Rocky Mountain Audiofest 2009

The Richness of RMAF 2009 Posted Wed Oct 7, 2009, 1:12 PM ET
By Jason Victor Serinus

As the sixth annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest draws to a close at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, what is now the largest annual audio show in the USA could boast an attendance of 3700, 200 more than last year. Prominent among attendees from 49 states and overseas was a notable increase in the number of under-40 attendees. No doubt they were drawn by the rise of audiophile computer-audio playback, the resurgence of vinyl, and the large exhibit hall populated by the Head-Fi headphone community. The younger attendees included an influx of students, who responded to RMAF’s concentrated outreach to local colleges.

Nor were all the new attendees men. Although the hi-end remains male-dominated, far more women than ever before braved the testosterone-laden environment to discover the best the High End has to offer. Venturing into the halls, they discovered over 150 exhibit rooms packed with products from at least 479 companies.

This year, women were the main driving force behind the show. After the sudden death of show co-founder Al Stiefel on January 27, his wife, Marjorie Baumert, vowed to continue Al’s service to the audiophile community. Assuming directorship, she assembled a dedicated team headed by Assistant Director Marcie Miller. Marjorie also called upon friends, family members, and the Colorado Audiophile Society to assist her in her task. That she not only persevered through her grief, but also managed to put together the finest show RMAF has ever produced, is a credit to the depth of her commitment and love.

After the show, Marjorie expressed her thanks, not only to everyone mentioned above, but also to those who extended “kind words and many hugs.” I, for one, will never forget the night before the show opened, when Marjorie broke down in the arms of Stereophile’s Laura LoVecchio, then rallied to lead a touching toast to her wonderful late husband.

“Over the past five years,” says Marjorie, “the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest has grown from a small regional show to a driving force in the audio industry, and seems poised to remain so, if comments from exhibitors are any indication. If you haven't had a chance to attend in the past, the dates for the 2010 show are October 15–17, 2010. Hope to see you there!”

READ MORE »

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (4)

Bit-Perfect Playback Posted Wed Oct 7, 2009, 1:06 PM ET
By Jason Victor Serinus

The sixth annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest had already closed when I finally had the time to stop by Reference Recordings’ booth to check out their latest mouth-watering HRx high-resolution master WAV file DVD-Rs. There I encountered Demian Martin, who, together with Ray Burnham, has produced the Auraliti (pronounced Aurality) disc player ($800).

“Right now,” Martin explained, “if you try to play hi-res files, you need to fool around with a computer. Nor does USB support hi-res 176.4- or 192kHz-sampling rate data in standardized format. Our alternative is the Auraliti, a computer specifically modified to play hi-res files.”

Martin claims that the Auraliti plays everything from 16-bit Red Book CD up to 24-bit, 192kHz files in “flawless, bit-perfect form.” With neither internal storage nor moving parts, its solid-state memory is “hard to screw up.” It also emits almost no heat.

The Auraliti, it should be noted, needs a little help from its friends. Users start with their computer, and transfer Red Book or hi-res files onto a separate USB hard drive (approx. $50) or memory drive (approx. $100). Once they use a USB cable to plug the drive into the Auraliti, it reads the data. So I guess you do need to mess with a computer after all to use the Auraliti.

You can also connect an iPod Touch ($200) to the Aurality, and gain access to the iPod Touch’s content through WiFi. Martin believes that any iPod user will be comfortable with the process. He also asserts that the Auraliti will play the content in bit-perfect form. “It doesn’t know how to do anything else,” he said.

The Auraliti does have an internal DAC, but sounds far better if connected to an external, state-of-the-art DAC such as Berkeley Audio Designs’ fabulous Alpha DAC ($5000) that Martin had on display. S/PDIF and optional switchable outputs are supplied.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (10)

Imperial Sound Posted Wed Oct 7, 2009, 12:55 PM ET
By John Atkinson

One of my best sounds at RMAF was the room organized by Colorado dealer Audio Unlimited featuring the Emperor speakers from Canadian manufacturer Hansen Audio that had so impressed Jason Serinus at the 2008 RMAF. The three-way speakers were driven by Accuphase monoblocks sitting on Critical Mass Systems platforms, with the front end based on a Trans-Rotor turntable. I was drawn into the room by the full-range sound of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" and didn't leave for quite a while. Wes Phillips said it best in his CES 2009 coverage of the Emperor: "the music had me melting in my chair."

