many others rather insistent. Didn’t make me want to linger.
GINGKO CLARA VU no. 3. A real sleeper. Worth keeping an eye on. The imaging was particularly fine; sound dynamic, what I call a modern presentation. Not sure about ultimate timbral purity, and at high volume levels occasionally slightly strident. Nonetheless, impressive for the price.
PURE AUDIO PROJECT. These had the Voxativ middle driver. Effortless and transparent. Deep bass a bit boomy, even though being demo’d in one of the bigger rooms. Good imaging, decent soundstaging. But yet again sounded overcooked on certain tracks.
AMPHION ARGON 7LS. Another good, not great, speaker. The same boomy bass, with the accustomed modern, mainstream sound.
QLN model? Drivers looked very similar to those in older Proac Response 2.5. Another highly competent but ultimately undistinguished speaker, hampered, I suspect, by the nearly unlistenable source material being played. (Really?)
Disappointing
LARSEN 9. Oh dear, another speaker that I really wanted to like. Positives: nice timbre, nice full sound. Set up along the long wall, against the wall (naturally); but I felt the listening positions needed to be further back (impossible, given width of room). Poor, vague imaging, poor soundstaging. A piano was stretched w-i-d-e all the way between the two speakers. On another recording a voice seemed to float around, coming from different points at different moments (and it wasn’t just that the singer was moving around).
VOLTI RIVAL. OK, so it seems like all my disappointments are makes/models that I was expecting to like, whereas the makes I was, err, less than enthusiastic about going into this, all ended up in my middle-of-the-pack category. I don’t know what was going on here. Played with Border Patrol 300Bs and Triode Wire, they still sounded rather too bright to me. How can that be? The horns?? Other tracks sounded “up front” and occasionally piercing. Overall, I have to conclude tipped up. One redeeming feature was the imaging was excellent.
BOENEKE model? Really really tiny speakers, sounding incredibly strained trying to reproduce full orchestra. Why??
Caveats. As ever, YMMV. My subjective impressions on the day, in rooms that were almost all acoustically challenged. May post some follow-up comments once I recover...