PNWAS at RMAF 2010

PNWAS

New Member
Aug 3, 2010
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Many of our members will attend RMAF this year. Here is your place to communicate and post comments about this year's show.
 

garylkoh

WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Sep 6, 2010
5,599
225
1,190
Seattle, WA
www.genesisloudspeakers.com
Come visit the PNWAS members at RMAF.

Kosmic and Genesis (Joe and myself) will be in rooms 446 and 9021.

Eficion and Exemplar(Pei-Gen and John Tucker) looks like 1110.

Puget Sound Studios (Bruce Brown) looks like 8000 and 1117

Hotel rooms for are going cheap on Hotwire - so this is a good year to come visit RMAF :)
 

garylkoh

WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Sep 6, 2010
5,599
225
1,190
Seattle, WA
www.genesisloudspeakers.com
Bring us a Feast

The Thai Lotus is our favorite restaurant for the show - we've been going to the same restaurant for the past 5 years, and bringing adventurous folk with us. We'll walk in, commandeer a large table, and tell the cook "We are hungry, bring us a feast." After a long day, we are usually too tired to decide on the menu.

This year, we almost had quorum for an Exco meeting: (from right) Darrin, his wife Li Lei, John Stone, Arnold Martinez (Tweak Studio), Joe Pitman, Robb Niemann (Burmester).

View attachment 1005
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
This was our first trip to an Audio show, but it wasn't just a listening trip. We were focused on making as many contacts as possible for our new company, Jaguar Audio Design. I wasn’t initially planning to bring my wife, Li Lei, thinking it might be kind of a short and hectic trip, but we had two flight vouchers from a recent airline misadventure on our honeymoon flight. While she likes music and this was important for our business, she still gets a lot of credit as a wife who was up for the show all 3 days. We both had a great time…much better than I expected.

I was genuinely surprised at how open and approachable the people who we spoke to were. We only had one company that told us they wouldn’t be interested in working with us if we came back to them with our clients, as the business grows. As a matter of fact, we met several people who are so friendly and customer-focused that I couldn't recommend working with them more highly. A few of those included Vinny from Red Wine, Jerry from Audio Magic, Brady from Audio Engine, Emmanuelle from First Sound Audio, Dan from Modwright, Jonathan Tinn from Evolution; I’ll definitely add Bruce from Puget Sound Studios, Joe from Kosmic and Gary from Genesis, in that group, but we knew them before the festival. I feel like mentioning their names, because in an era where companies like United Airlines and AT&T have set some sort of low-ball standard for customer service, it’s good to know that’s not how it is everywhere.

The Genesis room with the 7.1 had some of the best speed and holography I heard at the show. It was really horrible when we first got to the room, but it turned out to be the Jethro Tull recording Joe was playing (presumably at the request of the guy next to us). I was relieved to hear how it sounded with the next track…some sort of early German techno track; I don’t know what that was, but it really rocked the room. The Genesis/Kosmic server made a better source than most of what we heard at the show. The other room with the Genesis 5.3 sounded good, but I think they would have benefited from a larger room, like one of those on the first floor. Not to knock the larger Genesis models, but to my ears, the 7.1 sounds every bit as good as the larger models, like the 5.3, just smaller and less powerful.

John Stone tipped me off to some of the best bookshelf speakers I’ve ever heard, from Joseph Audio. Though, fairly expensive at $7k, they did make for a very involving near field experience. John also recommended the Estilon room. These were tall alien-shaped speakers made from a graphite composite; the price was in the stratosphere and I didn’t hear anything that excited me.

The best sounding rooms I heard were the Evolution Acoustics room and the Xact Audio Room. Jonathan from Evolution played some SRV and a jazz track on tape that were absolute perfection. Xact Audio featured Steve Dobbins’ new turntable, which can be described as exhilarating. Word has it that Mike L. has one of these tables now.

Of note for Puget Sound Studios (and PNWAS by association), both the Evolution room which was playing Bruce’s material and the Usher room which was also playing Bruce’s material, each won Oasis awards from Positive-Feedback, for their sound. Letting Puget Sound Studios handle the source is like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Very nice job Bruce!

There was a room set up by some dealer with Vandersteen speakers, which sounded quite nice. The basement had a large room with Acapella horn speakers from Germany that sounded very good; however, they lose points for costing $80k. Daedalus speakers were some of the most attractive speakers, for their real-wood cabinets and though they’re not prototypical audiophile speakers, they sounded good and people were really responding to them. No doubt the Daedalus benefited greatly from the First Sound preamp, which are top notch. I was also impressed by the Jones Audio room. They’ve done a radical re-design of their amp and preamp cases since they visited the club. Some people are uncomfortable the warmth of Jones amps, but if you have the right speakers and are into the tube sound I think Jones is really the ticket.

I was mostly interested in the low to mid-cost systems, for our clients and I’ve spent a lot more time listening to systems in this range (up to $30k). The standouts for me were the Red Wine, Zu and Odyssey rooms. Red Wine is gear that I’ve owned and its all-battery power gives you a path to a reference system for $10-15k, by avoiding buying any power cords a conditioner or more than one interconnect. The speakers with the Red Wine were the Zu Essence. While the combo wasn’t perfect it, but it did a lot of things that many of the other more-expensive systems weren’t capable of. Keith B. came in with me and brought an opera recording that was brilliant. Vinny says he will soon release a 100 watt version of his amp. The Zu room had their new Soul model, connected to an EL-34 amp, playing jazz and blues; the system was full of life (a real modern party system). Dollar for dollar, nothing else I saw compared to the Odyssey system. $5,500 for SS mono blocks, speakers, a preamp and cables. The source was a $1,500 Technics turntable (most other companies would have connected a $20k turntable to this system). I listened to a few tracks of the vinyl and found that this system was absolutely the real deal. I’ll also add the Audio Engine room. Their gear is not audiophile stuff. The company plays in the same space as Sonos, with product conceptualization that’s as good, but for less money. They’ll have a USB DAC option available with their powered speaker system soon; very nice and reasonably priced systems for a computer desk, library, kids' room, dorm room, etc.

PS Audio had an interesting approach to the music server. A computer is required, but it connects with a RJ-45 connector to an optional circuit card that slides into their DAC. The music is transferred into memory on the card and the electronics on the card do all the processing; I don't know if this is borrowed from their approach with the Perfect Wave CD player. We didn't listen long enough to form an opinion on the sound. One of the most attractive room setups we saw was the J Corder room. We couldn't really make it into the room, because the seats were all taken, but my impression was that the sound wasn't as engaging as I would expect from tape. I heard a lady from the company say that they made their tapes from CDs, which struck me as odd. I suppose there's a world-class CD player out there somewhere that could make a good tape. I asked one of the club's tape aficionados about this practice and he didn't like the idea at all. I can understand making a tape from a CD player if you have a friend with the most amazing CD player out there and who will let you use it for recording, but not from your own CD player, as most people would end up doing.

There were a number of rooms that did not impress. Mostly rooms with $50-100k of gear that was just unremarkable. The McIntosh room had what must have been a few hundred thousand worth of cosmetically beautiful gear, which sounded to me like a major disappointment.
 
Last edited:

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA

R Johnson

Well-Known Member
Jul 24, 2010
188
43
933
Chicago, Illinois, USA

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Thanks for updating the links R J., and for reading.
 

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