RMAF 2014 Observations


I made it back from RMAF and over the three day period I think I saw and listened to almost every room/demonstration. Since I am contemplating a potential new loudspeaker in the next year or so, I focused on loudspeakers. Here are my thoughts including my top five rooms and my worst of show rooms too. Preface: These are my observations only and subjective to my ears only - everyone has different tastes and observations and if you like a certain loudspeaker or sound then its right for your ears!

Caveat: I used the side one of Dead Can Dance 'Into the Labyrinth' as my test music. I was allowed to play it in all rooms except the Raidho and Voce rooms which wasn't using vinyl set ups, but did have mp3's of the record.

5th best sound/room: Voce Audio Loudspeakers with Plinius electronics: This sound was all sparkle yet very detailed and musical. Bass overloaded the room some, but this was a room issue. Great imaging and sound staging. Build quality of the loudspeaker was world class. Reminded me of Rockports.

4th: HWS: Horning Eufrodite Loudspeakers with TW Acustic analog front end and electronics with Tron preamp. This was the most enjoyable room at RMAF. Great music, no audiophile recordings and just plain fun. There was a remarkable relaxed quality about the Hornings and for the money probably not a better bargain. Jeff Catalano is a first class guy and most audiophiles would be hard-pressed to find better person to do business with. This system just 'worked.'

3rd: Audio Alternative: Vandersteen 7, ARC electronics and Brinkmann turntable with Lyra Atlas cart. This was a spectacular room. Other than the bass being a little bloated at times and on certain recordings, the Vandersteens did it all. Incredibly musical, images were solid and 3-D and soundstage width was wall to wall. Soundstage height a little low for my tastes, but I am nitpicking here.

2nd best sound: Raidho loudspeakers with Constellation Audio electronics. This was craziest room to visit. It was like a magic act. New Raidho X1 mini-monitors with stands for $8K. In this room set up, they sounded better than the D1's! Incredible purity and soundstaging. Non-fatiguing and very musical. And the bass was exceptional. I could not believe there wasn't a subwoofer hidden somewhere. I am betting these super small cabinets got down to 30 cycle bass in the room.

Best of Show: AAAudio Imports: Lancshe 5.1 loudspeakers with Ypsilon electronics and Thales turntable with Ikeda cart. This was the best sound I may have ever heard. On all types of music. Soundstaging and air was phenomenal. Extremely musical with no grain at all. Tonal balance from top to bottom was perfection. Plasma corona tweeter gave detail to recordings I have yet to here in my room at home. Was it a match of components or a perfect room (it was a large room)? I don't know but it was fantastic and I will definitely want to listen to some again. Only draw back is that the corona tweeter lasts for around 5000-7000 hours and needs to be replaced.

Honorable Mention: I didn't hear a Joseph Audio room I didn't like. Jeff Joseph is definitely doing something right!

Underwhelmed sound: Wilson Audio room with Sashas and the big VTL monos was very dynamic and detailed. But just something about the brightness to my ears of Wilson speaker and the thin midrange. I can certainly see why many would like this set up, it was just not for me.

More underwhelmed sound: Polymer Audio room - just plain analytical and boring. Great build quality though.

Even more underwhelmed sound: The two rooms with Focal Grand Utopias with either VAC or Soulution electronics. Both of these rooms were very average in my opinion. Soundstaging was two dimensional and only between the two loudspeakers. Very disappointing.

Worst of Show: Aesthetix and Focal Mezzo Utopias. This room was horrid. It had to be the set up. Soundstaging was horrible, detail was missing and bass was bloated. If I was either manufacturer, I would have been pissed at how this room was set up.

Again, these are just my opinions based on my ears and listening preferences. Feel free to add thoughts from people who were there and what they liked and disliked.

I certainly admire everyone in the business who work tremendously hard to set up rooms and put on a show for three days. Cudos to everyone who had rooms there.
philb7777

Showing 4 responses by dev

I found there were allot more average to poor sounding rooms in comparison.

I would ad the Nola's & ARC gear combo, was sounding great.

Yes I agree both Focal rooms with the Grand's were a disappointment - I have Vac 450 Statements and Sig pre myself so I'm very familiar, have mine paired up with MBL's and destroys what I heard there - makes it sound broken.

Lancshe, nice but as you mentioned one needs to change the tweeter, the tweeter is degrading along the way while listening and will cost ... replacement needs to be done by a qualified tech - sorry but have no interest in such a speaker.

Raidho speakers, ya I agree but someone mentioned a much higher list price - are you sure they were only $8K including stands - if so in comparison to anything else I listened to at the show these would represent the BEST bargain.

I found the High Water room very musical and relaxing also but lacking body, system just wasn't convincing.

Vandersteen 7 set-up, went in three time and was underwhelmed every time so reading your assessment seems to be the only room we really differed.

Agree on the Wilson room, blah!

I visited the Nordost demo room where they had Rowland and Magico S5's paired up and found the demo they were doing was pretty fair showing the differences in their cables, this system was sounding pretty nice also and put at the top of my list.

I was pleasantly surprised with CANJAM, I see this being the fasted growing area within the audio market place - I dropped by Friday but spent most of my day on Sunday because it was dead attendance wise so I was able to listen to every vender and what they were representing manufacture wise and combo possible. I wasn't planning on getting another can for my AK240 but after hearing the beyerdynamic T5p's paired up with it I just had to have them, real ear opener experience.

AK240 is a marvelous portable devise, I have mine loaded with dsd albums including the additional card total which provides 384GB of memory and paired up with these T5p's is just a great match.

Only think that disappointments with these cans is they don't have detachable cables.

I did get some Silver Dragon cables with 2.5 connection for my dap so I'll be using what they refer to as the balanced section of the dap, so far in comparison to my stock ones that came with my Shure SE846 inear's I'm not noticing much of a difference, Drew mentioned 50 hours and then will hear.

Also have a new Black Dragon cable with 2.5 connection on order for my Sennheiser HD800's, really like these cans but they are much harder to drive than the T5p's, hopefully going balanced which is suppose to provide a little more head room will do the trick. I did initially hear them with a adapter from 1/4 to 3.5 and liked - I'm not looked at listening to crazy levels.

I was disappointed with the over all sound of the Stax 009's, I really wanted to like and did listen to numerous combo's. One headphone that stood out was the Abyss, very nice sounding.

Best part of the show for me was meeting "members from different forums" finally putting faces to their monikers - making new friendships and the after show get together with great food and lots of stories to share and laughter.
For some reason that link may not have worked properly, go to the page and go to SHOWS and when the window opens click on RMAF 2014 - that's the review.
Cymbop,

there was no Wilson/VAC room with Peter M - you must mean VTL

Mbovaird, Focal/Solution consistently good, I would say okay at most, the stage never surpassed the outer edges of the speakers, performers were at most 2D - boring, yawn! Tonality was sterile in comparison to the Focal/Vac room. I agree the Vac room sounded better when not playing vinyl - something possibly wrong with the set-up. Brent felt it was the cables throughout the system holding it back.

What I don't understand is if their prior set-up was so marvelous why in the heck not just leave well enough alone and duplicate it all over again - win win for everyone.

If one looks the numbers "cost of gear" in both of these rooms expectations are much higher "mine anyways" and they should sound allot better than they did.

Damn the little Raidho's were more convincing - ouch!

10-21-14: Philb7777
But the girls were easily 'best of show' in front of the Polymer room. After you went inside it was a letdown though.

I agree, did you read this article http://www.stereophile.com/content/r...class-entirely

Let me know what you think or any others whom heard this set-up.