RMAF 18

[austinpop]

I will be there at RMAF. I'm not sure of my schedule yet, but would certainly be up for a happy hour like last year. Especially if @The Computer Audiophile is buying the first round!

[austinpop]

Works for me too. We can meet at the legendary, world-renowned Pint Brothers Alehouse on the lobby level.

 

Saturday 6pm. Ish.

[austinpop]

I’ll be there the whole show., and will attend the happy hour.

 

if you see me, stop me and say hi!

[austinpop]

I am pleasantly surprised at the number of rooms that sound good at RMAF this year!

 

My favorite room today:

 

Nagra HD electronics, Nagra reel-to-reel deck, Rockport Cygnus. Get thee to the 10th floor and listen.

 

Simaudio Moon electronics with Scansonic speakers:

 

and later in the afternoon, replaced by Raidho TD-4.8:

 

This Merging stack was sounding mighty fine - DAC, PSU, and just announced Master clock:

 

Just to highlight how show conditions matter - these Golden Ear References were sounding rather nice here, paired with Hegel electronics, unlike what I've heard at other shows where I didn't like them:

 

These Dali active speakers sound amazing for the $5700 price point:

 

 

My favorite headphones:

 

Meze Empyrean headphones ($3000):

 

Warwick Sonoma Electrostatics ($5000 with DAC/amp):

 

Abyss AB-1266 Phi CC

 

 

[austinpop]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi @austinpop Did you hear the Quad headphones?

 

Not yet.

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, rickca said:

Has anyone dropped by Innuos to compare the Statement with the SE and talk to Nuno?

 

Stopped by a couple times and they were busy. Might check right now.

[austinpop]

More noteworthy rooms today...

 

The Vandersteen Model Seven MkII's sounded mighty fine, couple with  VTL electronics

 

Constellation electronics through Rockport Avior 2 speakers. A lot of Rockports in the show this year.

 

The Legacy V System had excellent image precision as did the lower priced Focus SE

 

Esoteric electronics with Canton speakers. Another excellent sound from speakers not insanely priced. Can't say the same for the electronics!

 

Here are some Spanish Maggies. Just kidding. These are AlsyVox full range ribbons and Omega electronics. Very nice.

 

These German-Physik "We are the robots" speakers sounded great. That's my name for them!

 

I'm a sucker for the BBC LS3/5A. These sounded amazing for their small size.

 

Joseph Audio speakers on Doshi electronics. Another not insanely priced speaker that's really nice.

 

Another great speaker for pinpoint imaging was the Wilson Benesch Resolution. Excellent system and sound.

 

Can we talk about the elephant in the room? Is that a giant horn or are you just happy to see me? I could go on!  These ESD Acoustic monsters were certainly worth a listen, if not my cup of tea. Plus listening to Chinese erhu music on these was a bit surreal.

 

 

 

[austinpop]

7 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Very nice reporting, Rajiv.

Only pointing out that you misplaced the photo going with that text. 

 

Peter

Fixed. Thanks for noticing. It was a late night after a long day.

[austinpop]

8 hours ago, barrows said:

I only went to selected rooms, so I only heard some stuff, from what I did hear, the good (I do not report the bad, everybody with bad show sound gets a pass with me as it is really hard to get good sound and it is unwise to dismiss manufacturers for bad show sound)

 

Constellation/Rockport: about as good as it gets for me, Constellation electronics always seem to be "right", resolving, dynamic, never bright or overbearing in any way, just "right".  The interesting thing with them is that every price level from them sounds nearly the same, fantastic.  I suspect if the Inspiration series has enough watts that is all one needs (except for bragging rights).  Rockport have been some of the best speakers in the world forever, and Andy is always making small gains.

 

MBL, a rather unique sound that may not be for everyone, but everyone should hear it, but only when the room has some space as the omni speakers must be out in the room to do their stuff.  I love the "MBL sound" in the right space, enveloping and much like live music, wrapping around you.  Not so much the pinpoint imaging that some audiophiles prefer, more of a immersive sound, great for electronic music BTW, and they will play that if you are not afraid to ask.

 

Nagra/Rockport:  Rockport again... and another larger room.  Beautiful sound in here from some very expensive and beautiful Swiss electronics.  Ahh if were a wealthy man and could afford this and an equal donation to charity...

 

Anyone at the show today, hear these three if you have not already!

