Group Therapy > Sharing Experiences

RMAF 2011 Report

(1/3) > >>

Carlman:
Any word from folks attending?  It'd be nice to hear what was great, weird, interesting, or whatnot about this year's showing.

Meet any interesting people?  Have a fun experience to share?  Let's hear it! :)

goldlizsts:

--- Quote from: Carlman on October 17, 2011, 01:46:39 PM ---Any word from folks attending?  It'd be nice to hear what was great, weird, interesting, or whatnot about this year's showing.

Meet any interesting people?  Have a fun experience to share?  Let's hear it! :)

--- End quote ---

What's great - the darn show gets bigger each year.  For example, opposite the traditional registration/check-in area, there are now more booths staffed by RMAF.

What's great and not so great - You get overloaded with sooooo many exhibitors.  Things get blurry.  Regardless, it was truly a feast for the ear, tho it's more like the eye that becomes starry with so many great-looking boxes, cases.....

Greater - Made new friends.  Weather was fantastic.  First time I can remember there was no snow over the entire sunny, warm (70's) weekend.

I'll leave it up to others to report on gears if they so desire.  There's already so much posted in the other circle. :thumb:

BobM:
Posted this on the NY Rave forum. Some pretty impressive coverage on these links.

day 1
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=99214.0
day 2
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=99215.60
day 3
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=99216.40  
 
 

bpape:
Lots of mediocre rooms and a few good ones.  More folks are being more careful about the room acoustics but some still don't get it.  If I heard one more room with curtains all the way around sucking the life out of everything, grrrr.  Oh well.

My favs from the limited time I had to listen

Luxman/Vivid/Kaplan - Natural, pleasing, good imaging, did nothing really wrong.  Any problems were errors of omission rather than of commission which is much the way I prefer it.   When I walked in, they were playing Lou Read - Walk on the Wild side on vinyl.  My jaw hit the floor.  Never heard it sound like that.  The one sure tip off is when everyone in the room is bobbing their heads and tapping their toes.  They got it right.  People were listening to MUSIC instead of equipment.  Hats off to Mike Garner for putting together a great sounding room and Paul for tying it all together with his new line of cabling.

TAD - The CR-1's never cease to amaze.  In a room that many would consider too small (smaller than most of the Marriot rooms) they sounded wonderful.  I told Andrew I gave him the highest compliment I can give.  I've heard them in a lot of rooms with lots of different gear.  Sure, sometimes they are better than others - but they never sound bad and always sound at least very good.



I'll not blow our own horn too much but I thought our room was definitely up there.  Had a few problems the first day but by Sat evening, it was sounding really nice.  While not 100% my cup of tea, it was certainly very accurate with lots of speed, detail, harmonic accuracy, imaging, etc.  A good front end and clean controlled power courtesy of BPT certainly helped.  

mgalusha:
This year was weird for me. I was very much looking forward to the show and enjoyed myself a lot on Friday, the high point of which was having dinner with Scott F and Bryan P and their lovely wives. Alex from Odyssey joined us for a few beers as well.

Saturday morning I completely lost all enthusiasm, not sure why but just didn't really give a crap about much of it. Thankfully I did wander around and got to hear a fair number of rooms. For me there were only a few I really liked. Like Bryan I really enjoyed the Luxman/Vivid room, especially with the analog sources. The vinyl was lovely but the RTR with master tapes was stunning. I also attribute the good sounds in this room in part to the Kaplan GS Mk II power, speaker and interconnect cables. I know what these do in my system and I I'm sure they were an important part of the overall result.

I also really like the AMR/Dr. Fieckert/Rosso Fiorentino room. Happened to sit down just as they were cueing up Cat Stevens - Tea For The Tillerman pressed at the new QRP plant. It was magical, I could have sat there for hours and I left that room smiling and in a much better mood.

Unlike some folks I liked the Linkwitz Orion's. They won't do the kind of dynamics I like but the sound was far better than I've heard from them in the past. I suspect having 6 channels of lovely Pass Labs amplification instead of the ATI 6ch home theater amp did not hurt. One of these days I want to hear a Pass XA30.5 in my system. I've been promised a demo soon from a friend who has one. Yum.

Far too many rooms were playing things TOO LOUD. Before anyone says I'm too old, no that is not the issue. I like loud music but IMO every piece has an appropriate volume level and overloading the room with too much volume is just bad. Just ask Scott if I enjoy it loud, he came by Thursday night before the show and I probably ruined his hearing for Friday.  :rofl:

I also liked the Silbatone room with the 1947 Western Electric 757A monitors. Pretty amazing the sound coming out of those old blue boxes. I really need to build some of JC Morrison's designs...

mike

Edit: added info about the ancillaries in the Luxman/Vivid room.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page