First impressions at California audio Show

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I just got back from the show, and it was really quite an ear opening event for both my buddy and I. First, no one except for myself brought music that truly challenged any system there. It was all low key, almost zero dynamic range vocal stuff that while revealing in the midrange, had too stark and empty of a mix to really give us a chance to hear the speakers stretch their legs. Secondly, I have to give a major props to my friend who designed my mini monitors I am currently using in my small home theater in Oakland. There were no small speakers that came close to sounding as good as these speakers - and this is something that both my friend and I agreed with. Just about every room had tube amps and solid state together, but I didn't get a chance to hear both on the same speaker system. There were also alot of beautiful turntables there, but only one demo really blew me away. Another observation - there are a shocking amount of bad systems out there that cost a arm and a leg, and left me less than impressed.

I brought two recordings with me. The first was High Altitude Drums which is a Ray Kimber Isomike recording on DSD. It features the Denver Blue Knights Drum and Bugle corps recorded at Weber University in Colorado. If your system survives the dynamics of this recording, it are truly worth their salt. While this is a multichannel mix, there is a separate and quite capable two channel DSD mix as well.

The second recording is called A Gospel Celebration, a recording I did in multichannel and two channel DXD, transferred to SACD. It features my church's 150 voice gospel choir, some of the best soloists in the Gospel music field, my church's five piece band, and the 100 person strong Oakland Symphony Orchestra. It has everything from a full bore dynamic, to a single soloist with a piano. If you can hear the air conditioning system during the quietest passages, then the system has excellent noise floor. If your system can play this recording back while keeping things layered and uncongested when everything is going, it has excellent overall resolution and dynamics.

Starting off with the bad:

The JBL Room by Design Interaction.

JBL's Everest II systems quite frankly costs a fortune. However, the sound of those speakers (and the entire system) was just so underwhelming I was speechless. It sounded like a JBL speaker system for sure, nice clear mids, but airless highs, and bass with absolutely no impact or depth, indistinct, and just not right. The speaker has a super tweeter, but it revealed no air, and no space between the instruments and vocalist. With my recordings, the system did not image well, was not tonally correct, but it certainly was dynamic. The demo left us both dry as a bone. One of the worst of show for sure.

Clair Audient 2+2 Room

First, the guy didn't want to play my recordings for fear he would blow his system up. That was one tick on the presentation just for his lack of confidence in his product. What he did put on showed me nothing, and did not impress me at all. First the speakers had a deep a toe in, which meant no clear sound stage, but you got stereo everywhere in the room. It had no bottom end to speaker of, and the whole presentation was full of lacks. No air around vocals or instruments, and no dynamic punch whatsoever. They only played music that would not challenge the system in any way.


The Earthquake Room.

Featuring their Cinenova amp driving the Tigris speakers, the sound mirrored just what the review I read in Stereophile described. The speaker was too bass heavy, and too tweeter heavy, leaving a recessed midrange with no sense of presence to anything. It reminded me of the smiley face setting on a 1/3 octave equalizer. While the bass went deep, it was ill defined and just too fat sounding for my taste. It made my recordings sound like they were in another room, and they are not supposed to sound that way at all. This was another big let down, but not totally unexpected.

The Audio Note Room.

This was clearly a step up from everything we had heard so far. I understand why Richard likes these speakers, they had a lot going for them. Everything sounded clear, and clean, and quite surprising being pushed by a 21 watt amp. It was not a perfect demo however. The fact that the audio note speakers have to be pushed into corners really revealed the rooms modes and nodes, which caused a chestiness with male vocals. It also flattened the sound stage depth to the point that it was really a flat sound stage, but with excellent lateral imaging. All the vocals I heard from the various demo's material had a wolly character - not fully revealing the true tonality of the voice. The entire system has excellent resolution, but it sounded a bit "washed" with timbres and overtones. Bass was also a bit wolly, and the mids had just a hair of forward bite that almost approached shouty when pushed during the demo (this could have been the recordings fault). I was impressed otherwise with the sound of this system, and can clearly see it having some very vocal fans. It certainly did more things right than wrong, but some of the wrong things were pretty audible.

The Acoustic Zen Room

I am going to be honest, I loved the sound of these speakers, and so did my best friend. Tt played back my recordings with all the power, nuance, imaging, dynamics, timbre and tonality that I heard in my recording studio. This was the first room we came across where the bass was tight, deep, and sounded realistic. It was also the first room we came across that projected sound in a way that was very realistic - at times I felt like the Blue Knights were in the room.

Teresonic Room.

I really liked the sound of this system. Very natural and easy, with excellent coherence. The speakers are a single driver design, and as such should have excellent uniformity in dispersion in both the vertical and horizontal plane. This one had it in the horizontal, but clearly when you stood up, you got a very different tonal characteristic than from sitting down. As long as you stayed seated, the presentation was excellent. The moment you stood up, everything got tilted towards the treble. The sound was smooth, but in the presence of any deep bass, the whole system just broke down to my ears. That is the drawback of using one driver to carry 10 octaves worth of music.

The YG Acoustics Room

Oh what a sound from this room, and I know that the electronics behind the speakers played a big role in that. Featuring an all DCS system of which I am totally familiar with, the sound was present, pure, sweet, relaxing when it should be, dynamically powerful and big sounding when it needed to be, and just plain mind blowing overall. We stayed in the room a while listening to everyones recordings. This system could do no wrong to these ears. Whether it was Drum corps, or Opera, this system excelled in creating the appropriate space, timbre and tonality of the recording. When I put on my recordings, the room got very crowded very quickly; to the point it got hot as hell in the room. My recordings (and everyone else's) sounded totally right on the spot with this system.

The Best of Show (at least so far) to me came from:

The Lotus Group Room.

Featuring the absolutely gorgeous sounding Granada speaker, this demo was totally stunning and perfect in every way. No matter what was played, this system was dynamic, clean, and at times extremely spooky real. The speakers have a totally seducing open quality that really drew me in to the music, no matter what was played. I almost missed this room, but standing at the elevator I heard this excellent Jazz recording featuring a three piece group highlighted by Jimmy Smith on the Hammond B-3 organ. Since I own this organ, and have played it my entire life, I am very familiar with its tube like sweet tonal quality. The bass pedals sounded just like they should, deep, full and powerful, with no overhang between notes. The organ sounded like it was in the room, and I thought it really was before entering the room. When I asked the gentleman to put on my recordings, he had no reservation in playing them at realistic levels. The sound was enveloping, extraordinarily powerful and effortless with VERY accurate timbre and tonality. From the bottom up, nothing stuck out in the mix, which had a very wide and deep sound stage(again as they should) which allowed you to hear the air mix with the horns and drums in a way that sounded like I was at a drum corps show. The inner voices of the horns were clearly rendered, highs wide open and clear, and bass that was tight and impactful without being overwhelming and wolly. I was in this room for 30 minutes and didn't want to leave. This system was addictive to the hilt, and I wanted to take it home.

I am going back tomorrow and will have other observations to reveal. I have yet to hear the Legacy Whispers, Magico speakers, the Emerald Physics speakers, Acoustic Technology speakers, Sonist speakers, and several other systems.