I'm more of the Peter Parker photographer than a reporter, but yeah, what he said. It helps that we have similar interests so his list is my list.

I'm also curious if anyone will be showing off magic bells or little stones or cupcakes or some such.

Any background on these rooms?  Or are you trying not to bias the reporters?

My buddy and I will also be there on Sat.  As HST once said, "buy the ticket, take the ride".   Let me know if you guys want to meet up for a beer and compare notes.

The AURALIC Dac is on my list of gear to hear and they will be there.  

Unfortunately, Ayre will not be participating.  I was hoping to hear their SS amps w/o negative feedback.  The Ayre DAC's would have been interesting too.

Quote:

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Marten and Aesthetix are on my fantasy wish list of audio gear. Just interested in other opinions after looking at the list of vendors. I wish I could go, but I can't.

Sounds like it was a fun excursion!

I'm looking forward to the DirectStream. My ZP3 is saying "Come on sucker, I bet I can best ya!" We'll see!

Below are a few systems that stood out to me (doesn’t include the obvious super expensive systems, Sonus Faber/Audio Research, etc).  

Acoustic Zen Crescendo mkii speakers driven by triode japan TRX-845 mono block tube amps (using either 845 or 211 tubes...neither of which I have ever heard of before) sounded very musical.  Tone and timbre were excellent and I found the presentation to be very engaging.  The room was bad, maybe even awful (very small, no bass traps), and I still enjoyed the music, so I can only imagine what this system would sound like in a treated room.  I would love to hear the ZMA paired up with these speakers.  Too bad they are 10x the cost of the 944’s.  $16,500.

The Venture system was excellent.  We were surprised more people weren’t in the room at any one time, but maybe it was because it was a bit off the beaten path (near the Starbucks).   The system sounded very natural and lively. Tone was incredible.  At one point I really thought someone was playing a saxophone in the room.  Speaking of the room, they were in a huge room and they had the system pulled out into the middle of the room.  It was a 2.1 system and the sub integrated seamlessly.  Drums sounded particularly natural and lively.  At one point we were listening to Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take 5’ and it was the best reproduction of this track that I have heard.  The drum hits were spectacular.  The speakers will only set you back $36K and they were being driven by 200 watt Venture class A monoblocks that will set you back 120K.  Geeze.  

I was very impressed by the Legacy Aeris speakers.  We stopped into the Legacy room for a quick listen late Saturday (they were playing the Whisper XD’s) and the sound was intriguing enough to stop back on Sunday.  Of the 3 Legacy speakers we heard (Focus SE, Whisper and Aeris) I definitely preferred the Aeris.  The Air Motion tweeters are awesome--incredible air and detail.  At first I thought they might get fatiguing, but they never did.  The speakers were open, fast and had great clarity.  Impressive.  I wish the less expensive (but still expensive) Focus SE speakers sounded as good as the Aeris, but they didn’t.

Best of the Inexpensive (assuming you can call $8500 for a system inexpensive, but compared to most everything else, it was definitely inexpensive)
-Zu Audio Druid mk5 driven by Peahtree nova 220se.  The Zu’s were clear, dynamic, lively.  Bass that hit you in the chest.  This was a fun room.  We spent a lot of time in this room because they were playing real music (all the audiophile stuff gets old after a while).  The Zu guys were knowledgeable, fun, knew about Decware and handed over the iPad and let us dj for a while.  Good stuff.  I could definitely live with the system they had in that room.

Worst of the Inexpensive
-Rega room (small and congested sound)
-Focal Chorus/Yamaha Receiver/VPI Nomad system (reminded me of something you would hear at BestBuy)

Worst of the Expensive
-Wilson Alexia? Speakers being driven by Dan Agostino electronics.  The room was so small and the bass so ridiculous that this truly was a waste.  I would have preferred to just look at the Agostino gear.  

Biggest Surprises
-I expected more of these super expensive systems to have better soundstage depth.  I feel like I can count on 1 hand the systems that had good depth
-I expected to be more wowed by R2R tape
-I expected to leave thinking I really need to get a vinyl front end setup. In general, I wasn’t impressed with the vinyl rigs at the show.  The one vinyl rig that did stand out was in the Room 1234 system.  It was a Clear Audio turntable, AMG tonearm and I can’t remember the cartridge.  
-I didn’t expect to see horn speakers in the Merrill Audio room.  Extremely high power class D monoblocks powering super efficient horns???
-I expected the sweetspot to be larger in the MBL rooms with the radial drivers.  

Great write up.  Sounds like you were able to spend more time there.

Sounds like we agree on the Zu's.  I was impressed.  I never realized how little physical depth there is the those speakers.  For drivers that large I expected them to be 20" deep or something.

I also have to agree with you on the soundstage depth.  Most speakers were only a few feet from the wall.

Legacy Aeris
Sensitivity: (Room, dB@ 2.83V/1m) 95.4 dB

4 ohms = 2 watts;  +3 dB
in room with 2 speakers:  + 1.5 - 3 dB

@90 dB 1w/1m ?

