Anyone else attend the California Audio Show in Oakland?


I went yesterday 7/28, heard some really good stuff, including:

Old Forge Studios room. The Soundkaos Vox 3F standmounted 3 ways were incredible! My favorites of the show. Tiny boxes and 35Hz on the low end had many of us looking for a subwoofer. The Wand tt and PureAudio electronics were excellent.

Tidal Contriva speakers speakers were my 2nd choice as favorites. Just a bit more expensive than the Soundkaos at $65,000, they were beautiful to look at and gorgeous to listen to, or vice versa. Open and airy, great bass extension, with the equally fine Bricasti amps and preamp, they would surely be even better in a larger room.

Aurender streamers and dacs also pulled me in. I’m looking for new gear, and they have a great selection. The combo dacs and streamers start at around $3500 and run to $22,000 for the W22SE, which was playing in their room. 

On on the down side:

Audio Vision SF Room
I didn’t care for the Naim/Rega/Focal gear. It sounded very shut in, muffled to me. Sibilance was not pronounced, and the Focal speakers sounded blurred. 

Wyred4sound

I've never been a fan, so maybe I’m biased, but the new gear just didn’t add up to me. Disjointed is the word I come up with. The new W4S speakers were these hulking boxes, with drivers arranged in MTM configuration. The tweeters are ribbons, which I usually enjoy, but these sounded too laid back to me. 

Any other attendee thoughts?

pumper24

Showing 6 responses by auxinput

Agree.  Old Forge / Sound Kaos / Pure Audio was the absolute best in the show.  I think this may have even beat 99% of the rooms are RMAF last year (at least in my opinion and preferred sound).

I had the opposite reaction to the Tidal / Bricasti room.  It seem really harsh and thin to me.  Not sure what happened.  Maybe a bad pairing between electronics and speaker.  The Bricasti M28 sounded a lot better in the Sound Lab room, but the electrostatic panels are probably more forgiving speakers than the Tidal.

The Focal room was not bad.  However, I did not get all the resolution and texture that should have been coming out of those speakers.  Sound was very smooth without any brightness/harshness (which is hard to do with Focal), but it lacked the grit / bite / resonance from the voices and instruments.  The whole setup was done with Nordost cabling which could be the culprit for hiding that high frequency texture/tonality.  Silver tends to smooth out the grittiness in the sound.

I never really focused on Wired 4 Sound before, but I agree with your responses.  I don't think it's the new Wyred speaker that's the problem.  Ribbons are generally very high resolution and bright.  I think it's just the sound of that Class D ICE in the Wyre 4 Sound.  It sounded low resolution and boomy to me.  I got the same warmer / rolled-off highs in the Unisinger room across the way, which also used Wyred 4 Sound amps.
Zesto did good, agreed.   The Whammerdyne room was weird - it was one of those downsides.  I'm not familiar with Whammerdyne, but the cut sheet suggests it is a non-conventional design.  In any event, the room/speakers sounded really muffled.  It could be that they were open baffle speakers, but it was one of the rooms that did not impress me at all.
Oh, If Old Forge / Sound Kaos was first place, the second place would go to the Margules Audio room (the Lyn Stanley room). 
I would say that imaging and soundstage are very good.  However, many people chase after a "deep soundstage" and in my experience this has to do more with the preamp / amplifier that you choose -- as long as the speaker has good resolution.

If I remember, these speakers sounded bigger than you would think, mostly because the top mounted ribbon tweeter causes high frequencies to reflect off the rear wall and ceiling.  Some speakers are engineering to have a 360 degree dispersion (such as the MBL speakers) and this gives you the impression of a bigger sound.  However, it can cause slightly less resolution because you are hearing a smearing of all the waveforms.  With the Kaos Vox, I don't think that's as much of a problem because it's only the high frequencies which are sent out with reflections.
The Sound Kaos Vox speakers were very high resolution and very natural sounding with a a lot of texture.  Very neutral and surprising amount of bass.  The high frequencies were not bright/harsh which was unexpected due to the ribbon tweeter.  The ribbon tweeter is mounted on the top of the speaker and fires upwards, which may help explain this.  However, it does mean that your rear walls and ceiling cannot have any acoustic panels which would absorb a lot of this high frequency energy.  The two woofers are only 5", so you will not be pushing a huge amount of bass or amplifier power.  If you have a smallish to maybe medium size room and you want really nice sound but do not need a huge amount of bass, these are excellent choices.

I cannot remember which model I actually heard (3F or 3A).  They have different midrange drivers.
I took a quick look at the Bakoon.  It looks very high end, but it's a pretty low power amp (only 25 watts per channel).  If you are looking at the Vox, I would go for the Vox 3a or 3afw as these are just a bit more efficient at 92db than the 3f.  At 25 watts per channel, you want a pretty efficient speaker.

You probably have found the following review already:

https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/soundkaos7/

It's a 9 page incredibly detailed review with tons of technical detail and internal/construction pictures.  The cabinet construction is excellent in my opinion and they pack a whole lot into a very small cabinet.  The two 5" woofers essentially make it a 7" three-way speaker.  If you can afford the cost of the 3a, I would definitely recommend that over the 3f.