T.H.E. Show 2022 Long Beach

[gleeds]

I was at The Show yesterday afternoon. Traffic was light which I expected in the Sunday pm time slot. My highlights of the show were somewhat surprising.

Best of Show: time spent with J.R. Bosclair of WAM Engineering - he has several new products and services which look very promising for taking analog replay and alignment to an even higher level.

Best Sounds of Show:
Prana Fidelity/EAR Prana's new stand mount with integral stands we sublime and an incredible value at approximately $10-12k ( the new birch cabinets looked amazing!)

Smaller Veriy's and Vitus in the Cake Audio Room (kudos to Ken Boyce)

Alta Audio Adam speakers, powered by Infigo electronics

Raidho 3.2 driven by Margules I-240 integrated amplifier (the amplifier is only 25 tube watts running Class A powering a $70k speaker effortlessly and will great musicality. At $6k that's saying something!

Was not able to stay long but Phillip O'Hanlon's new floor-standing LS5/5 Graham speakers sounded very good as well.

Acoustics appeared very challenging at the Hilton in the bigger rooms across the board so do not want to judge those systems unfairly.

 

[bazelio]

Zingali with valves is very warm and colored. Bloated midbass too

Very bloated. I don't think there were many valves in the path, but I'm not familiar with JMF. I think the guy said one of the components was hybrid tube / SS.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Very bloated.

I heard them at the munich show .
Too warm , coloured no bass do i need to continue..
Did you hear a good horn while u were there?

 

[cal3713]

Is that a horn speaker?

 

[bonzo75]

What's the midbass and bass?

 

[bazelio]

I heard them at the munich show .
Too warm , coloured no bass do i need to continue..
Did you hear a good horn while u were there?

I'm trying to think of how many horns there were in total - not many. Zingali Client 1.5 was the closest horn integration to a sound that I thought could be promising, but their low end was just too problematic. What I liked from them was that the horn dispersion seemed quite good, sound had depth instead of being projectile, and the speakers themselves did fairly well at disappearing so to speak. I figured the blue Top Wing was used to try to balance the bass-heaviness, but if Pear Audio TTs themselves are warm, then I don't understand.

 

[bazelio]

What's the midbass and bass?

I believe also JBL. Someone might know model numbers.

 

[bonzo75]

I believe also JBL. Someone might know model numbers.

I am asking if bass and midbass is a horn.

 

[bonzo75]

Smaller Verity with Zesto were also the most musical of the cones in Munich 2019. Of the videos I then recorded, three had the same Royal ballet track, and people preferred the Verity, which is what I thought sounded the best in person

Munich 2019 Video Coverage – Zero Distortion

zero-distortion.org

The Alta audio were quite musical at Rhapsody

 

[J.R. Boisclair]

I was at The Show yesterday afternoon. Traffic was light which I expected in the Sunday pm time slot. My highlights of the show were somewhat surprising.

Best of Show: time spent with J.R. Bosclair of WAM Engineering - he has several new products and services which look very promising for taking analog replay and alignment to an even higher level.

Best Sounds of Show:
Prana Fidelity/EAR Prana's new stand mount with integral stands we sublime and an incredible value at approximately $10-12k ( the new birch cabinets looked amazing!)

Smaller Veriy's and Vitus in the Cake Audio Room (kudos to Ken Boyce)

Alta Audio Adam speakers, powered by Infigo electronics

Raidho 3.2 driven by Margules I-240 integrated amplifier (the amplifier is only 25 tube watts running Class A powering a $70k speaker effortlessly and will great musicality. At $6k that's saying something!

Was not able to stay long but Phillip O'Hanlon's new floor-standing LS5/5 Graham speakers sounded very good as well.

Acoustics appeared very challenging at the Hilton in the bigger rooms across the board so do not want to judge those systems unfairly.

Hi Gary! Thank you for the very kind words. It was certainly a pleasure to have met you at the show.

I had a good time delivering my seminars and answering the questions from audience members. I know that our research into the state of affairs in the industry might seem to be cause for analog despair but I don’t see it that way. I figure that if we can enjoy our analog to the degree that we do without even knowing how to truly optimize our playback (or for that matter, the cutting of the lacquer) then you can just imagine how much more there is for us to look forward to when we take the time and effort to optimize our set up!

We have much more research and advancements in the works. Stay tuned!

 

[cal3713]

I am asking if bass and midbass is a horn.

And you clearly already know the answer.

 

[russtafarian]

View attachment 94483

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PBN audio.

Love the TT. But the JBL horns are absolutely not my cup of tea.

I'm going to give PBN the benefit of the doubt and suggest this setup is an experiment or prototype. That's a long-throw JBL cinema horn which makes it a curious choice for near-field listening. In a theater listeners would be at least of 30 feet away from that horn. At that distance, the articulation gain would counterbalance the horn coloration. When I heard it sitting 15 feet of the speaker, the coloration was pretty pronounced. Not a sound I could live with.

I wonder if PBN EQ'd the horn for this setup. I looked up the specs and JBL recommends +2dB at 10kHz and +13.5dB at 12kHz! That's for long-throw applications and would likely kill small animals in the near-field. So I'm guessing no.

It sure looked cool. No doubt about that.

Russ

 

[BruceD]

Grateful thanks to Baz for his excellent photos and prompt to the point observations.

Pleasing to read --Kudos

BruceD

 

[Al M.]

What kind of music did they play at The Show? Girl with guitar or with easy jazz background?

Let me guess, most systems there would break trying to play Black Sabbath.

 

[bazelio]

What kind of music did they play at The Show? Girl with guitar or with easy jazz background?

Let me guess, most systems there would break trying to play Black Sabbath.

We played Rammstein in the Verity, Thrax room. Sabbath? Child's play.

PS I'm not one to tolerate audiophile music for very long. In one room, someone said "let's play the Vanessa Fernandez cover of Led Zeppelin" to which I responded "that's my cue ... buh bye!".

 

[cjfrbw]

"Let my play you some selections from my 5000 record collection of 'girl with guitar' music. I have them arranged according to squeaky, breathy octave!"

 

[andromedaaudio]

Unfortunately the real test always comes after you pay the $$ bring the stuff home plug it in and play some of your favourite music .

But in munchen some didnt care .
For example FM acoustics played anything u could think of

 

[Audiophile Bill]

"Let my play you some selections from my 5000 record collection of 'girl with guitar' music. I have them arranged according to squeaky, breathy octave!"

You forgot the show specials. The quinquagenarian, violet eye shadow and blue polyester “fitted” dress brigade singing their hotel lift repertoire.

 

[bazelio]

In some of the rooms that were digital streaming only, I simply asked if I could select a track myself and they were fine with it. They handed the iPad to me. In the past, I've brought a record or two to the show, and 90%+ of the reps were happy to play them.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

In some of the rooms that were digital streaming only, I simply asked if I could select a track myself and they were fine with it. They handed the iPad to me. In the past, I've brought a record or two to the show, and 90%+ of the reps were happy to play them.

Some useful data points in your posts - thanks. The post about the Prana more dead cabinet not speaking to you musically as a more live one very much resonates with me (pun intended). Also the AER in the acrylic - yes it imparts an acrylic timbre low and behold. It isn’t the driver though - the driver is very neutral indeed. Also the absurdity of that application - it can never produce any proper bass like that - to expect it to is mere madness.