Report from Rocky Mountain AudioFest

Just back home to Seattle from three days there with my friend, Peter. Had a great time overall, and it got better from day two as I had more enthusiasm hearing a greater number of better sounding rooms. There were still plenty of compromised rooms, but I guess I didn't let them damp my enthusiasm as much. The highlight for me was in meeting some great folks there. Peter and I shared a van to the airport and a nice conversation with Arnie, one of the founders of Audiogon, who was very responsive to some of our constructive criticisms of recent directions the site has taken and left us with hope that some things may change in the near future. Got to spend some more time with Albert, who is as fine and fun a person, and as much a gentleman as one might imagine from his contributions here. Too many nice conversations and great folks to recount.

As far as the exhibitors, we somehow managed to save the best for last, though certainly not intentionally. In second place for me was the Daedalus / Art Audio system. At the top of my list, was the last room we listened in literally shutting the room down as we lingered for as many cuts we could get them to play. The MBL room playing their larger speakers was truly breathtaking. Utterly astounding and the closest to the illusion of live music in the room from virtually any corner of the room. Effortless. I'm glad we took it in last as it would have made everything else a bit of a disappointment in comparison.

There are a few more rooms I enjoyed listening to, among them, in no particular order, some of the memorable ones for me from today were:

A.R.T. Loudspeakers from Scotland
Proclaim speakers
Blue Circle
Studio Electric Speakers and Amp
Atmasphere
Modwright
Quicksilver (back again)
Vanderstein/Ayre (back again)

Overall for the weekend (we did not get a chance to listen in every room...not even close), top 5 for me:

1. MBL
2. Daedalus / Art Audio
3. Proclaim / Red Rock Audio
4.(Roger) Sanders / Innersound
5. Pioneer / Bel Canto

I had a great time, but I think this will last me another ten years or so before I need to try it out again. I look forward to reading other's impressions.

Marco

I thought the Wilson Maxx sounded spacious and real. Does anybody find the Sophia 2 and Watt Puppy 8 boxed in? I came to the RMAF expecting great things from Wilson Audio all around, walked away with such extreme difference of opinion for the Maxx versus Sophia and Watt Puppy. I think both Watt Puppy and Maxx were driven by BAT, while Sophia by Levinson 436.

Yipean-I didn't stay long enough In the Apogee room to really have as long a listen that I would have liked. Way to much to hear, but long enough to know I liked them very much.Thank you for telling me what model It was also as the room was very dark with just a light behind the speaker. Nice. Friday Is a very short day only 6 hours of listening! I would dearly love to spend the whole 3 days, maybe next year. Judging from the threads there were loads of rooms that I missed that had great sounding gear(boo). Still It Is a great way to spend 6 hours as It Is a truly great show for the money and with guys/gals that actually wanna talk hi-fi.Had a great chat with Duke from here and also Mr Tyler to name a few. Trouble Is also when one starts chatting, that eats up valuable listening time. I don't know If anyone noticed how many rooms seem to have speakers that were around the 7-9k mark. Anyone else notice or was It just me?
I was also glad that the hotel put up signs for us to use the stairs to get to other floors, which was good as last year there were no signs and It was a calculated gamble to use the stairs and I was not sure about being able to get back on the floors without walking down to the fire exit on the ground floor. The MBL room that people say sounded good I thought It was to bright, maybe the speakers were to close to the listening seats?, If my memory serves me correctly.
I didn't think music was being played to loudly generally. Needless to say after all I heard I shant be rushing out to change my current speakers for speakers that will surely cost lotsa moolah, although the Maxx's were sure nice, now where can I get 26k from hmm....(relax dear I am only kidding). I can't remember If the nice chap In the Maxx room told me the cd player was $40k or that the amps and cd player were, does anyone know the prices please? Roll on 2008!

I thought the Wilson Maxx sounded spacious and real. Does anybody find the Sophia 2 and Watt Puppy 8 boxed in?

I was surprised that I liked the sound of the Sophia 2, as I'd heard it before at a shop and did not like it at all in that setup. The Maxx2 did not grab me, though I don't recall whether it was sounding "boxed-in". It was one of those rooms that I did not spend much time in. My objection to a whole lot of the rooms is that they sounded overdamped...somewhat muted and restrained. This almost always was in systems using the short wall of the room, for some reason. Mike Sanders told me that there room started out being much to bright and lively and that they had to work to tame that. They were in one of the larger rooms which were in the minority. Two of the rooms I liked best, MBL and Sanders/Innersound, seemed to use little or no room treatment at all. The Sanders/Innersound system used very narrow speaker placement straddling one of the room corners. His speakers couldn't have been more than 4-5 feet apart yet they were imaging monsters frequently rendering images well beyond the outer edges of the speakers. The Proclaim also used a corner-straddling setup, as did a few others.

Yes, there was too much to hear and not enough time, I'd agree. A few other good rooms I'm reminded of by other's posts...and I'm sure I'm still leaving some others out:

Audiokinesis and Apogee both had me engaged and sitting more than just a minute and tapping my toes. Ralph Karsden (Atmasphere) was telling us about a new single-driver speaker from a Japanese manufacturer that had an active electromagnetic (hope I'm getting that right), ultra-efficient driver. We tried, but never found the room in the tower. Did anyone hear those speakers and or can recall the name? Ralph could not recall the name, but thought it was on the 10th floor. He seemed very impressed by the design as he'd been thinking of doing the same thing himself.

The impressions here are a good illustration of how subjective all this stuff really is. A room that may have one person completely engaged may send another turning tail for the next room. On more than one occasion I went into a room where someone was leaving commenting how great the room sounded, yet when I went in what I heard there did not thrill me at all.

Marco

Regarding the 'too loud' and 'bad sound' problems at the show, here's my take. Most speaker manufacturers, it seems, wanted to bring their flagship model. These are typically large. As in 'far too large for a tiny hotel room.' In general, I found the rooms that sounded really good were using speakers that were at least reasonably suited to the room size.

Standouts for me were Selah Audio, North Creek / Advanced Ribbon Technologies, Analysis Audio, and GamuT. The first two represented high value; the second two were higher performing, but far, FAR more expensive.

Underwhelmed by the MBL / Kharma room and the Acapella / Einstein room. Both had quite good sound, but when you consider the price, I was unimpressed. And both setups were in suitably large rooms and well-treated, leaving little room for the 'show conditions are difficult' defense.

Had fun at the Nordost cable demo, where different cables were swapped out to demonstrate the improvements as you move up in their line. As I've said before, any non-believers are deaf or lying. Whether $16,000 is best spent on a 1m set of interconnects or 1,000 CDs is an entirely different issue =)

My findings only, of course.....