I would add additional impressions, but I think Carl summed it up perfectly in one word: Wow! Now if I could only figure out how to get a dedicated room with at least 10 foot ceilings.What can you say about SoundLabs except WOW! If you have the gymnasium to house these guys you will get it all: dynamics from whisper soft to explosive, detail, speed, and subtlety.
The Ayre amplifiers were quite small aluminum blocks, but the vendor was a little hush hush about topology, couldn't say if they were D, AB etc. because I guess they are supposed to be proprietary hybrids. Sounded good, but maybe the old fashioned OTL amps generally used with stats might sound better.
I had the fortune of being in this room at the right time: Paul S. grabbed The Staples Singers tape and played Respect Yourself on his Tape Machine Project player. Just wonderful.The Burwell horn speaker/Raven room was another excellent sounding room. What do you do when they give you a room with nothing but a big corner to put your stuff in? Horns, of course. Lare imaging as is typical for the horny breed, some very nice female vocals when I was there.
What was a real treat was we had a recording artist come with her master tapes and she got up and sang together with herself. That was truly music coming alive!!
The other WBF member who came to hang out was Ron Party - who was lucky enough to be sitting close enough to the singer to hear her voice.
I had a great show - more so because of the great friends who came over and hung out with us spinning music. The California Audio Show is one of the smaller ones in the US, but this just gives everybody more time to spend more time in the rooms that they liked.
I was told that there were other great rooms. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to go and visit with Tom and his Soundlabs. I was told that it was magnificent. Because Lyn Stanley was in my room at the end of each day talking about her album (and I was in charge of putting the tape machine to play), I couldn't go and visit. But everybody who came to tell me how good the Soundlabs were sounding said the same thing - "Gary, next year lend him your 1,440W amplifiers!!"
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