 

Oh yeah, GO BRONCOS!

 

Glad you liked the Constellation/Rockport room. And great to meet you, @barrows

 

I was thinking of posting a day 3 report, but it looks like this has now become an MQA thread.

[austinpop]

Back to RMAF 18...

 

Here are my great sounding rooms/systems from Sunday. Like @barrows, I am not mentioning rooms I did not like, but I'd say less than 10% of rooms - and this year I peeked into almost every one - sounded even remotely good. I guess Paul McGowan, who I said hello to - great guy! - felt the same: https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/different-strokes/

 

With that preamble, Day 3...

 

Headphones

 

  

These Quad ERA-1 headphones sounded very impressive at the Woo Audio table at CanJam, driven by their diminutive but impressive solid-state WA11 Passport DAC/amp. Especially next to the just-released Focal Elegia closed-backs, which I found distinctly underwhelming. These Quad's may just set the new benchmark for the sub-$1k segment.

 

Good-sounding rooms

 

These $200k Von Schweikert Ultra 9s, powered by other expensive electronics, did one thing that too many other 6-figure speaker systems didn't do at RMAF - sound amazing. I visited twice, and was underwhelmed the first time they were playing Beethoven's 9th on a turntable. The second time was digital, and that was outstanding.

 

This was one of my favorite rooms of the show! Falcon had a setup of 6 different generations of the BBC LS 3/5A, including a restored original BBC version, all the way to the latest version from Falcon. Listening to the same track switched between each generation was a real treat. I've got to say - these speakers are astounding, even to this day.

 

Another great-sounding room with Rockport Avior 2's, this time with CH Precision electronics. 

 

  

Good ol' Vinnie (Rossi). He sets up his rooms so well. And this year was no exception. LIO electronics driving these Harbeth M40.2 Anniversary Editions was really rocking. Room acoustics were'nt perfect, and I've heard this setup sound better at another show, but even so, the soundstage at the sweet spot was incredible.

 

And last but not least, my first exposure to the Wilson TuneTot's. Very, very impressive sound. These would be killer for a nearfield setup - at a price!

[austinpop]

On 10/6/2018 at 1:56 PM, Ralf11 said:

I'm curious why the SQ in the rooms is better - re @austinpop comment above -

 

Did they have more time for setup than most shows?  Or are exhibitors learning?

 

Ralf,

 

It was a relative statement. Last year I felt the sound quality in most rooms was truly atrocious. A little better this year, but the ratio of good:bad was still depressingly low.

[austinpop]

10 minutes ago, shadowlight said:

@austinpop did you come across any rooms that had good sound but were reasonable in pricing say under <$10K for speakers,amps, preamp and maybe a dac.

 

So this is something I would like to see the organizers encourage. They do have a category of rooms entitled Entry-Level Rooms - see https://www.audiofest.net/attending/show-schedule/cat_ids~125/ - but these top out at $5k. I would argue that it would be interesting to have another category of rooms in the $10-$25k total category.

 

The only room on my "good-sounding" list that I think was set up to be under $10k (not 100% sure about the cable costs) was the Dali Callisto setup, which sounded very good indeed.

 

Racking my brains for others, but perhaps others who attended can chime in. 

[austinpop]

I suspect the Elac room would have qualified. I ended up skipping that room, as it was packed, and I never made it back to that floor again.

[austinpop]

37 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Actually, my quick tour of 10+ other sites looking for decent show reports did not turn up much.  I would like to know about announcements of new products relevant to "computer audio"--specifically streamers/renderers, servers, networking, DACs, and software.  All the sorts of things that interest the CA citizenry.  If you have some links to such, please post them.  Otherwise I'll just hold my breath and hope that either this thread gets back to its title or that someone starts a new, MQA-free show coverage thread.

 

Hi Alex,

 

If you've been to RMAF's past, you'll know the whole show is setup mainly to demo systems, and so the speakers tend to dominate the experience. I had the same thought as you, but was hard pressed to find, much less navigate, any computer audio announcements or debuts. 

 

The only one I experienced was the Innuos Statement, which I've described in the novel thread.

