Who is excited about Capital Audiofest 2023?

So the sound level is the only possible difference in sound between rooms?

Of course not. Read what I actually said which is “it often helps”.

Mainly the sound meter is a useful tool to identify differences in bass extension and levels Room to room. I’ve found some rooms are bass heavy and others bass shy and others just right. It helps to verify what you hear.

Bass levels have a big impact on what you hear. Too much bass tend to obscure detail in the midrange. Too little tends to make the midrange sound more pronounced.

The meter also helps confirm what you are hearing room to room and better understand why things sound different or not.

Also my ears are older and no longer hear “air” fully well out to 20khz, but the sound meter app on my iPhone has that covered much better than I. Just because I can’t hear something doesn’t mean a “high end” system gets a free pass to slack off.

I was at the show the whole day but I saw no people pulling their decibel meters out of their pockets or oscilloscopes.

Did you check what people were actually looking at when they had their smartphones out? Sound meter apps are a real thing! There could have been nefarious measuring going on right under your nose.  Things are not always what they appear to be.😉

I dunno manmap. Going to shows just to stare at your “smartphone” decibel meters is kinda sick. But whatever pleasures you… 

@thyname can’t get anything by you.  But don’t worry I stare at lots of things and my ears even still function as well.  It’s a neat trick.  Try it you’ll like it!🙏

I went today...

• Caladans: wasn’t my music choice, sounded a bit thin lacked lower end gravitas.. but nice and tight, fast, and great tone in the mids and decent highs. a lot of speaker for the price
• Easiest to listen to: NSMT (monitors+bandpass sub combo) smooth and true.
• 300B integrated that caught my eye: the Westinghouse 91E (it was driving the top full range driver only of an active sub tower) didn’t love the bass/midbass integration - which wasn't powered by the Westinghouse, rather the active speaker itself. I would have liked to have seen them driving a speaker full range alone, 25 watts per channel after all. A 5 year warranty on 300B tubes (!)
• Worst sound: didn’t note the brand, a larger 3rd floor mini ball room was open baffle 7’ tall ribbon/planar + bass modules (4 towers total) maybe too far away from the back wall but sounded very thin and hotel california was painfully edgy.
• The horns in the Viva room had a surprisingly (albeit narry) honky tone in the upper bass/lower mid that was distracting
• MBL - first time in person, impressive
• My favorite of the day: Consonos, their midbass (open baffle) and sealed sub blended beautifully. it’s a 4 way with the 3 higher freq drivers being open baffle and highest 2 are planar drivers. The source was a Mytek Empire and their in-house amps were hidden (their faceplates didn’t make it to the show so they put them behind a curtain). Supposedly each driver is actively driven by it’s own 400w amp, so 8 amp channels in total. I think the speakers are $17k and the speakers + amps are $70k, so with the Mytek it’s < $100k. Trounced some other $200-300k combos. (I was in the room at a less busy time and he played several requests of songs I know well, I went straight home and compared - damn... damn.... damn...)
• several separate beautiful recordplayer setups played dirty records, annoying pops and such during playback...
• Oh the bacch-sp was cool not too exaggerated to be fake, he also took requests. I am eager to get my setup, was able to talk to the founder/professor - said they’d be shipping my kit next week so will report back on how it works in a new thread.