A still have a few more things to share about Axpona, and will share in blocks:

I really enjoyed the Sony room.  They had their top of the line speakers in the room ($30K) and they were being driven by Rogue Audio monoblocks ($15K).  This system had very good depth (one of the few).  The speakers were pulled out from the back wall a little bit, but I don’t remember seeing any room treatments, so overall very impressive for the conditions.  The sound was detailed, airy, musical and smooth (they played a few non-audiophile tracks and it was very listenable). Sony has apparently stepped it up quite a bit.  It’s too bad these speakers are so expensive.  They really did sound excellent.  

I don’t know if this is a stretch or not, but I think there are similarities between the Aerial Acoustic 7T’s ($10K) and the Sony SS AR-1’s ($30K).  It would be interesting to A/B these speakers.  The Sony’s may go lower, but that certainly wouldn’t be worth an additional $20K.  I could be way off on my hypothesis because the 7T’s weren’t at the show and it has been a while since I have heard them, but I am putting it out there.

One other thing to note about the Sony room was they were using their new HAP Z1 ES HI Res music player ($2K) as the source.  I couldn’t say for sure that it sounded good, but they seemed comfortable using it as a source for their flagship speakers.  Oddly enough, the DSD Remastering Engine sounds quite similar to what PS Audio is using in the Direct Stream.  See below:

DSD Remastering Engine

This ideal D/A conversion system combines a high-performance DSP and FPGA (field programmable gate array) to convert all signals to 128 FS DSD signals. It was designed based on know-how garnered from Sony’s direct 8-times oversampling and Extended SBM (Super Bit Mapping) technology for professional recorders.

@ LR,

Yep. I agree ... you have to load your music on it before it wil play it back.  A big downside IMO as I have an NAS that I stream from and prefer to use JRiver to catalog and playback my music as my interface.  Perhaps they will release a straight DAC version in the future.  

I guess it would be OK "if" I didn't already own a PC/NAS combo in my 2 channel system "and" I didn't plan on getting such a combo in the future.  But after owning a PC in my 2 channel stereo and home theater playback chain I would never go without one again as I like surfing and listening to my music at the same time.  And the NAS forget about it ... I can access music from anywhere in my home that has a PC, Xbox, Tablet or Smart Phone and each bedroom has at least a PC and JRiver software.  So it's an all around great feature that I wouldn't want to give up.

I think you would like it quite a bit Dave once it's setup.  I think music from a PC and good DAC can rival rival most CD players that I've heard ~ not to mention the convenience factor once you get your music stored.

Although my good gear is in my living room, there are times that I'm in my bedroom (late at night, especially) and want to listen to something and I just open JRiver from my bedroom PC and my whole digital music and movie catalog is there for me (another thing about an NAS besting just a music server is that it can stream hi-res movies from it as well so we can watch movies, iisten to music, browse photos, etc. in any room).

Thanks for that list, Pal. I've already grabbed a couple of those albums from my regular "CD Shop", I need to grab some more when I get back home tonight. I have a couple friends over to hear how the ZMA sounds now that I've got...I don't know, 400 hours on it or something.

I actually don't recall.  I think they were monoblocks.  It definitely was not what they had them paired with last year.  Sorry

Correction:  I just found this on AC:  The Voltis were powered by a Peachtree Audio integrated and had a Yamaha CD players as its source.  That was good sound.

Correction of my correction.  Found this also on AC:  Voltis were powered by a Peachtree integrated used only as a preamp into Quicksilver EL34 mono amps.

Yeah, the sound on those speakers sounded like all the treble was being grated  through a screen door - really dry and thin. The bookshelf speakers sounded much better comparatively.


Also, I came up with this great Axpona drinking game - I was making up the rules as we walked the floors.

#1 drink anytime you see a toupee

#2 drink anytime you see someone of color (at first it was *all* old white guys - of which I guess I'm close to fitting into that catagory)

#3 drink anytime you see a youngish hipster with manly facial hair and a tube/vinyl/vintage Tee

#4 take two drinks of said hipster brought his hot, much younger girlfriend.

Blah, that's not controversial enough for me.  ::)

You could also add XLR cable under $550 to that list.

I got really damn tired of hearing "our entry level cable starts at $880", or "this cable is only $1679 for the half meter length"

I got a survey for Axpona today, I gave the location and layout decent marks. I honestly think I'll go again next year, for two days even, if it's at that same hotel.

We did not.  Look promising though.  I built a pair of open baffle once and liked the way they sounded.

just getting in on the thread.  yes, the martin logan guy was completely obnoxious and would not shut up.  he carried on a loud conversation with a guy on the other side of the room while he was demoing music instead  of simply walking over to talk to the guy.  
the best thing i came away with was seeing how some of the dealers set up the speakers to help deal with the room problems (in rooms that sounded good).  tried at home and solved a low frequency issue i was having with my err's.

My buddy and I did get to listen to the Spacial speakers.  For background, we spent <10 minutes in the room, mainly because nothing really stood out to us (good or bad).  When we took a break for the day to discuss rooms we would go back to on Sunday, this one didn't make the cut.  I do remember asking the gentleman about the bass response specs, particularly b/c there was a lack of bass being produced (they were quoted as going into the low 40's).  Also, I wasn't familiar with the class D amps driving the speakers.

Agree that the specs might warrant additional consideration for low powered amps, but would probably be best to bring into your own room for a demo (I suppose this applies to anything).

One thing is certain, they look pretty cool and would likely be welcomed by the significant other.  

Thanks Lin.