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (1)

PC Audio @ RMAF Posted Wed Oct 7, 2009, 12:36 PM ET
By John Atkinson

There was full program of seminars and workshops at RMAF, as well as my own "Squeezing the Music Till the Bits Squeak," the session featuring Harry Pearson, and Michael Fremer on "Turntable Setup," I moderated a panel session, "How to Get the Most Out of Computer-Based Audio," on Saturday afternoon. The A-List panel—(from left to right) Gus Skinas (SACD Center), John Stronczer (Bel Canto Design), J. Gordon Rankin (Wavelength Audio), Charlie Hansen (Ayre Acoustics), record producer Joe Harley, and Chris Connaker (www.computeraudiophile.com)—discussed the best way to use a computer as a legimate source component in a high-end audio system. All concerned felt this was the way forward for the high-end audio industry, particularly with the increasing availability of hi-rez downloads, and it was a shame that the session was limited to an hour.

One spippet shared by Gus Skinas, who is still strongly associated with the SACD medium, is that DSD recordings made on the increasingly common devices from Korg and other manufacturers can be burned on to DVD-R blanks to produce discs that play on a Sony PS3 (both generations) and Sony's new 5400 SACD player. These can't be called "SACDs" as they lack the physical watermark and the DRM restrictions that are required by the SACD license. But the DSD Disc, as it is called, is a legitimate hi-rez format.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (4)

Remembering Stereophile's Founder Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 4:04 PM ET
By Jason Victor Serinus

On Saturday evening, at show's close, Bea and Luke Manley of VTL, with the support of Nordost, hosted a Martini tribute to the recently departed founder of Stereophile, the inimitable J. Gordon Holt. Located outside Nordost's Humboldt Peak room on the Denver Marriott Tech Center's mezzanine, the tribute drew a huge crowd of industry icons.

Forty-seven years after Gordon published the first issue of Stereophile, his son, Charles Holt (above), joined John Atkinson, Gordon's long-time friend Bob O'Neill, veteran tube-amp designer Roger Modjeski, and fellow publishing icon Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound in raising a glass to the irascible pioneer.

Gordon's cutting-edge analysis of the best and worst that the high-end has to offer was founded on the premise that the best way to review audio components is to listen to them. As common sense as that concept may be, it's amazing how upsetting it remains to people who think that audio is about everything except how the music affects you. Thanks, Gordon, for constantly reminding us that our passion is rooted in the love of music.

External Link  ::  Blog Entry  ::  Comments (8)

Robert O'Neill Pays Tribute Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 4:01 PM ET
By John Atkinson

Bob O'Neill sold advertising for Stereophile in the early 1980s and also contributed record reviews to the magazine. He became a firm friend of J. Gordon Holt's and gave a moving eulogy honoring Gordon's memory at RMAF.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (1)

Chip Off the Old Block Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 3:52 PM ET
By John Atkinson

When I last met Charles Holt in 1991, he was a teenager. But I had no problem recognizing him at RMAF—he looks just like his Dad. And, as you can see in Jason Serinus' photograph, in which Charles is flanked by his girlfriend Melissa and me, Charles is wearing the infamous "finger button," which was Gordon's favorite image of himself.

But I am not sure if JGH would have approved of the Chocolate Martini.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (3)

Cheers, Gordon Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 3:47 PM ET
By John Atkinson

Tube amp designer Roger Modjeski (Music Reference) toasts Gordon Holt with a Martini.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (1)

Celebrating JGH with the Real Thing Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 3:43 PM ET
By John Atkinson

Bea Lam's Martini party in honor of J. Gordon Holt—that's Bea at the right of the photo— concluded with a solo violin recital to remind partygoers what high-end audio is all about.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (0)

Get Better Sound Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 3:37 PM ET
By John Atkinson

Restocking the magazines on the Stereophile booth, I saw a familiar face on the booth next door. Audio industry veteran Jim Smith was selling (and autographing) copies of his book Get Better Sound, which is, as the name suggests, about how to get better sound from your system.

In his recent review, Art Dudley concluded that "Get Better Sound is the cheapest good tweak you can buy for your system....It also has the potential to be among the best system investments you can make, period, partly for its breadth of subject matter, and partly because it could lead any open-minded reader, the next time he buys some new gear, to a greater understanding of what it is he really wants."

What he said.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (2)

Axpona in 2010 Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 2:59 PM ET
By John Atkinson

Since the demise of of its own Show, Stereophile has been supporting North American audio Shows, which was why you can find us at RMAF in Denver and SSI in Montreal. Next March, we are partnering with the Axpona Show in Florida, which had a booth at RMAF. The booth was manned, er, personed by two beautiful girls but, of course, when I went back with my camera, they had left for the day.

External Link  ::  Blog Entry  ::  Comments (0)

Bellisima and Joseph Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 2:56 PM ET
By Jason Victor Serinus

As expected, Bel Canto Design's complement of components fully lived up to their reputation for affordable excellence. The top-of-the-line e.One CD2 CD transport/player ($2995), prototype DAC 3.5 (price not yet set), two REF500M Balanced mono amplifiers ($1995/each), REF VBS1 Virtual Battery Supply, which can power up to three front-end products ($1495), USB Link 24/96 USB to /SPDIF link ($495), and new USB Lightlink High Speed Optical ST glass-fiber link (price not supplied) were fed by an Airport Express-equipped computer server. As Bel Canto President Michael McCormick explained, "The DAC 3.5's excellent jitter rejection is at the center of the system." A Running Springs Power Conditioner completed the chain… except for one major component, the speakers.

