IN! Oh wait, you mentioned me already...oh crap, I just realized in my meeting this afternoon we are discussing a business trip for training in April. I hope the days don't overlap!

And yes, I still celebrate my own birthday.  ;)

Sounds like fun!  I am not far from there at all, near Washington and 75th.  As we get closer let's arrange a time and place to meet and share contact details.

I'm considering a DAC upgrade and it is between the forthcoming Schiit Yggdrasil and the Decware DSD.  An audition would be amazing.

Rob

Palomino, I have had the Bifrost, Bifrost Uber, and now Gungnir.  I have a pretty good hold on their "house sound"!  :)  The Yggdrasil is their statement and supposedly will be released by end of March (last I read) but it has been rife with delays so who knows.  Schiit and Decware are two companies I have mad respect for so choosing between their DACs is like trying to pick between chocolate and vanilla; love them both.

Another great idea!  I can do this anytime just need a couple weeks notice.  I have two young kids (2 and 4) that dictate schedules.  What are your speakers, Palomino?

Well I don't know about Palomino but I welcome enablers in my life!  I seriously eat, sleep and breath music and audio.  

I have a dedicated room in my basement tweaked to the nth degree.  I'm sure it's not perfect since all of my achievements were born in a vacuum independent of any experienced audiophile (I started audio on a whim in late 2011), but rather 1500+ of hours of personal Internet research over the last 3.5 years.

So yeah, I'm pumped too and there's nothing wrong with that!  Any bonafide audiophile would do but Decware owners are special.  Why?  Because we know what no one else does... can't do much better!

Whatever and whenever you guys want to meet is fine, and I'll throw my house in as a potential.

Rob

He starts out innocent enough..."check out my modded Zen amp, Nice, sound, huh?"

The next thing you know, he putting a P10 power supply in your system and blowing your mind with a ZMA (insert evil laugh here).

You wake up one day and you have 3 Decware amps, 4 sets of speakers a room lined with sound treatments and you're frothing at the mouth building QRD13 diffusers in you garage on the weekends.

it's a downward spiral...

As the 3rd member, former Naperville-ian, and the lone WI representative of the CDaPs, I am in for AXPONA on Saturday as well.  My buddy is coming with me too.  And oh yeah, I have a dedicated listening room as well  ;D  None of that digital malarky for me though ... it's all analog, all the time.

Palomino, get a new chair yet?

Ok, well we need to arrange a time now.  I'm thirsty for a DAC-off.  Is there an initiation or hazing process to join CDAPS?

Quote:


Haha ... I almost snorted beer through my nose when I read this!

Ok we'll figure out a place/time to meet.

Rob, left you a VM.  We are getting together today at 1:00 if you want to come by.  Give a call and I'll give you directions.

Quote:


And this is why we get a long...I totally get this phrase.


I was amazed at how swapping out those two QRD diffusers we designed and you built simply collapsed the sound.

I'm glad that we also hear the improvement of Micro Detail and Dynamics that I caught at my place( before I mucked up my sound field moving things around).

Now we just need you foaming at the mouth while building a couple more pairs of QRD 13, tear down all the crap on your front wall and replace it with absorbers/diffusers, take some measurements, and design some nice helmholtz bass traps! Easy Peazy! LOL

We're not experts by any stretch - but here is our methodology that seems to work pretty well.

Typically we go in blind. I'll pop over to Palo's house, and he'll plop me in the hot-seat and just play some pre-queued tracks. Then he'll look at me expectantly. I say the first thing that comes to mind - for example, when he finally got his room balanced with absorbers and psudo-diffusers, I said "the reverb in the recording is contiguous". His words were "I now have a wall of sound", but we meant the same thing. The soundfield was connected left to right, and you could hear the *room* that the recording was made in, more than the room we were sitting in. It was a huge leap for his system, and it was exactly what he was hoping I'd hear - no prompting, no hints, just set me down and let me say the first thing that comes out. Steve has taught me to trust my instincts and trust myself - I tend to be right far more often if I'm not second guessing myself or keeping my thoughts to myself.

The other method we do, say one of us brings a new piece of equipment over to try out. We listen to a couple well known tracks on the current system as a reference (whatever  system that may be), then we introduce the new gear and we each take the hot seat for a couple songs. At the end we compare notes. I'd say 80% of the time we say pretty much the same thing. I might say the treble is etched, Palo might say treble is harsh. But we both spot a problem with treble (for example) being the key.

If we find a problem we work backwards from there. In this most recent case, something was off in Palomino's playback software (we were afraid it was a hardware issue). Once we got that figured out, the system was crushingly good.

