A Capital Audiofest 2012 thread

Pops, I recall the sound in the room with the Devore's being promising and I would have spent more time in if I could. Unfortunately, I had only enough time to pop in, listen for a minute or two and leave.

did any room feature a panel speaker, such as a magnepan, martin logan or sanders sound ?

mapman....the orangatans were simply marvolous. They had the most pleasing and natural tone and were scary transparent. They are the reason I went back on Saturday. If I knew you I would have made you stay! :-) If I was serious I would have played some vinyl rock....my go to.

mr tennis, I did not see any panels....lots of horns though.

Mr T., I heard these GT Audio Works + dual subs for $3000 at CAF and enjoyed them very much.

The only commercial panel speaker I saw at the show was the GT Audio planar magnetic/ribbon speaker. It sounded decent, particularly with price factored in, but, it was not that memorable. The other panel speaker I heard was a DIY full range electrostatic that DID sound quite good, even with somewhat limited bass response, but this was not a commercially available product.

Another interesting thing on display was the QOL processor. I was expecting to hear the kind of "special effects" of other processors that inject phase shifted signals to boost the size of the soundfield, but, what I did get to hear was much more subtle. It added just a touch of additional soundstage width, but mainly, it added a bit more feeling of being immersed in a complete sonic environment (less of the feeling of sound only coming from the speakers and front of the room). It did not significantly alter the tonal balance, not something that can be said about some other processors/ambience recovery devices. I did not hear it long enough to detect any major problems (nor was I really listening for such). In short, it is something I found worth seriously auditioning.