What were the best and worst rooms at RMAF 2009?

I went on Friday and Sunday. Open-to-Close.

I went to the Bel Canto room on Sunday about 1PM. I wanted to hear Bel Canto's "Class D" as Rowland did it so well in their gear.

This was the super large suit at the end of the hall. All Bel Canto gear leading into Josephs. The host was playing most of the tracks from a music server.

Incidentally I was there to buy after the show. (I live just four miles south of the show) By the end of the show I was pretty worn out but I was ready to buy a demo pair of Focals but they had too many surface damages.

I also liked the Ayon CD2 and Ayon Spirit amp but decided I want to stay with Solid State gear.

The Zu's grabbed at me as very "live" sounding for cheap money. What was everyone's take on the ZU's? They got a good review this month also. (As if you can put any trust in the reviewers from that magazine)

Tom92602,

I don't think that it is fair for you to blame the Bel Canto amplifiers for your dislike of the sound you heard in their room with our Pearls. When I saw your posting on the Asylum I was puzzled until I looked at your system description.
http://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/9260.html

According to that profile, your speakers are the Klipsch RF-82.

Under system goals you write "Trying to make Classic Rock sound warm and rich without loosing refinement and speed."

As you mentioned, the system sounded nice until you played your disc.

I do not share your goal of trying to make Classic Rock recordings sound warm and rich, *unless they were recorded that way in the first place*. I greatly prefer the purity of a natural, even balance that lets me hear what the recording actually sounds like rather than trying to goose up the upper bass to add false warmth. The nice thing about evenly balanced speakers is that you do still have the option of patching in an equalizer to adjust for harsh recordings, as opposed to trying to tame a system that is has errors "locked in" as part of the speaker design.

This hobby is about listening enjoyment, first and foremost. I am not trying to tell you what to enjoy for your personal listening. I just felt that some context and insight into why your perspective would differ from my own and the vast number of visitors like Tvad who were very pleased with how our systems performed at the show would be useful.

And you should not rule out Bel Canto for your system as you cannot predict how that combination might sound based on your audition with my speakers.

This was my first exposure to Audio Note--which IMO sounded surprisingly bland and lacking in depth and imaging. One of the best SET-oriented was the inexpensive Grant Fidelity room(Opera Consonance/Jungson/ShengYa/Shuguang.)

Since I'm a panel/electrostatic kinda guy, I really liked the King’s Audio Electrostatics. Just wonderful!

I also liked the Bel Canto/Joseph Audio room.

The mbl room was also very well done and sounded good.

I concure also on the Vienna Die Muzick and Rod Tomson is a very cool dude indeed.