I understand acoustical concepts and the gear pretty well, Palo is really good at actually implementing my ideas. It helps that he has a dedicated room to focus on. I've also heard some amazing sound before, mostly at Decware - so I have some high reference stored away in my head and each time we get a small step closer to that reference sound. Someday I hope to supersede that Reference Sound I heard at Steve's place 17 or so years ago. I have the gear, that's for sure, I just need the room!

Even with all the books I've read, and brilliant people I've followed in forums, I think I learn the most from our CDAPS meets where we listen and try to wrangle out the best sound we can with the gear we have, and just bouncing ideas off each other. So we welcome more people and more rooms into the fold - it's only going to help us all in the long run.

And yes, I'm the Enabler Extraordinaire  :)

Well, I have a lot of opinions.  Unfortunately I have had no one to share them with, so it plays out as sort of an inner monologue.  A 2nd (or 3rd) opinion would be nice.  

It's really weird (and a bit unnerving) for me to think of it, really, the potential of experienced audiophiles listening to my system.  I think I previously stated I have 1500+ hrs of research under my belt.  I assure you it's far more than that.  The end result of all this time and money is something I'm completely astounded by (**pats self on back**).  But, plopping someone down in the hot seat and waiting for an opinion would be the longest 10 mins of my life!  

I'm still pissed I missed Sunday.  When's the next one?

Rob

So many exhibitors, so little time.

Dave, any suggested speaker companies?  Some of the usual suspects there.  Any gems?

Pal...below is my list of speakers...
-Audio Kinesis
-Vapor Audio
-Salk Signature Sound
-Acoustic Zen
-Daedalus Audio
-Legacy Audio
-Zu Audio

Great adds Beowulf!

I agree on the Audio Kinesis.  Love the way they look!  I'd like to see Volti as well, which may be paired with Border Patrol and Triode Wire Labs.  Triode Pete is a great guy and I have a lot of his stuff.  

Last year I hit up the High Water Sound room and didn't know until afterward how many fans Jeff Catalano has.  Definitely the coolest exhibitor at the show.  Would like to give his room another shot assuming he's there.

Agree with LR on the megabuck rooms.  When I went into the Constellation/Kharma room last year I felt like I had just met a celebrity....  Totally starstruck by those Constellation monos.

Hey All- if you check the AXPONA website you can see which exhibitors are in which rooms, but you can't see it the other way around.  Doesn't make sense to me, so I put together a file that shows exhibitors by room.  See attached.

Rob

I'd expect we will have a flurry of activity closer to the date.  I'd like to see if we can coordinate a meetup.  I am just not on top of the audio market the way you guys are and figure I can learn a thing or two following you around.

So I have visited the web sites of the suggested speaker manufacturers.  So far Daedalus has my highest level of interest.  Sensitivity + craftsmanship.  I'll look for some reviews.

Palomino, Raven and I are having a post-show beer and recapping what we heard.  I'm going to do my best of list later this evening, and Raven might play the snarky side and do his worst of.  More to come.

Good Morning Everyone,

As promised, I'm going to do my "best of", but I'm also in the mood to do a "worst of/biggest disappointments" list.  First, I want to point out the prevalence of bass issues.  Seriously, with all these genius audio minds can't anyone figure out a way to eliminate this?  EVERY ROOM had room boom, with few exceptions.  The rooms that seemed to handle it best also happen to be on my "best of" list.  After a couple rooms I had to try to evaluate systems outside of this issue, trying to pretend like it wasn't happening.

Without further ado:

Best Of
1. Pure Audio Project / Grant Fidelity Room

I guess there should be no surprise in it for me as a proud OB speaker owner, but this room really took the cake for me.  Open sound, well balanced and no bass issues!  They sounded more coherent than my Hawthornes due to the full-range 8" Tang Band driver, and had me dreaming of inserting a full-ranger into my baffles one day.  Tom and Eric had already decided how they were going to build a pair by the time we got back to our cars.  Speakers were $3,500 and the Grant Fidelity amp was also $3500.  Cheapest room at the show?  If not it might have been awfully close.  As they turned up the volume, the sound just got better unlike any other room.  To top it off, they played my Porcupine Tree request.  Bravo!  

2. Volti Audio / Border Patrol / Triode Wire Labs

They didn't play music that I like and there was a tiny bit of boom here, but my God, the realism and tone were just awesome.  I don't think any other design can compete with horns in this area.  Are the Voltis worth $25k?  I think you can come damn close for far less, but in absolute terms I didn't hear anything yesterday that could compete.  In general I preferred the horn systems to your typical box.  I also felt the Classic Audio room had potential but it didn't beat the Voltis.

