Yes, I visited *the* place to be at CES: Gary's Genesis room with the "famous" $35,000 tonearm on TechDAS Air Force One turntable: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...rtere-Reference-Tonearm&highlight=gary+35,000
Here is a shot of it:
As Gary rightly pointed out, it has a nice LED light to let you see what grove you are landing it on.
Another shot I could call artistic but in reality was me not holding the camera right!
Gary was kind enough to do an AB between this and the lessor second arm. I think that one cost $15K???
Let me tell you, it was night and day. Once you listened to this one, the other sounded like trash. There was no micro or macro dynamics on the other. The cheaper one was harsh as if it was digital. You could literally hear the needle drag on the sides of the grove! Go back to the $35,000 and boy, what a revelation. Angles were singing and you were transformed to somewhere with less crowds than CES!
Seriously guys [at the risk of stating the obvious: the above was a joke], subjectively in the demo Gary did, it did sound better. The dynamics were improved.
Gary also did a test of the turntable vacuum system for me. I was very surprised that when he let out the vacuum pressure holding the LP down on the platter, all of a sudden I started to hear a lot of background noise (typical LP noise). And here is a fascinating psychoacoustics effect Bob Stuart of Merdian fame talks about: when he put the pressure back on, I started to hear the same scratches that I had not heard the first time with the same pressure on! While the level was much lower with pressure, the noise was audibly there. Yet, not knowing about it, had made me think the first time that it was completely absent. Once we get sensitized to an artifact, we can hear it much more readily. This also throws a monkey wrench into AB tests. Clearly my first observation was inaccurate since the noise was really there but I thought it was not!
While on the topic of LP, I heard a lot of it at the show. It is clear that it can delight. I am not saying that it can delight more than digital, but it certain has enough performance to make a person enjoy the music. As a format, it is able to overcome its performance limitations, sans the popping noises and such, quite well. As I was thinking about writing this line while listening to another sample in a different room, I asked the person what LP it was. And he told me it was digital! Oh well. I guess they are both good.
Here is a shot of it:
As Gary rightly pointed out, it has a nice LED light to let you see what grove you are landing it on.
Another shot I could call artistic but in reality was me not holding the camera right!
Gary was kind enough to do an AB between this and the lessor second arm. I think that one cost $15K???
Let me tell you, it was night and day. Once you listened to this one, the other sounded like trash. There was no micro or macro dynamics on the other. The cheaper one was harsh as if it was digital. You could literally hear the needle drag on the sides of the grove! Go back to the $35,000 and boy, what a revelation. Angles were singing and you were transformed to somewhere with less crowds than CES!
Seriously guys [at the risk of stating the obvious: the above was a joke], subjectively in the demo Gary did, it did sound better. The dynamics were improved.
Gary also did a test of the turntable vacuum system for me. I was very surprised that when he let out the vacuum pressure holding the LP down on the platter, all of a sudden I started to hear a lot of background noise (typical LP noise). And here is a fascinating psychoacoustics effect Bob Stuart of Merdian fame talks about: when he put the pressure back on, I started to hear the same scratches that I had not heard the first time with the same pressure on! While the level was much lower with pressure, the noise was audibly there. Yet, not knowing about it, had made me think the first time that it was completely absent. Once we get sensitized to an artifact, we can hear it much more readily. This also throws a monkey wrench into AB tests. Clearly my first observation was inaccurate since the noise was really there but I thought it was not!
While on the topic of LP, I heard a lot of it at the show. It is clear that it can delight. I am not saying that it can delight more than digital
, but it certain has enough performance to make a person enjoy the music. As a format, it is able to overcome its performance limitations, sans the popping noises and such, quite well. As I was thinking about writing this line while listening to another sample in a different room, I asked the person what LP it was. And he told me it was digital! Oh well. I guess they are both good. 
