The absolute best audio i have heard anywhere
The Best Audio System I Have Ever Heard—Anywhere, At Any Price
Last Saturday I had my references for the ultimate sound system challenged and blown away by the most unlikely system imaginable. Before I reveal my new reference, for at least the next 5 days, let me give you a short summary of my listening acumen. I have played with high end audio for the past 50 years; have attended at least 40 CES shows, spent over $100K building a custom and dedicated audio listening space; had close to $200K of 2 channel audio gear in the room; directly auditioned John Iverson’s “Force Field” in his lab for 8+ hours; have been Harry Pearson’s in Sea Cliff 5 times and spent hours listening with him; and yes like most audiophiles have been up 100’s to 1000’s of late night hours looking for nirvana either at my house or that of my best friend, Marty W from this site. Said another way, whether you agree with my taste, I am a very seasoned listener and have a good idea when to be impressed and when the audiophile BS is flying in the wind.
So what is this system? For those who want to know the specifics, I have to apologize because I know very little, but expect to learn much more in 5 days from round two, when I will have an opportunity to talk to some of the sound engineers/magicians who made this possible.
So here’s what I know:
Venue-the new Yankee Stadium
Speakers- No idea, but two front curved arrays 30-40 long with 4 cabinets in each row (2 woofer, 1 mid-bass low mid and 1 mid and horn tweeter), 3 equally long arrays with the same configuration except only one woofer cabinet in each row at just past first and third base and behind home, AND 6 20 foot arrays set up in the upper decks in the lights serving as 2 rears and 4 sides.
Amps- who knows, but clearly very stable and probably at least 500,000 watts if not considerably more.
Cables- we probably do not want to know because most of us would throw up by their mundaneness.
Accessories-probably a whole team of the best in the business sound engineers, an incredible mixing board and what must be the most sophisticated digital signal processing available so that essentially every seat in the stadium had a phase coherent experience (I have not a clue how they did that)
Source material-Roger Waters and his 9 piece band playing Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Extras- A Wall 120 yards long and over 40 feet tall that can be partially assembled and blown up at strategic points in the show, but basically serving as a projection screen for dozens of super high quality hi output video projectors that can and do control the pixels down to a single brick in the wall so that they can be individually projected upon when inserted and unilluminated when removed or blown up.
What I heard. Flawless audio, with no hum, perceptible distortion nor feedback. It was surround sound unlike I have ever heard anywhere, large or small. People were actually ducking when the helicopters came in. When the children sang they were everywhere as if the choir was all around us. The volume had to be in the 110db+ range and yet because of the open-air design there were no pressure issues.
Believe it or not, there were incredible images throughout the stadium, both stationary and moving. Somehow they seemed to be able to control the height of the images to match what was going on on the wall or when the plane flew across the stadium and crashed into the wall.
Put simply, it was the best audio experience I have ever experienced, plugged or unplugged or even the megabuck systems of some of the most prominent people on this site.
What was truly amazing is that I was off axis sitting first row off of the field at third base and imaging and phasing were perfect, I mean perfect like REAL. I had obstacles between me and main arrays but was otherwise exposed to all others by a clear path.
As you can see from the pictures below the playing field was anything but clear
file://localhost/Users/russferstandig/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image002.png
file://localhost/Users/russferstandig/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image004.png
I was so blown away by the total experience that I am going to see the concert again this Saturday in Philly and will be sitting dead center about 10 rows in front of the mixing board and will hopefully be able to talk with the engineers.
The Best Audio System I Have Ever Heard—Anywhere, At Any Price
Last Saturday I had my references for the ultimate sound system challenged and blown away by the most unlikely system imaginable. Before I reveal my new reference, for at least the next 5 days, let me give you a short summary of my listening acumen. I have played with high end audio for the past 50 years; have attended at least 40 CES shows, spent over $100K building a custom and dedicated audio listening space; had close to $200K of 2 channel audio gear in the room; directly auditioned John Iverson’s “Force Field” in his lab for 8+ hours; have been Harry Pearson’s in Sea Cliff 5 times and spent hours listening with him; and yes like most audiophiles have been up 100’s to 1000’s of late night hours looking for nirvana either at my house or that of my best friend, Marty W from this site. Said another way, whether you agree with my taste, I am a very seasoned listener and have a good idea when to be impressed and when the audiophile BS is flying in the wind.
So what is this system? For those who want to know the specifics, I have to apologize because I know very little, but expect to learn much more in 5 days from round two, when I will have an opportunity to talk to some of the sound engineers/magicians who made this possible.
So here’s what I know:
Venue-the new Yankee Stadium
Speakers- No idea, but two front curved arrays 30-40 long with 4 cabinets in each row (2 woofer, 1 mid-bass low mid and 1 mid and horn tweeter), 3 equally long arrays with the same configuration except only one woofer cabinet in each row at just past first and third base and behind home, AND 6 20 foot arrays set up in the upper decks in the lights serving as 2 rears and 4 sides.
Amps- who knows, but clearly very stable and probably at least 500,000 watts if not considerably more.
Cables- we probably do not want to know because most of us would throw up by their mundaneness.
Accessories-probably a whole team of the best in the business sound engineers, an incredible mixing board and what must be the most sophisticated digital signal processing available so that essentially every seat in the stadium had a phase coherent experience (I have not a clue how they did that)
Source material-Roger Waters and his 9 piece band playing Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Extras- A Wall 120 yards long and over 40 feet tall that can be partially assembled and blown up at strategic points in the show, but basically serving as a projection screen for dozens of super high quality hi output video projectors that can and do control the pixels down to a single brick in the wall so that they can be individually projected upon when inserted and unilluminated when removed or blown up.
What I heard. Flawless audio, with no hum, perceptible distortion nor feedback. It was surround sound unlike I have ever heard anywhere, large or small. People were actually ducking when the helicopters came in. When the children sang they were everywhere as if the choir was all around us. The volume had to be in the 110db+ range and yet because of the open-air design there were no pressure issues.
Believe it or not, there were incredible images throughout the stadium, both stationary and moving. Somehow they seemed to be able to control the height of the images to match what was going on on the wall or when the plane flew across the stadium and crashed into the wall.
Put simply, it was the best audio experience I have ever experienced, plugged or unplugged or even the megabuck systems of some of the most prominent people on this site.
What was truly amazing is that I was off axis sitting first row off of the field at third base and imaging and phasing were perfect, I mean perfect like REAL. I had obstacles between me and main arrays but was otherwise exposed to all others by a clear path.
As you can see from the pictures below the playing field was anything but clear
file://localhost/Users/russferstandig/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image002.png
file://localhost/Users/russferstandig/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image004.png
I was so blown away by the total experience that I am going to see the concert again this Saturday in Philly and will be sitting dead center about 10 rows in front of the mixing board and will hopefully be able to talk with the engineers.
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...and may have had the same conclusions.