3. Harbeth / Vinnie Rossi

I thought about putting this room above the Volti Room based on price-to-performance factors, but overall I feel it belongs here.  Vinnie Rossi has a place in my heart due to my ownership of a Red Wine Audio Signature 15 early in my audio career.  I was surprised to learn yesterday he is abandoning electronics under this moniker and taking his new self-titled project forward, and I can hear why!  His all-in-one box really did everything well and paired wonderfully with the Harbeth HL5s.  I had never heard Harbeths in person, but had read about their glorious midrange.  I agree with that assessment.  Buttery smooth.  I did notice a bit of truncation in the highs, but couldn't have cared less yesterday.  He also played a CDApS favorite demo track in Sara Bareilles "Yellow Brick Road" which allowed for mental comparisons to our own systems.  For a show rig, it compared very favorably!  

4. Vivid Audio / Lumin / Convergent Audio Tech

I had never heard Vivid but they have been one of the most intriguing speakers for me.  Yesterday's performance will not diminish my enthusiasm.  If I had to own one "modern sounding" speaker, the Vivid Giyas would be it.  Talk about detail, air and tonal accuracy.  In spades!  Not sure Tom and Eric were as impressed, but I was having a lot of fun in this room.

5. Merrill Audio / Sadurni

Go ahead and Google Sadurni Staccato speakers.  Now imagine them in a room about 13' - 14' wide.  Then imagine this 108db/w/m speaker being biamped with 800w of Class D power.  Yeah.  Givin the vastly undersized room I felt the organizers at Blue Smoke did really well with their demo, giving us some very cool and dynamic material from Nils Lofgren to strut these horns' stuff.  It was the best treated room at the show, with diffusers on both sides and a Hemholz resonator in the back.   Again, I think I'm alone in my love here but at least the guys got some diffuser ideas.

Worst Of

1. Zu Audio Omen Def Mk II

Sean.  Are you deaf?  Your rig sounds broken.  And on Day 2?  C'mon!!

2.  Zu Audio Druid Mk V

Sean.  Please give me one redeeming quality about what I'm hearing.  Far better than the Omen Def room, but still deserving of penultimate status as Worst Of.  At least we got some free t-shirts.

3.  Magico / Aesthetix / Clearaudio

Ok, this room didn't actually sound bad, but I cannot see why anyone would spend one-tenth of the money this system cost for this sort of performance.  Am I wrong to expect to be blown-away when I walk into a room with over $500k in components.  If I am, I like being wrong.  There was another guy walking out of another Quintessence Audio room across the hall with Dynaudio speakers, and we all heard him say "that was horrendous!".  Yeah, very disappointing, sir.

I echo Tom's statements, hug your Decware amps.  One thing was hammered home for me yesterday.  You DO NOT need to spend a FRACTION of what these systems cost for drool-worthy, I can't believe what I'm hearing sound.  This should come as no surprise to the Decware crowd, we all seem to love value.  But for me, I've never been an "anti-high end" type of guy.  Hey, I'm a capitalist.  I'm not going to sit back a spew venom  because something costs $10k, or $25k or whatever.  Vote with your wallets, people.  But I think I'm a half-step closer now to believing that even in the pricing stratosphere you need to do a lot of work to separate the wheat from the chaff.  There are some truly breathtaking components that justifiably cost gobs of money (see Volti, Vivid Audio) but in most cases I think it's a matter of catering to those with more money than patience.

But hey, the people watching was fun too!  Maybe Eric will entertain us and judge some people in his next post.

All-in-all a great birthday present to myself.  I had a blast.

Rob

I think one reason for playing 'slow jazz' as demo material is that there's a better chance of determining accuracy using that music than electric instrument based music such as rock, funk. . . . I've heard systems that sound great with rock that sound really inaccurate with jazz and classical. . . . Guess it doesn't matter if you always listen to one style of music, but if you have a very accurate system for jazz or classical rock can still sound amazing.

Thanks guys for a great report, I really loved reading about the gear.  I'm also glad that 2 of the rooms I requested (Harbeth and Volti) got a good response as it seems like I'm on the rigt track.  Although I doubt I would ever be able to afford the Volti's unless I hit the lotto, but some Harbeth models are within reach.  I've heard it mentioned that if you like the Harbeth Super HL5 plus, the smaller 30.1's are even better (and less expensive), but you would just need to incorporate subs with them.

I remember Steve saying that the Torii wasn't a good pairing with the Harbeth's, but I would think with their spec'd sensitivity that the ZMA could rock those ... even though I've heard guys running these with some Audio Note 10 watts SETs though.

Question:
Did you guys happen to hear the Audio Note UK room?  I read on another forum that the speakers were very unimpressive for the cost.  The thing is the speakers are really hyped up on that other forum, but for some reason I just don't think they are as good as everyone says they are ... which is strange because I've never even heard them.