 

I've scoured all the press releases I can find and the only other announcements I could find were:

1. Cary Audio: Cary Audio will be debuting our two newest network audio players at this year’s show! Replacing the awarding winning DMS-500, the NEW DMS-550 and DMS-600 take the DMS platform to the next level.
2. Lumin:
   • Lumin Music -  USA Launch. New Flagship model X-1 streamer/renderer/DAC with DAC bypass.  Supports Ethernet and Optical Fiber networks.  New outboard power supply.  New board architecture and PRO series D/A conversion. 
   • Lumin Music -  Global launch. New model U1-MINI streamer/renderer with 5 digital outputs. The power of a U1 in a smaller package for those who already own DACs
   • Lumin Music – USA Launch.  New model 5TB Mini Auto NAS. Drag and drop, then plug and play. USB 3.0, Slave, Gigabit, Ethernet, Zero Config.
3. fidata Japan –  RMAF first time introduction. 1 and 2 TB pro series SSD servers.  Server, streamer, ripper, tagger, bridge.  New design is fully proprietary.  Sound result is phenomenal.
4. Lindemann Audio GmbH – USA and RMAF intros, Music Book 25DSD.  Streamer/renderer/DAC/Sample rate converter/CD player/pre-amp.  Golden Ear Award 2018.

Clearly, I missed these rooms.

[austinpop]

11 minutes ago, shadowlight said:

Can we move the MQA related info from  the thread to it's own thread.  Maybe is call it RMAF 2018 - MQA Discussion or something easy to find.

 

Pretty, please.

 

Yes, please ^ 2!

 

Other than Chris' seminar, and some pathetic MQA Live posters, MQA was a complete non-event at RMAF. Indeed, most rooms chose not to stream at all, and those that did were having a ton of trouble connecting on the crappy Marriott network. One exhibitor even showed me an error message on his browser, which suggested the regional Tidal server was at capacity!

 

As for Qobuz, who were sponsoring quite a bit of the conference, apparently that did not extend to network infrastructure. I was told by a lot of vendors that they chose to forego network access rather than pay a hefty fee for it. Probably smart in hindsight, given the network issue many were having.

 

As a result,  I was disappointed by the archaic methods of playback so many were using. I had gone expecting a lot of rooms to be streaming Qobuz, and had made an RMAF playlist I could point them to, but that didn't work except in one room. Many rooms wouldn't take requests, period. Others wanted physical media like CDs and records, surprisingly few could even deal with something like music on a USB stick, and only a handful could grok an iPhone playing out of a Lightning USB adapter.

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, shadowlight said:

Can you share the link to your playlist, so I can add it to follow :-).  I pick up new music / artist that way.  I am 99% sure that the playlist is likely to be classical but hey I might learn something new and might get a start on good classical music.

 

Not all classical, and it's hardly a primer on classical music! 

 

FWIW - https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/1925869

[austinpop]

4 minutes ago, shadowlight said:

Thank You, Rajiv.

I am going to listen to the playlist tonight.

 

Aaaah all this pressure! I didn't really make this playlist to represent my tastes, just to throw up a few test tracks on Qobuz.

 

Please don't judge me.  

[austinpop]

4 hours ago, Derek Hughes said:

Yep, spent quite a bit of time at both Axpona and RMAF with Gayle and I really like the whole system concept and sound. I had a friend with me, he's blind but has excellent hearing so I used him as a sounding board, excuse the pun. On Friday he wasn't impressed and heard many systems which he preferred. However, on Saturday he changed his mind. We asked the guy from Aurender if they had changed anything. He said that they had changed the input from their server from USB to spfdif. He also said that he could hear a big difference. Gayle told me that they should be in production pretty soon and he's in the process of lining up a dealer network. As soon as that's in place I'll probably get one. 

 

Derek,

 

That explains why when I went by the Eikon room on Friday, I came away somewhat underwhelmed. As I said in the comments to my article, I'll be giving it another listen for sure.

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

The Kii Three was there mounted on their BXT woofer/stands.

 

Hi Kal,

 

I looked for Kii in the Exhibitor list and didn't see them listed. Were they just part of another exhibitor's system?

 

Before going to Denver, I had looked at the list for both Kii and Dutch^2, and found neither.

[austinpop]

9 hours ago, pawsman said:

Austinpop,

Did you hear the Spatial Lumina? It's garnered a lot of good buzz-

 

pawsman

 

Sadly no. I appear to have missed some good rooms others have liked: the Bluebird room, Spendor, Kii 3, etc. Even if you try it's hard to cover everything.