Thanks to Joseph Audio's new Pearl 2 loudspeakers ($28,500/pair), the system's airy placement, lovely warmth, and fine highs were delivered in spades. Joseph's lauded babies, which have previously won a host of awards and two consecutive Best of Shows, now feature sleeker cabinets with side panels fastened from the inside, and new refinements to their crossovers. Their frequency response extends from 25Hz to 21kHz, ±2dB, and their 8 ohm nominal impedance never dips below 6 ohms. Those are fabulous specs in anyone's book. So is the sound.

Pictured, left to right, are John Stronczer, Bel Canto's CEO and chief designer; PJ Zornosa, North American Sales Manager; Michael McCormick, President; and Jonathan Scull, publicist extraordinaire and all-around bon vivant. Although Jeff Joseph was lamentably absent for this once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity, he joined us for post-show dinner and smiled his way into the show wrap-up photo that heads this blog.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (1)

German Physiks & Vitus Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 2:36 PM ET
By John Atkinson

"This wasn't our choice of music," whispered German Physiks' Robert Kelly when I entered the room they were sharing with Danish electronics manufacturer Vitus Audio. "No problem," I whispered back, " I love Howard Shore's symphonic score to the movie trilogy Lord of the Rings," which a visitor had asked to be played.

The speakers were the Borderland Mk.IV ($34,995/pair), driven by a Vitus SCD-010 CD player ($20,000), Vitus SL-10 line stage ($28,000 wity system remote), and a pair of SM-010 40W class-A monoblocks ($50,000/pair). The sound was open and transparent, as it should be given the price of the system!

I remain intrigued by the German Physiks speakers, which use, like the old Ohm designs, a bending-wave drive-unit to cover almost the entire audioband. In the case of the Borderland, the drive-unit's cone is made from carbon-fiber and covers the range from 190Hz to 24kHz, a downward-firing 12" woofer performing the bass duties.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (3)

Small Speaker—Big Bass Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 2:21 PM ET
By John Atkinson

Listening to a Toni Braxton cut on the LSA1 Statement speakers ($2599/pair), driven by an Exemplar-modded Denon 2910 DVD player and LSA's hybrid integrated amplifier (reviewed by Stereophile when it was called the DK Designs VS.1 Reference Mk.III), I was struck by how much low-frequency information was coming from this nicely finished two-way stand-mount.

LSA's products are all available in three levels of performance: Standard, Signature, and Statement. In the case of the LAS1 speaker, the Standard version costs $999/pair and uses a 1" soft-dome tweeter; the Signature at $1499/pair offers upgrades to the crossover circuitry; and the Statement replaces the dome tweeter with a ribbon unit, as well as implementing the crossover with such premium parts as a 4 lb air-cored Alphacore coil in the woofer feed.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (0)

April's One-Box Solution Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 2:13 PM ET
By John Atkinson

My attention was caught by the USB flash drive sticking out of the side of the Aura Premier CD player/receiver/headphone amplifier ($2595) in one of the April Music/May Audio rooms. And so it should have caught my attention, because it was styled by noted English industrial designer Kenneth Grange, responsible for some of ther classic B&W designs on the 1970s and '80s. The Premier will play MP3, WMA, and Ogg Vorbbis files from its USB-B input and it also has a USB-A port that will accept data sampled at up to 48kHz with 16-bit resolution.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (0)

Squeezing the Music... Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 12:55 PM ET
By Jason Victor Serinus

John Atkinson was one busy camper at RMAF. In addition to blogging the show and moderating Saturday afternoon's information-packed, standing room only Computer Audio Panel, John presented four hour-long seminars entitled PC Audio—Squeezing the Music Till the Bits Squeak, playing all his music examples from his MacBook laptop via a Metric Halo FireWire interface. The setting was Evergreen E, the large, excellent-sounding exhibit (Sony and JBL speakers, Mark Levinson amplification, EMM Labs preamp and digital source components, Kimber kables) assembled by Ray Kimber of Kimber Kable.

At the final seminar, presented Sunday at 11am, John set the tone by playing his reference-quality, 24-bit, 88.2kHz recording of the male acappella choral group Cantus singing Eric Whitacre's transporting Lux Aurumque. The sound, as you might expect, was extremely natural and inviting, and captured the natural dynamics of a small ensemble in peak form.

