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Anyone else attend the California Audio Show in Oakland?

I went yesterday 7/28, heard some really good stuff, including:

Old Forge Studios room. The Soundkaos Vox 3F standmounted 3 ways were incredible! My favorites of the show. Tiny boxes and 35Hz on the low end had many of us looking for a subwoofer. The Wand tt and PureAudio electronics were excellent.

Tidal Contriva speakers speakers were my 2nd choice as favorites. Just a bit more expensive than the Soundkaos at $65,000, they were beautiful to look at and gorgeous to listen to, or vice versa. Open and airy, great bass extension, with the equally fine Bricasti amps and preamp, they would surely be even better in a larger room.

Aurender streamers and dacs also pulled me in. I’m looking for new gear, and they have a great selection. The combo dacs and streamers start at around $3500 and run to $22,000 for the W22SE, which was playing in their room. 

On on the down side:

Audio Vision SF Room
I didn’t care for the Naim/Rega/Focal gear. It sounded very shut in, muffled to me. Sibilance was not pronounced, and the Focal speakers sounded blurred. 

Wyred4sound

I've never been a fan, so maybe I’m biased, but the new gear just didn’t add up to me. Disjointed is the word I come up with. The new W4S speakers were these hulking boxes, with drivers arranged in MTM configuration. The tweeters are ribbons, which I usually enjoy, but these sounded too laid back to me. 

Any other attendee thoughts?

pumper24
auxinput
2,921 posts
 
The Sound Kaos Vox speakers were very high resolution and very natural sounding with a a lot of texture.  Very neutral and surprising amount of bass.  The high frequencies were not bright/harsh which was unexpected due to the ribbon tweeter.  The ribbon tweeter is mounted on the top of the speaker and fires upwards, which may help explain this.  However, it does mean that your rear walls and ceiling cannot have any acoustic panels which would absorb a lot of this high frequency energy.  The two woofers are only 5", so you will not be pushing a huge amount of bass or amplifier power.  If you have a smallish to maybe medium size room and you want really nice sound but do not need a huge amount of bass, these are excellent choices.

I cannot remember which model I actually heard (3F or 3A).  They have different midrange drivers.
audio_phool's avatar
audio_phool
87 posts
 
@auxinput thanks for the your impressions. You have raised one very interesting point of not treating real walls and ceiling because of top mounted ribbon tweeter. This would make it even more interesting case for Indian small homes where treating the room is not always possible.
Do you remember anything about it's imaging and soundstage capabilities?
Regards,Saurabh
auxinput
2,921 posts
 
I would say that imaging and soundstage are very good.  However, many people chase after a "deep soundstage" and in my experience this has to do more with the preamp / amplifier that you choose -- as long as the speaker has good resolution.

If I remember, these speakers sounded bigger than you would think, mostly because the top mounted ribbon tweeter causes high frequencies to reflect off the rear wall and ceiling.  Some speakers are engineering to have a 360 degree dispersion (such as the MBL speakers) and this gives you the impression of a bigger sound.  However, it can cause slightly less resolution because you are hearing a smearing of all the waveforms.  With the Kaos Vox, I don't think that's as much of a problem because it's only the high frequencies which are sent out with reflections.
audio_phool's avatar
audio_phool
87 posts
 
@auxinput Thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree that having a top mounted tweeter would help in having large sound-stage. I have seen many of the very high end speakers such as ones from Von Schweikert Audio use an additional tweeter (usually ribbon) mounted on the back side of the speaker for the ambience/sound-stage. Hence top mounted tweeter seems to be a very clever design alternative to using separate back-mounted one.
I just want to know all these clever designs are not causing any glaring issues in the overall sound of the speaker as having a clever design is one part but implementing them to have good sound is different story.
I agree on the pre-amp/amp part regarding soundstage. IMO your entire upstream chain is going to decide how how well these sound as every component has contribution to overall final sound of your system. Thankfully I have Bakoon Amp 13-R (doing dual duty of headphone amp and stereo integrated amp) which is supposed to have one of the best pairing with these speakers as Martin from SoundKaos has designed the speaekrs with this amp.

Regards,Saurabh
auxinput
2,921 posts
 
I took a quick look at the Bakoon.  It looks very high end, but it's a pretty low power amp (only 25 watts per channel).  If you are looking at the Vox, I would go for the Vox 3a or 3afw as these are just a bit more efficient at 92db than the 3f.  At 25 watts per channel, you want a pretty efficient speaker.

You probably have found the following review already:

https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/soundkaos7/

It's a 9 page incredibly detailed review with tons of technical detail and internal/construction pictures.  The cabinet construction is excellent in my opinion and they pack a whole lot into a very small cabinet.  The two 5" woofers essentially make it a 7" three-way speaker.  If you can afford the cost of the 3a, I would definitely recommend that over the 3f.
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