Pacific Audio Fest

I attended Friday and Saturday.

3 rooms were of note.

Von Schweikert Room. Big room and Huge soundstage. I found it hard to leave the room.

Linkwist room. Very tight and tuned sound. Not too crazy about the looks, but a very good sound.

The Pillium/Alsyvox Room. BEST OF SHOW! Incredible tonal balance, relaxed sound, clear soundstage and unbelievably toned, well defined bass. Never boomy (which I heard in many rooms as they are not the best rooms for demos). Several times, people looked around for "the subwoofer". No subwoofer.

 Another thing I noticed- there were no room treatments! These are my dream speakers. The Pillium amp would be nice, too.

This speaker called Linkwitz looks funny but it sounds clear and holographic.

I only had one day, and couldn’t hit all the rooms. I thought these rooms were excellent:

1. ACORA SRC-2 speakers with VAC mono blocks and preamp - Big room, and they presented an amazing soundstage and lifelike sound.
2. Linear Tube Audio preamp and mono blocks with Daedalus speakers: Gorgeous sound and speakers (just beautiful wood and joinery). I am thinking of getting an LTA preamp. The speakers are very efficient, and a great pairing with the LTA 20-40W amps and integrated.
3. LINKWITZ speakers - A total surprise. I know the name and a bit of the founder (RIP) but these speakers really surprised me. Amazing omnidirectional presentation, and a huge deep soundstage. The speakers really disappeared. They are odd looking, almost a homemade look but the sound! They come paired with 5 channel monoblocks (class D) so that each driver has its own channel. (The MBL Radialstrahler (120?) is a fancier omni that would have to be considered too.)
4. Acapella Campanile horn hybrid - Lovely sound. I have little experience with horns, but was pleasantly surprised.
5. MAGICO A5’s, Constellation Argo integrated, Berkeley DAC, Aurender streamer: Excellent overall. If I had $25-30k for speakers, these would be in the running.
6. JOSEPH AUDIO Perspective (or Pulsar?) Graphene2 - Very pleasantly surprised. Gorgeous and lovely sounding. I didn’t get to hear their stand mount monitors which have gotten excellent reviews, darn it. Mr. Joseph is a charming fellow, in my brief chat with him.
   
   I wish I could have gone back on Sunday to hear some of the rooms mentioned here. Next time I will spend 2 days. The hotel has a very odd layout which made navigating a bit of a pain.

This system sound very musical.

The most notable thing is the cost of amplifiers is modest compared with that of speaker.

Raidaho speaker cost 70k$ while Margules power amp and pre amp cost 10k$ and 7k$ only.

I got the feeling that Margules pre is good.

Thus I bought it at show discount price of 6k$.

After installing in my system, I am happy with it.

It use 4 12AU7(ECC82) and one 6922(6jd8) tubes.

Thus lot of room for tube rolling.

I replaced the stock Elextro harmonic tubes with NOS Amperex.

It really sound gracious.

This room also gave very musical sound.

Well Audio is making excellent amps and dac.

I almost pulled the trigger for its new tube Dac called Cipher.
 

http://www.wellsaudio.com/cipher-dac