However, "It's getting increasingly difficult to find albums to review that don't have the life squeezed out of them," John told the packed house. "Recently, Robert Baird presented me with Delbert McLinton's Acquired Taste, which he thought would be a candidate for "Recording of the Month" if the sound was good. But when I played one of the tracks, "Mama's Little Baby Doll," "I discovered relentless, in-your-face sound."

John then played the raucous track, and ran real-time software that showed the waveform banging its head against the top. The entire dynamic range had been compressed to 4, 5, and at the most 6dB, and was mostly composed of square waveforms that were responsible for its clipped sound. He also challenged Don Was, the A list producer responsible for the sonic travesty, for caving into to music industry honchos who believe that unrelenting loudness is what people want to hear.

READ MORE »

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (9)

The Live Reference Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 12:53 PM ET
By Jason Victor Serinus

Bless Ray Kimber's heart. For at least the last three years, Kimber Kable has transported live musicians to RMAF so that we could always have a fresh, live reference in our heads as we traipsed room-to-room listening to canned performances.

Pictured is clarinetist Russell Harlow, who prefaced John Atkinson's final installment of his seminar on dynamic range compression, with a lovely short performance of Bach. Sitting up close, no one could miss that the clarinet's sound has no sharp digital edge, and that the exaggerated breathiness we often hear around recorded winds is much less apparent in live performance.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (0)

Gingko Vibration Isolation Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 12:39 PM ET
By John Atkinson

Both Art Dudley and Michael Fremer have praised Gingko Audio's isolation platforms in Stereophile's pages, and at RMAF, the company was showing the benefit of its Cloud 10 platform on an Atmasphere tube power amplifier. Projected on the wall above Gingko's Vinh Vu (and onto his forehead!), real-time analysis showed the outputs of B&K accelerometers fastened to the stand the amp was sitting on and to the amplifier chassis, which was supoorted by a Cloud 10. There was indeed a dramatic reduction in the excitation of the amplifier compared with the stand—especially at low frequencies.

The system featured Gingko's two-way, isobaric-loaded Claravu Model 8 speakers ($3990/pair, plus $500/pair for matching stands), Silver Circle Audio's Pure Power AC transfomers, and the new Benchmark DAC 1HDR, a remote-control version of the DAC 1 Pre preamp/DAC/headphone amplifier that Sam Tellig and I reviewed in October 2008.

External Link  ::  Blog Entry  ::  Comments (5)

Where's the Rest of the Speaker? Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 12:26 PM ET
By John Atkinson

When I walked into the room of Chicago-based Acoustic Technology LLC, I thought I was listening to speakers that only had tweeters, because the only visible drive-unity was a single 3" unit. Yet the sound, a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Schererazade, was definitely full-range,and the soundstaging, as you might expect from such a small radiating diameter and a narrow cabinet baffle, was well-delineated.

The 3" unit, which has a titanium cone, was being used in the Acoustic Technology Classic-Series loudspeaker ($2450/pair) to cover the entire audio band. Yes, the speaker was running out of headroom at climaxes with a lot of bass energy—maximum amplifier power is specified as 30Wpc—but there was a refreshing transparency to the overall presentation. System was an Ayon CD2 CD player, Pass Labs X-1 preamp, and a PS Audio power amp.

External Link  ::  Blog Entry  ::  Comments (10)

Paul McGowan Scores Again Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009, 12:19 PM ET
By Jason Victor Serinus

Having just heard a Bay Area Audiophile Society (BAAS) demo of the PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport ($2999), Perfect Wave DAC ($2999), and Power Plant Premier ($2199), all hosted by the ever-engaging Paul McGowan, I was very eager to hear PS Audio's front end powered by an early prototype of PS Audio's forthcoming class-D Perfect Wave amplifier. Using Focus Audio Master 2.5 speakers ($20,000/pair), two MartinLogan Descent subs, and a complement of Perfect Wave AC12 power cables ($699/meter) and older PS Audio speaker cables not currently on the market, the system delivered the kind of clean, impressively full range sound that has made PS Audio a legend in the industry.

The Perfect Wave Transport (PWT) connects to the Perfect Wave DAC (PWD) via a proprietary 1²S bus connection carried by an HDMI cable. PS Audio's Perfect Wave I²S cable ($500) creates a superior connection between the components that is claimed to eliminate most jitter. The PWT plays both CDs and hi-res DVD-Rs from Reference Recordings and other companies. It also functions as a hard-drive player, reading the contents of a disc to its drive, and then playing the music back in presumably bit-perfect form.

Thanks to PS Audio's Dave Kakenmaster, who is pictured above, the contrast between the sound of Reference Recordings' famed recording of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances in CD format and hi-res master file format was ear- and mind-opening. I'm greatly looking forward to hearing more of this combo at home in the near future.

Blog Entry  ::  Comments (0)

1 2 3 Older Posts >