Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2008

All, sorry not to post anything last night - I had a bunch of folks from the site over and just didn't have time. Dave (Twich54) and his wife Shirley, Steve (SlowGEEZER) and his wife Joyce, Eric (eknuds01) and his girlfriend Christine, Sean (Feltran) and my buddy Joe who's not a member of the site (he's got Summits, but no computer), my wife Sandy and I.

It got a little rowdy. There was alcohol involved. Smart a$$sed comments about politics. Dancing on tables (Dave really shouldn't take his shirt off). Dogs were barking. Cops were called.

There weren't any shots of folks at the house because Wayne specifically said he didn't want to see any. It's just as well, when the drinks started getting thrown I wouldn't have wanted the camera out anyway. I don't know who beaned me with the beer bottle, but Eric was laughing awfully hard about it and Christine had a wicked angry look in her eye.

Pending a stop at an ATM and a quick hearing this morning everyone will be back to normal at the show today - well, Steve might have a nasty bruise under his eye, but he's a scrappy guy and can give shots as well as he takes them.

At any rate - on with the coverage of the show itself...

Xindak and Dynaudio

The little Dynaudio Confidence C1's sounded very nice paired with electronics from Xindak. They were playing the Blue Coast compilation SACD that was all the rage at last years show. The Xindak gear on tap included the Muse transport ($1499.00), DAC 8 tubed DtoA ($1299), and the V30 50W integrated amp running Genlec KT88's that had be cryogenically treated. It really did sound as good as it looked.

Sanders

The Sanders room was a great place to stop and take in some great music. Mr. Roger Sanders is pretty well known around this forum as many of the members have enjoyed the merits of his amps - just look at the details of their construction. He was also showing his new 10B speaker ($12,990) which was doing justice to some Stevie Ray Vaughn while we were in the room. Roger was setup in his somewhat unconventional diagonal arrangement, and the room did sound quite good. That's Erick in the front seat and Roger over to the right. He also played a cut from Patricia Barber's "Cafe Blue" - the one with the really dynamic drum solo (sorry I can't remember the name), and the drums did have a very natural attack and decay. Dispersion of these speakers though is VERY narrow, at least as they were set up here. It's pretty much a one person, small sweet spot speaker. But when you're in that sweetspot it was impressive.

Krell

Krell was showing a passle of their Evolution Series elctronics, the 302 amp, 202 pre-amp and the new 5 Series SACD player all lashed with the Nordost version of their CAST cables. The new hot item for them is their Modulari Duo speaker system ($65K) machined out of solid aluminum billett and weiging in at 250 lbs. each. They were playing Chris Jones "No Sanctuary" and it sounded great. Smooth, seamless presentation on both voice and guitar with wonderfull dynamics and absolutely cavernous bass.

Pure Vinyl

Pure Vinyl is a new company that specializes in managing the transfer of your vinyl treasures to a pure digital medium. I don't remember all of the details, but it looked like a decent archival approach and had a very interesting GUI, including a graphic representation of the album surface generated from the digital data that would allow you to move the "cartridge" via a touchscreen. It sounded quite good actually, but alas, will only be available to those of you running on Mac's.

Here comes the audio porn for us non attenders. Thanks and keep um coming.

AMR & Rhythm

AMR was showing their two box digital solution as well as their own amps. I didn't ask if it's SACD capable, but did notice that they were running the DAC in "Denon D-Link" mode. Speakers were the somewhat awkward looking but decent sounding Rhythm's sporting Lowther drivers. I'd like to tell you more about the sound, but the music they were playing was so Gawd Awful I couldn't bear to stay any longer - my notes actually say "music was $hit!?"

Glad to here that Xindac stuff sounds good - couldn't draw any conclusions in London. The KT88 based amp does look smart.

Would like to hear those new Krell speakers - they look as though they could issue really serious bass, and as you say, they do!

Hope the hangovers weren't too bad:devil:

And keep 'em coming... we'll all be checking back!

Rowland & Vienna Acoustics

The room featuring the new Vienna Acoustics "The Music" speakers was impressive to say the least. These $27K beauties were making the most of Hugh Masekela's "Stimela (The Coal Train)" from the wonderfull Analog Productions 45 RPM vinyl (picked my copy up yesterday as well). Electronics were the Jeff Rowland 312 amp ($15.4K) and Criterion pre-amp ($18.6K) fed by the Project REM-10 turntable ($3299.00). I'd love to hear these speakers in a better room. They are real contenders. Notice how the midrange driver is in a seperate aimable compartment on top of the main speaker body.

OK, got to run to make day 2 of the show. Today I'm taking my tripod so that I can get some better shots. Lots more to come. I took 90 pictures yesterday and we only covered the 5th floor in the atrium area of one hotel. 10 more floors to cover in 2 hotels! Got to pick up the pace, but it's been so much fun listening to the music...

Tim, we're all living vicariously through you! :bowdown:

MiTT said:

Today I'm taking my tripod so that I can get some better shots.

Click to expand...

Yeah, then you can up the exposure time. I was thinking the same - will do the next show I go to. Also, take with a two sec delay if you can, so there's no shake.

And so the RMAF audio porn begins!

Many thanks for posting these pics for us non-attendees. Now, back to work!

Great stuff! Is Zu there this year? You should stop by and have a listen and let us know what you think.

There is some great stuff at RMAF! Sanders's new speakers are dollar per dollar possibly the best high end speakers at the show, in my opinion, but I don't know how they compare to the higher end Logans (which I've not heard yet ).

The Nordost room was what I found the most interesting, though. They had a fantastic sounding setup, and did demos of almost all of their products.

Also, I can't forget to mention the great company from those of you I met last night and saw again at the show today!

I'm glad everyone is enjoying it so far - so much more to come, I took another 180 some shots yesterday. There are some incredible rooms, great equipment and very interesting people to say the least. I stopped and talked to both Jonathin Valin from The Abso!ute Sound and Michael Fremmer from Stereophile on my way out last night. I also have run into Johnathan Skull a couple of times.

Channel Island

Channel Island was showing off their new D500 Mk II Class D amps - 500 watts as you might have guessed out of these monoblocks. I believe the guy in the room said that the speakers were AV123 1.6's, but I couldn't really her the guy over the music. Source was a Wadia i-Transport feeding the Channel Islands VDA.2 DAC.

Kharma and mbl

So I've always been a huge fan of both Kharma and mbl, but this room wasn't working very well yet when we were in it. It sounded a bit lifeless - which I suppose goes to show that under show conditions, unfamiliar room, trying to setup quickly, not really having a chance to tune the room etc. - even the best of gear can miss the mark. They were playing Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Scheherazade" (the Reiner/CSO version) off of a Solous music server - I don't know, maybe that was the culprit. None the less, beautiful to behold, but there were no dynamics. Too bad.

Asr

The mighty ASR Emitter II Blue (Battery Edition) was playing Stacy Kent "You Go To My Head" when we walked in and I was immediately hooked. Source was a Bel Canto transport and DAC, and the speakers they were using were called the Xavian Mediterranea ($10.5K). This is a seriously good integrated amp, but I'm not ready just yet to plunk down the $34K to take one home.

Lamm & Tidal

The Lamm room was VERY musical thanks in no small part to the dcs Puccinni 1 box SACD player. The Lamm L2 Reference pre-amp feeding the M 1.2 monoblocks didn't hurt either. I'd never heard the Tidal Piano speakers ($39.9K), but I'd give them a listen again. Very musical, and the finish was beyond reproach.