Photo Highlights Of California Audio Show 2011

[Steve Williams]

Well this was truly a labor of love. I took several hundred pictures and narrowed them down to 109 of the best and then had to resize all of the photos. I will try to add some comments along the way

My vote for the Best Sound at the show came from Music Lovers in Berkeley/San Francisco. Jae and Hugh IMO rose to the top of the pack. This room was so large that in order to get both main speakers in the photo I had to sit way at the back of the room. The speakers were probably 25 feet apart and the soundstage was as magnificent as anything I have ever heard. The room was dialed in by Dr Keith Johnson as well as 4 hours of speaker placement refinement by Hugh

Thor's Hammer

Aesthetix front end

Spectral

Maxx lll's

Jae spinning some music

 

[Steve Williams]

MBL Room

 

[Steve Williams]

Magico Q1

Alon with his Q1

 

[Steve Williams]

Magico Q5

Aluminum build

Constellation amp

 

[Steve Williams]

Blue Coast Recordings shared the other half of the room with Magico Q5

 

[Steve Williams]

Q3 Room with new Audio Research Ref250 Monoblocks

Transrotor TT

 

[Steve Williams]

 

[Steve Williams]

Devialet Premier Integrated Amp

 

[Steve Williams]

Our friend and member of our Expert panel, Art Noxon giving a seminar

 

[Steve Williams]

Ayon

 

[Steve Williams]

Einstein

 

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Acapella

 

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[Steve Williams]

 

[KeithR]

thanks for the pics Steve.

how was the Ayon room? I thought the amps looked a bit garish in person (and much, much larger than online photos), but they were in a really small room in Newport, so didn't get any sweet spot action.

I'm not sure how anyone with Magico Minis could sell them for the Q1s. that is a bit of an ugly duckling compared to one of the most beautiful speakers i've ever seen in person.

 

[Steve Williams]

they were garish

 

[Steve Williams]

 

[Steve Williams]

Dan D'Agostino's Room

I thought it sounded terrific BTW

 

[Steve Williams]

My good friend Jonathan Tinn's room. Unfortunately no Wave Kinetics however these Evolution MicroMini One's at $2K/pair was IMO the best deal at the show

The man himself

 

[Steve Williams]

A seminar of Recording Artists and my good friend Andreas Koch from Playback Designs on DSD, the past, present and the future