Lone Star Audio Festival - Dallas 2011

The show was great and so were the exhibitors, a great experience indeed!

I sure will try to make it next year too.

Hands down the best sounding system that I heard there was the Raven Audio room! The system was incredibly musical and had great detail and resolution, Given the right room this system would sound even better. The entire team of Raven Audio was very courteous, polite and professional including Dave's wife! I had a listen to it on Saturday and made it a point to hear it again as the last system before leaving so that it leaves a good taste in my mouth.

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Richard Gray's SET prototype amp @ 6 watts per channel was another great product driving the baffle-less speakers. I enjoyed his company while listen to music late Friday night without knowing he was somewhat of a celebrity in his field of power conditioning.

The "Carmel" speakers were very impressive too, great finish and a very good sound.

D-Sonic audio room was was also a very enjoyable place to listen to Dennis Deacon's system as it was well setup and sounded great. His amps sound even better than what I had heard before, great detail and power. Last but not least one of the most beautifully finished in the price category. They sure look much more expensive than what the price of those amps is.

The Lighter Note Preamp from Uriah Daily seemed to be in every third room I visited which goes on to show how much it is liked by the DIY community.

Overall a great show, however I had very bad experience in a couple of rooms I visited, not the exhibitors but the so called audiophile visitors were "barking" while some of us were trying hard to listen to the system. If I had a shotgun with me I swear I would have used it! Enough said!

The innerurban room with the refurbished Quad 63s on custom stands was a real fun room to visit. Extermely generous of him to lug that gear into the room and share, and he has great taste in music. An expereice that doesn't come along very often.

The Manzanita room with the 18" open baffels (yes, 18" or 457.2 mm!!) had some good sound as well. He was running a Musical Fidelity SS amp when I was in there 'cause his SEP was busted :( He was very knowledgeable about speaker design, or so I guess because I didn't understand a word he said half the time.

The Pi room (Keep your fork, there's PIE!) was a good room to be in. Wayne was very acommodating and informative and played a lot of good music.

The Oddwatt guys were cool, I enjoyed their room.

The room with the Melody gear was a good room as well, good sound and I liked the way they had it low-lit so you could see those 845s glowing. They had about 15 tubes to make 75 watts (preamp and monoblocks).

I think Audiokenisis didn't get their room deposit back because they cracked the plaster in the walls with all that bass. Duke - Get that Cowboy Junkies album yet?

All in all an enjoyable afternoon for me and well worth the 3 hr. drive from Austin. This show is very laid back, can't get some of these guys to stop talking about gear or music, very friendly folks.

Here's to next year.