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Best sound at Stereophile show.

I got to rate the Dynaudio room as the best sounding Room. They used the Dynaudio C4 speakers which listed for 16,000. All I can say is, they sounded incredible. They sound very smooth with an amazing soundstage. Bass was really good.

I also liked the Gamut Room. Gamut used probably the largest Amp I'v ever seen. The Amp weighed 400 pounds. Speakers were the Pipedreams with the Gamut CD Player. The system sounded very 3 dimentional with a good bass response. I also got to thank Ole Lund Christensen. He's the designer of Gamut. He played by far the best music. He played upbeat classical, where you could judge the midrange and bass of the speakers. He also played brick in the wall by Pink Floyd. I felt to many rooms played to much Jazz and violin music, where you just couldn't judge the speakers. Also, Ole played what ever CD you gave him.

I also loved the Wilson Watt Puppies 7. What totally amazed me. Wilson played alot of the time, the Watt Puppies 7 with the massive Wilson Sub. I thought that Sub would totally boom up the bass on the Watt Puppies. But it was the exact opposite. The Wilson Sub blended in so perfectly with the Wilson Watt Puppy 7 speakers.

I also liked the Tact room. They had those new Tact speakers that must have been 7 feet tall. They sounded great.

Most amazing home theater performance had to be in the Audio Video Creations room. They used a Pioneer 50 inch Plasma TV. Krell multichannel Amps, Krell Preamp processor, Krell DVD Player, Piega speakers and Piega Sub. They played clips from Jurassic Park and Matrix. Holy Moley did this system sound unbelievable. It was so incredible sounding.

Another thing that really impressed me. In the NAD room, one of the people there downloaded a Jewel peformance from the Jay Leno show on High Definition TV. They downloaded the Jewel performance to a hard drive, then transferred it to a DVD recorder. This picture quality was amazing. It was so perfect the picture.

I also really liked this Antique Sound Headphone Amp with Senheiser headphones. It listed for 1200 dollars. You could also used this as a preamp. The Antique Headphone Amp used 2A3 Tubes. It sounded so perfect and could go very loud without breaking up. Plus it had that nice tube sound.

Also alot of the designers were really nice. I mentioned Ole. Al from Dynaudio, Mark O'brien from Rougue Audio, Dale Fontenot from Roman Audio speakers, Alan Yun from Silverline, Tash Goka from Divergent technologies and Gilbert Young from Blue Circle were really good guys.
twilo

Showing 5 responses by marakanetz

marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Is there anyone was with me in Gamut room when Whole Lotta love was played?
Let me tell you that I've never heard Led Zeppelin sound so damn great on red-book CD! I wanted to stay even longer in that room to listen to the whole Led Zeppelin II albume.
I also listened to L.Cohen's Democracy prior to LZ.
Twilo mentioned that most of the rooms were playing jazz and classical but to me the didn't prove that they can realy rock and swing the air.
Certainly I rate the GAMUT room #1

The second on the list is Joseph/Manley. I believe that this system able to reproduce nearly anything you wish from heavy metal to baroque but I still wished to listen to some overdriven guitars or heavy drums(like Bonham).

And the third is certainly Totem. I'm the proud owner of Totem Forest speakers that are the perfect match for the small room systems and have an outstanding 3d and dissapearance effect and they're jsut perfect for the type of music I'm listening to. Model1 Signature monitors were as impressive as Forests. I was a-bit dissapointed that there were no Wind.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Flex, to tell the truth I cannot describe anyhow Piega/Meridian DVD-audio room since there were not any great possibility to listen to the music due to the extraneous noise comming from open doors. I felt that bottom end is being dissapeared ore canseled out(room reflections?) or it's just the speaker mutual interaction?
Anyway I've just left too quick so not to loose my time untill they play it on more quiet surrounding or maybe it was worth to play it more loud.

Would anyone also make a comment about it even from different shows/listening rooms as well if possible.

The worst sound I've heard there in NYH were MBL(speakers) that aren't capable to produce any kind of music and made me nocious. Despite this I was listening for them quite a while to get an idea what kind of music matches well these speakers and I realized that if you change one letter M to J you will basically get the same thing.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Ears are so damn different but some electronics/speakers can please the largest ear crowd, some of them are controversal like MBL! To me(not to offend anyone here) MBL reproduced the worst I've ever heard listening Ozzy Ozbourne; LedZep's Rock-n-Roll wasn't forwarded enough and dynamics were backed up big time. Along with that I've heard just pure screaming. The bass reproduction was only successful on Rap. I was not too impressed from Pipe Dreams rather than being impressed from Gamut electronics.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
I cannot say that I listen to only the hard rock or overdriven guitars but in my opinion if the speakers can't follow the rock guitar slams(i.e. slow) won't suit the music that I listen to. MBL in these terms are handycapped pedestrians. I like "BMW" type better. And indeed maybe for blues it's good enough to be a pedestrian but not for 300 drum hits per minute rhythms! The demo guys were always taking proposals from the listeners(which is nice) but I've never found anything I've asked to play sound right.
MBL transport/dac with different speakers/amps(dyna??/Plinius 8200) I've heard much more successfull and probably 10x cheaper.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
HaHa Cellover!!! try to turn on Pipedreams quiet and make a judgement!
I assume that it all depends on speakers' dynamic curve: some are more revealing at the low volume levels and less pleasant at high volume levels and some speakers are just the other way arround in general.
I judge the speakers to be able to reproduce the volume level of a real live music with ability not to create fatigue inside the room walls.

I always test speakers on the following scale:

-- acoustic guitar (on the level how it has to sound live)
-- than piano
-- than sax, percussion or any small jazz band or instrumental band
-- drum or percussion solo to check imaging and bass depth along with the speed.
-- than slammy electric rock guitar to check if it's dynamic and fast enough to take it.
-- symphony orchestra test(Symphony #5 Beethoven as an example) is the one that i refuse to do since if I did than I wouldn't buy any speaker that I can afford. Besides I'm through with classical music and have very limited collection since there is no limitation on spending bucks on different performances and releases every time -- much cheaper and more reasonable to visit them live from time-to-time:)

Most of the demands in my system are small bands, instrumental jazz and sophisticated electronic music.
But I love anything that I can call music and that can be a big bunch of a different kinds.

Certainly I did not try to dictate this test sequence on the show rooms of NYH since seats and time was very limited and I believe that there were not only I at the show.
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