Wow, I can't believe I missed Audio Note UK.  I've been interested in the brand for quite some time but my eyes failed me when picking rooms to visit.  Oh well.

Beowulf - I would say under show conditions just about everything is unimpressive for the cost.  However, I really wish I could opine on this room for you!

I'm still leery of full range driver's that go up to 10 or 12k and no higher.
I bet Palomino, those big Eminence in the Pure Audio Project's do pressurize the room quite well.

However, I am so pleased with my MTM config in my Adagio's, my under hung neodymium driver's up to 4.5k and then the tweets take over on up. I can get the room to shake with Marcus Miller playing right now with deep tight bass with no sacrifice to my midrange! They also sound better being turned up now too. These Mundorf Mcap Supremes have me scratching my head!  

So, I'm out of the Speaker market. Bring on Steve's new Preamp in the fall.

Oh, those Tang Band's say 20k? Still, a whizzer cone though.... . You get a lot of whizzin' from 8k to 13k that you can hear.  ;D

Dave1210 wrote on 04/27/15 at 16:09:02:


This leader was formerly known as Dollar Brand, and is a South African pianist who probably spent more time "in exile" than in his homeland. A fascinating composer and player, with a lot of great recordings from the 'sixties on; his wife Samitha Bea Benjamin is a very unique singer.

Dave1210 - what a great story!  In retrospect I feel like I was a bit hard on the Druids (not on the OD's, though, what was up with that?).  I went in expecting a lot and just didn't think they played the room that well.  At any rate, I haven't lost any love for Zu as I know how hard it must be to pull off great sound in unfamiliar rooms.

I'm also a bit relieved you heard good things from the Magico room.  We only gave that room a few minutes, but with so much to see you have to decide to stay or leave in a short time span.  To me it sounded like every other room at the show; just ok.  I am going to check out that disc though and see how it sounds in my own setup.

Palo - you know that one place where I keep that thing that has all those files? Yeah, that album Dave mentioned is there.  :)

ProggRob…I don’t know what was up with the Omen Defs, but I have heard them sound great.  I was hoping to be impressed with the FirstWatt J2 amp that was driving them, but that may have been part of the problem.  I really can’t say for sure.  I also don’t know why they had the room set up to maximize soundstage width, while likely minimizing soundstage depth.  I would have preferred the speakers to be closer together and pulled further from the front wall.

Thanks for the disc suggestion Dave.  I downloaded a couple of tracks just to see if I liked the music.  It's good and as you say, very well produced.  I think you are in for a treat.  You can check out all the tracks on iTunes if anyone is interested.

While I spec'd out the PAP open baffles, I don't think I will build them.  I am looking for something to play with a Zen and at 92db, I'm not sure how they will play.  Rob's 97db Hawthornes are probably about the lowest I would go.

I can just give you the El Caminos for a while.  I do want to hear the Zu but know what you mean on the transport.

Thanks Dave for more excellent comments!  

I don't know if you've ever been to the Audio Circle Vapor forums, but those Perfect Storm speakers were a disaster to get together and took forever to build.  The story is that a guy ordered them originally and paid something like 21K up front and was promised 10-12 weeks and they ended up being over 14 months, to top it off he requested a refund after several months of missed deadlines and Vapor refused ... there are ongoing battles between Vapor and that guy throughout that forum for the last several months.  Unfortunately I still don't think they issued a refund to him.  Seems his refund is dependent on somebody else buying them or something to that effect ... just a horrible business transaction.

I don't think many Decware fans would be too interested as they are not very efficient enough to be driven by tubes, but just wanted to make people aware.  The ironic thing is through all of that nonsense and missed deadlines, bad business rapport, etc., etc. if the guy posts a negative remark in regards to this everybody on the Vapor forum attacks the guy instead of Vapor ... strange world over there.

Also, I forgot to mention...

My buddy and I got a good chuckle out of the Hanson folks explaining the “low cost” system they put together for the show.  This Devialet (DAC/Integrated) is only $10K, these Focal speakers are $5K, the two REL subs are only $4K, the vault server $1K and all the cables just $3K.  To add insult to injury, the system didn’t sound good (at least to me).  The Pure Audio Project room sounded much better and for significantly less money. 

In the electronics design arena we have a term for miracle devices that get pushed on us by apps engineers and then never arrive:
"VaporWare" as opposed to hardware, firmware and software.
Obviously they got their name honestly.  ;D

Parttime Audiophile's take on the Grand Fidelity/Pure Audio project room

http://theaudiotraveler.com/2015/05/27/axpona-2015-grant-fidelity-and-pureaudiop...