Audio Karma Festival !

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C.A.P

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Ken and I walked the show and had similar feelings about most ! There is a thread he continued that I don't think will get the attention as its not mentioning AK FEST in the thread title. I hope this helps . Scroll down to see some of our reviews
Here is the link and enjoy !

http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9029
 
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I'm amazed at the lack of response:confused: in this thread., Or its predecessor, that is linked...... Some asked for reviews and pictures and that is what was posted. I guess if your not talking about digital Vs analogue its not a hot topic !:(
 
No disrespect intended. Just some disappointment. Mostly because I'm still busy kicking myself in the a$$ for having missed the AK Fest....

Post some more pics !!

~VDR
 
Hopefully this come under the category of better late than never.

I went to AKfest last Saturday and really enjoyed the experience. I missed connecting with Ken and Chris, but maybe we can meet up next year. This was my first audio show, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect so I left my camera and CD in the car until after lunch.

I had a slightly different reason for attending as I am thinking of working with someone to build a pair of speakers for our living room to replace our Vandersteen 1C's, so I was interested in hearing different speaker configurations and different drivers.

Like everyone else, I thought the Salk HT-4's were the star of the show.

That FAL planar midrange is really unique and gives the speaker great dispersion. The RAAL tweeter is also really nice and the TC-Sounds woofer is great. It used two passive radiators for the bass, the midrange is open backed with a lined tunnel to house the drivers using bamboo ply for the enclosure. Driven by the Van Alstine Electronics with a Logitec Transporter, it was the best sounding system for me.

Salk had some other speakers there, but the only ones I heard were the Songtowers, which were nice, and a big sound for the money. And I loved the wood on the speaker on the left in the other Salk picture.
 

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Another system that I really liked was the JM Reynard room with a moderately sized monitor speaker that sounded really good driven by Blue Circle Electronics. Nice smooth sound. I didn't actually get a chance to speak with Gilbert of Blue circle but his signs written with marker in the Blue Circle room are worth the price of admission alone.
 

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I peeked in the door of one room and spied what looked like a pair of Martin Logans, and walked into Cosmo's room where there were the Frankenlogans pictured here, he said they were Odyssey panels and only one was working because he was having power supply problems with one channel.
 

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Gershman and Manley teamed up in another room, and I thought it was nice, and maybe the fact that there wasn't anything that sounded remarkable to me, should be taken as a positive. There wasn't anything that stood out to me, it just sounded relaxed.
 

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Unfortunately, I didn't take as many pictures as I should have. If I go next year I'll know better. Other systems that I thought were quite good were the Bamburg speakers. Nice detailed full range speakers, and the review pair were for sale at an attractive price.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue42/bamberg.htm

For inexpensive speakers I really like the SB acoustic speakers in Nate's Audio room.

The Snell Phantoms were very good I thought. Hearing the seminar by Joe D'Appolito was very interesting for me and he made a good case for his arrangement of mid tweeter mid. I really had no experience hearing speakers that used that configuration before but the Snells, the Song Towers, the Tyler Acoustics speakers all used that configuration and they all sounded good.

I liked the SAS room and the Selah Phast Jr. speakers.

The Big Quads were well...big. I mean really huge. It seemed like they were 5 feet wide, (maybe only 4) but they simply were too big for the room. I thought the bass was too much for the room and couldn't make any real judgements about them.

There were other rooms where I was expecting more based on reviews and the amount of print they've been getting. Maybe I was there at a bad time, sitting in the wrong spot, who knows.

One thing is that it does seem that people did agree on the Salk HT-4's were something special.

What I find quite interesting, having heard some of the set ups, reading what other people have written, is how much a role personal preference plays in how people percieve a system. I like to make it analogous to food. I love Indian food, many people don't. Without listening to the systems yourself, you really don't know what they sound like. The only way to use reviews is to use them as a guide to find things that you might thingk are interesting, then try and hear them for yourself. I think that is probably the one thing that may save the brick and mortar businesses. Because the whole thing is a matter of personal preference, you really need to be able to hear things in order to decide if it suites you.

At the end of the day, I really enjoyed the show, and hope to make it back again. The other thing, was it was really nice to get back to my Vista's becuase as nice as some of the systems were. My system was assembled to suit my preferences, and my Vista's still have a midrange clarity that was better than or the equal of anything I heard. :music:


Chuck
 
I'm amazed at the lack of response:confused: in this thread., Or its predecessor, that is linked.....
Thanks for the write up, I had fun last year going with you.

Things are busy and slow at the same time, guess it fair to say I'm busy drowning (in a business sense).
 
I'm amazed at the lack of response:confused: in this thread., Or its predecessor, that is linked...... Some asked for reviews and pictures and that is what was posted. I guess if your not talking about digital Vs analogue its not a hot topic !:(

Hi Chris,

I'm with you regarding D versus A. I think we've about beaten that horse to death but I suspect the topic will come up again. Kinda like the opening scene from the "Holy Grail".

Chuck, great write up and pictures on the show. What is the location? Is it an annual event? How are the venues from an acoustic perspective?

GG
 
Gordon,

The show was held at an Embassy Suites Hotel in Livonia Michigan. Pretty hostile territory for a Buckeye like myself, but really not a bad place.

It seems to be an annual event. Hosted by the Audiokarma website people.

http://www.audiokarma.org/

Acoustically, the rooms are about what you would expect from hotel rooms. Meaning, OK, but not great. Most of the set ups were positioned along the long wall of the room, with a single sofa and two arm chairs opposite the speakers. So it was a pretty much in your face presentation. A few companies (Salk, Audio Classics and Marantz) had ballrooms, the Salk room being quite large, and the new Salk speakers seemed to have no problem filling the space.

Chuck
 
I attended the show for a few hours on Saturday. My picks for the top three rooms were:

JM Reynaud/Blue Circle/Audio Note
DeVore/Naim
Atma-Sphere/Classic Audio/TriPlanar

There are probably two or three others. JMR is about the only one I find that gets a ribbon tweeter to sound acceptable.

Attendance was way down from last year, and the number of exhibitors was way down, too. Aside from seeing some people I wanted to see, the show was rather disappointing.
 
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