Here is my report. Keep in mind I did not have much time in each room so these are little more than first impressions. I took some notes on my iphone just so I would remember what I thought. Sorry in advance for the picture quality.
Room 634 – Spatial Triode Master with zotl 45w OTL amps. Lampi DAC. I liked this version of the OBs much better than what I heard last year. It’s basically a coax over a bass driver. See the picture for the no phase plug approach. Very smooth mids for a coax, slightly warm. Bass was tight and tuneful. Did not hit as hard as bi-amped augies. Musical though.
Room 644 – Voxativ – In a TL configuration I think. Slightly hot mids. Wide soundstage. Clear as a bell. Maybe too clear to the point of being analytical. Forward sounding. This was one of their base models though. Not the mega expensive versions. Overall, I was expecting less single driver issues for drivers in this price range. Maybe their high end stuff is better.
Room 506 – Pure Audio. Unfortunately no Voxativ in this room. Instead they had a horn in the middle positon. They had the Voxativ drivers there, but the guy forgot some hardware to mount them. Anyway, very nice sound overall. Pretty whopper Xover. They were driving them with SS. I think he said 100 watts. What I went to this room for was the Voxativ, but also to hear their neo version of the Augie. Very nice, tight bass but it did not hit me like the Augie. We were able to crank it up on some tunes that I knew including a live track that has killer bass that hits you in the chest. It wasn’t there. These are tighter than the augie, but just don’t hit like them. Keep in mind that I am bi-amping at home with a Crown amp. I asked the guy if people biamp these speakers and he said “all the time.”
Room 504 – Well pleased Audio Vida. This was a single driver in a unique horn configuration. Bottom ported with the base of the speaker underneath angled up to diffuse the output. Overall, I found the single driver a bit hot on some tracks. Bass was just very mushy to me.
434 – Emerald Physics
I always go to the Emerald Physics room in hopes of hearing good OB sound and up to this point, come away disappointed. This year was different. I guess he has a new version of his design but it didn’t look much different from past designs. I asked him what was different and he said he had no electronic room correction going on this year. Whatever it was, I found his room listenable, the bass was authoritative and under control, and for the first time I was impressed with the speakers. He still tries to quick sell you everything in the room which is annoying, but at least it sounded good this year.
His approach to the bass speaker seemed novel to me. Mounted in front of the driver is a carbon fiber molded cone that feeds into a large port tube. Not sure what this does but it looked like it functions as a focused passive radiator. The bass did not seem muffled.
432 – Sanders Sound Systems
These were high efficiency electrostatic speakers. Unfortunately, the designer was not in the room when I was there and the information I got from the guy running the room was dicey. I think he said that he was running the electrotats with 6 watts and the enclosed subs with 900 watts. He said something about volts rather than watts, but I don't know this technology well enough to know what he meant.
Talk about a sense of scale. These cast a huge image, had controlled bass and ample treble. It was like the whole room was electric. You could easily sense when people were moving around the room. I didn’t catch the cost, but they looked pretty expensive and sounded better than a lot of what I heard. Very impressive.
I did stop by 514, the Wyred 4 Sound room. Sounded very nice. It’s hard for me to evaluate a DAC though. Too many other varialbles. I also stopped by MarkAudio SOTA room, 522. I didn’t like the way the speakers sounded. Poor setup too. Just a bunch of different speakers lined up with no toe in across the front of the room.
I stopped by the Schitt Audio room, 408. They were just running a Bifrost multi-bit and one of their tube pre’s. High end speakers though and it sounded great. Makes me want to multi-bit my Bifrost uber.
Unfortunately, I did not make it to the Harbeth room. I have heard their speakers paired with Vinnie’s amp in the past and it was my best of show pick. I also stopped by the PS Audio room on my way out. Paul was not there.
So, I think I covered most of the ground I wanted to cover. Overall, I have to say that the sound was better this year. More room treatments for sure. I came away fairly impressed with most of the OBs I heard. Sorry if I didn’t have comments on all the rooms suggested. I did visit them all. I had one shot at each room and if they were giving a speech or futzing with equipment, I had to move on.
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Axpona 2017 (Read 26296 times)
