Doctor's Orders/The Listening Room And Home Theater Of Steve Williams

**NorthStar** · 02-28-2011, 04:36 PM

Hey, you're not having a nap?

**Steve Williams** · 02-28-2011, 05:07 PM

That's for old people

. I've been island hopping and snorkeling for the past 10 days in the south Caribbean. Darn when I got home to California we were havting a cold spell but it is a balmy 73 here now. So napping is for ground hogs

**NorthStar** · 03-01-2011, 07:15 PM

Steve, can you hear music when you're dreaming?

**ulf** · 04-18-2011, 09:53 AM

In march my wife and I had a wonderful holiday in California. We visited my daughter and her husband who live in SF. What a wonderful city SF is - especally if you have a good guides.
They took us to different parts of the multicultural city with exciting shops and restaurants. We visited a Reedwood forest and took a tour to BigSurs fantastic landscape. After a week we hired a car and drove to Las
Vegas. We didn't spend any money on gambling, but marveled at the sights of the fantastic hotels along the strip. The helicopter tour to Grand Canyon (and landing inside!) was expensive, but it was a once-in-a
lifetime experience. Death Wally was overwhelming in many aspects and lots of desert flowers were blooming. San Diego was very charming and Sea World with the killer whale show was very good. Spending the last night on The Queen Mary and taking part of her history was very intresting.

But the highligth for me was of course visiting Steve and listning to his fantastic system. I have listen to many high end systems the last 15
years, but Steve's is by far the best I have listened to in a private home.

Steve has a BIG room and a big room give big speakers like the Alexandria the chance to breathe. I have listen to big Wilsons both in big
and small rooms (unfortunately I have a small room) and the big room gives an extra dimension to the music making it more like the real thing!

Apart from the room, the system is of course a dream. I consider Alexandria one of the best speakers in the world and was curious how it
would sound with the extraordinarily expensive and famous Lamm pre and power amps. Oh what a sound!! The soundstage was of course life-like big and stretches ouside the speakers.
The 32 w produced by the Lamm was enough to play at live volume without stress. The sound was utterly musical with a bit of extra warmth that I liked. Micro details were easily detected and the big Gotham subs integrated beautifully with the main speakers, giving clean and massive bass. The heigths were soo clear. My reference CD with Swedish artists contains several tracks with female voices and these voices were so beautifully presented trough the midrange.
All in all, one of my best musical experiences ever!

Thank you Steve for your hospitality. I hope you can come to my beautiful hometown, Stockholm, and have a listen to my system. And Steve you must get vinyl! It's the only thing I missed in your system.

**amirm** · 04-18-2011, 09:59 AM

You refresh all of my fond memories: both of western US and Steve's sound and hospitality!

**Steve Williams** · 04-18-2011, 10:21 AM

Stefan

thanks for your kind comments and it was pleasure to have met you. It was indeed a fun day.

I continue to play the CD that you burned for me of that beautiful Swedish music

Sweden is a country that I have yet to visit and almost certainly we will in the next few years. If so, I will be knocking on your door for a listen of your fine system as well.

And yes I do miss vinyl as well

**NorthStar** · 04-18-2011, 11:22 AM

Sweden have some of the best music recording engineers in the world.
With excellent recording studios.
They are serious on how they record their artists.

**ulf** · 04-19-2011, 08:48 AM

Glad you like my Reference compilation with Swedish artists. I always play it in Hifi shops and on Audio shows.The track with Baba Blues singing the old "St James infirmary" always atracts intrest and I haved made numerous copies to shop owners and HIfi brands representatives on shows . The track is in a way not HIFI with tape hiss but was made, I guess, with no limiter because the dynamic is outstanding. The singer change from very soft to nearly shouting and a saxophone suddenly appears in full force. Many lesser systems can´t cope with that swing but of course it was no match with your system! I played it for Alon Wolf on his Magico speakers in Gothenburg HIFI show last year and he really liked it.

It was amazing that we has - in spite of living half a globe away from each other - much the same reference music. You played for me Steve Ray V "Tin Pan Alley" one of mine ref songs (you should hear it on vinyl!). You played the unknown fantastic blues singer Hans Theessink and I have many of his albums and use it for demos. I played one of the best live recordings ever - The Weavers at Carnegie Hall - and you played the Gold CD version for me (much better than my standard CD).