Report from Rocky Mountain AudioFest

RMAF 07 – My Favourites:

Horn Loudspeakers:
The Cogent Horns fed by Chris Brady’s electronics & Teres Model 360 TT. Very life-like, no horn shout & superb PRaT. I kept coming back to this room whenever I’d take a break. That told me something about the sound.
The Classic Audio Reproductions came a very close 2nd. The had all the same attributes as the Cogent Horns but the Cogent was better to my ears.

Planar/Metal Ribbon Loudspeakers:
Hands down – the Apogee Acoustics Duetta speakers fed by all Audio Research gear. Rick Murray & his team did an excellent job re-finishing that Duetta Signature speaker in an automotive finish. The sound was totally dynamite. I was smitten!

Integrated Amplifiers:
Hands down – the Luxman 30W/ch playing thru Vivid loudspeakers demo’d on the Mezzanine floor. This was a kick-butt (pun intended) class-A amp that could bring the house down SPL-wise. Besides the bass quantity, the overall sound was excellent. It was not just the bass.

Turntables:
Here there was no clear winner for me as I liked several designs –
The Raven AC 3M,
Thom’s/Galibier Gavia,
Redpoint’s Model A in Dan Wright’s room,
The very unassuming TT in Berning’s room w/ that Allaerts MC1B cartridge (loved the sound of this cartridge!),
The Super Scout Master w/ the strain gauge cartridge,
Chris Brady’s Teres Model 360
just to name a few.

I got several opportunities to hear a Schroeder tonearm & I liked it each & every time I heard it. I think that I heard a Reference model every time except 1-2 times when I heard the Model 2. There was correctness about the sound thru it & it was always rich & full-bodied. Great arm!

Complete Systems:
Here again there were no clear favourites for me. I heard a lot of excellent amplification -
* The Art Audio Vivo sound is stuck in my head. Maybe it was the ModWright – ArtAudio combination that worked superbly with each other?
* Another sound that is stuck in my head is the new Berning Quadrature Z $30K power amps. The sound of these amps is simply excellent & without fault. I spent a good bit of time w/ Allan Bhagan talking about the ZH270 & the latest Quadrature Z amps. We had a very amicable long chat (Thanks very much Allan! ).
* The Mark Levinson-WA Sophia was another great combination. I surprised myself by actually liking the Sophia sonics!
* The ARC HT200-WA Sophia was yet another great combination.
* I’ve already mentioned my viewpoint on the ARC HT200-Apogee combination.
* Yet another great sounding system was the Shanling-Selah Audio Galena (a slight bass boominess – the room?) because it produced great sound for an affordable amount of money.
* The McIntosh room down in the Lobby area. We heard some tracks from Chris Botti’s album & a track from an album called “Vertigo”. Also several tracks played by the person demo’ing the gear (I did not get his name but it looked like either was a McIntosh employee or a long-time dealer).
* The Gershman-Clayton Audio room sounded very good to me. Very life-like & with music flowing effortlessly. Terry Rossen & Ofra Gershman very personally running the demos.
* The Art Audio-Dadaelus room was very good sounding. They were using a Bluenote Koala CDP. On the day I visited they had the 845 mono driving the larger Dadaelus speakers. Very musical, emotional. Other than the track that was playing when I came in which was bass heavy that showed me that the 50W/ch 845 were no bass slouches, we played tracks from The Michael Wolff Trio “2AM”.

Digital:
I heard some great digital gear spanning from Wadia’s 581SE to more modestly priced Oppo & Original players.
I also really liked the Squeezebox in stock & modified form (as in ModWright’s room).
The player from Nova Physics was yet another great music server.
The Abbington Music Research CDP also sounded good. It was surprising to see just how many rooms had the AMR CDP!

Cone/Dynamic Loudspeakers:
Green Mountain Audio’s Calypso was my favourite. You all could say that it is a biased view ‘cuz I own Green Mountains myself. So be it!
I heard several excellent cone/dynamic speakers but the Calypso sounded the best & the most life-like of them all and that too w/ very modest electronics & an older Sony CDR source.

Bombaywalla, Just to clarify the Redpoint in Dan Wright’s room was a Model SC = "Spoiled Child" not a Model A.

Did anyone here happen to listen to my prototypes in the BPT room - 9014? You'd remember if you did, the only red speakers at the whole show :-) If so, I'd love feedback ... good or bad. I only heard good from people I talked to, maybe everyone was just being nice.

I have already posted on another thread my impressions of the Acapella speakers so will not bore you with a repetition. I would like to mention one particular room that I felt was exceptional in that it finally seemed to capture the promise of a full range, cross-overless, single driver speaker. Joe Cohen of Prana, Oyaide, Acrolink fame (Lotus) was showing a number of Feastrex (probably mispelled) single driver speakers. One in particular (the 9") was damaged on the way to the show but the builder was present and able to repair it. The cabinet (a proto-type arrived late and the speakers were up and running late Friday and did not initially sound like anything special. By Saturday they were making lovely music. I have heard and ocassionally loved Lowthers but never thought that they were truly full range. The Feastrex 9" drivers in what appeared to be a ported enclosure were absolutely lovely. They had some of the best, most impactful, tightest controlled bass that I have ever heard if somewhat limited in absolute extension. Joe played a Japanese drum record which I would usually dismiss as boring. In this instance, the sound was rivetting. Although the Wilson watt Puppies have never been my personal cup of tea, they have always with the right amp been an excellent speaker to produce drums and other percussive instruments with very steep waveforms. The Weastren beat the Wilson in this area by a handy margin. They were equally good throughout the midrange and most of the treble (a place that single drivers seem to normally have a problem). Again, struck instruments such as triangles were excellent. Female voices and piano were also lovely. The speakers were being driven by Lamm ML2.1 amps, an Abbington CD player (seen in many other rooms and always sounding good), Joe's Prana gabling and various tweaks fromAcoustic Revive. By the way, these speakers employed field coil drivers, i.e. rather than permanent magnets, the magnet was hooked to a power source and the flux stength was adjustable. The bad news is that these drivers are handbuilt in relatively small quantities from expensive materials and retail at $35k per pair which includes the enclosure. For me this was one of the best sounds at the show.

>> 10-17-07: Audiobugged
>> Bombaywalla, Just to clarify the Redpoint in Dan
>> Wright’s room was a Model SC = "Spoiled Child" not a
>> Model A.

thanks for the correction Audiobugged.