It was fun, Andy, and I am one of those 'snake oil' believers. In fact, we were swapping cables, etc. long into the night, before the show, in order to get the best sound that we could. We wound up with marginal loudspeakers and we transfered the whole amp to another room in a different part of the building for Sunday listening. It actually sounded better in the other room, because of the different speakers, even though our original efforts were lost. Word to the wise, NEVER, NEVER use non-broken-in speakers for a show like this, AND always bring lots of damping material in the form of light blankets or sound absorbers.
Jan asked about the show over in the Blowtorch thread, so I'll give a small update.
I live about an hour drive from the show, but I'm not a big fan of it. I did show up on Saturday, and this was mostly because I heard that Bob and John would be there, and I thought Jan mentioned he would be there as well.
To be honest, I get pretty claustrophobic in those small hotel rooms with lots of people crammed into them, so I tend to just visit the large rooms. My favorite of these was the Legacy Audio room, where they were playing the big monster speakers. You can see pics of these in the Stereophile blog here.
Bob apparently spent the whole weekend there. He tends to visit as many rooms as possible, since he isn't bothered by the close quarters in the rooms as I am. He didn't get back home until 1AM this morning, so I don't expect to hear from him until he's rested up.
By far the best aspect of the show for me was at 4PM on Saturday, I met up with Bob and we walked over to the bar for a beer. John was sitting there, so we all sat down and quaffed a couple of brews and talked audio. It's not every day I get to sit at the bar with Bob Cordell and John Curl! It was a hoot.
To really enjoy the show though, you must be a lot less cynical than I am about the high-end audio industry (I'm tempted to put those in scare quotes). When buying tickets online, one can specify a company name to put on one's badge. Mine said "Snake Oil Specialists, Inc.". I got a few comments about that from people on the elevator who looked at my badge.
Hi Andy,
It was great to see you and John at RMAF.
RMAF was terrific this year. Attendance was good and there were plenty of exhibtors. I was barely able to visit all the rooms. There was no gloom in spite of the rough economic times. I guess there are still a lot of people walking around with too much money on their hands.
There were lots and lots of turntables and tubes, some of which I must admit sounded very good. I heard a setup with 100-watt SET monoblocks that sounded very good. Used really big transmitter tubes. I bet the filament alone burned more than 100 watts.
I heard many more rooms this year than in the past that had really good sound. I sense that many speakers have gotten quite a bit better. I think the exhibitors are also playing better demo material. Quite a bit of equipment involving playback of WAV files and things like USB DACs.
There was the usual presence of some $30k speaker cables and a 180k pair of mono block tube amps.
There were also a couple of rooms that sounded like cr@p and their owners seemed clueless that they sounded so bad. One of them was a room with single-driver speakers. However, another room with a quasi single driver speaker from India sounded quite good. It was essentially a two-way speaker where the "single driver" was properly crossed to a woofer at about 100 Hz.
One attention-getting seminar in the Nordost room claimed to have measured differences caused by speaker cables, vibration isolators, and the inclusion of a "Quantum Box". The latter is powered from the mains, but has no inputs or outputs. Supposedly emits some kind of a field. They showed oscillograms that they asserted showed time offsets on the order of a Red Book sampling interval (22 us) that were reduced when one or more of the above-mentioned measures was taken. I wish I could explain the demo better, but I had many questions that there was no time to answer. It was a subtraction-based test, but it was a bit unclear where in the chain the two things being subtracted were and what effect digital filtering in the playback would have had. The key, however, is that the application of the improvement measures appeared to make a change.
John Atkinson gave a couple of very good, well-attended seminars. Harry Pearson also gave one.
Anyway, it was a great show and I recommend it to everyone.
Cheers,
Bob
I was there last year and enjoyed it. This year I'll be at AES next weekend and at BAF weekend after; adding the RMAF to my itinerary would have made it too costly for me. But had I known that all you guys would be there I might have bitten the bullet
jd
You didn't miss much, Jan. You have be a 'believer' like me, to get much out of the show. Just like Bob Cordell just parsed his words about the Nordost seminar, you probably would too. I missed the seminar, but I believe what they say, even about the 'quantum box' because I trust my ears, and heard it demoed at CES. Even I would not touch it with a 10 ft pole, however.
I must say that it was refreshing to be with people who heard differences without qualification. We experimented with cables, set-up, break-in (or lack of it) stability platforms, exotic playback of CD, etc. with gusto!
I even heard the difference between two connectors, a WBT and a Chinese 'knockoff' along with some reviewers. I is shocking what can make a difference if you just listen and not think that everybody is a 'crook' who shows it to you.
I must say that it was refreshing to be with people who heard differences without qualification. We experimented with cables, set-up, break-in (or lack of it) stability platforms, exotic playback of CD, etc. with gusto!
I even heard the difference between two connectors, a WBT and a Chinese 'knockoff' along with some reviewers. I is shocking what can make a difference if you just listen and not think that everybody is a 'crook' who shows it to you.
Check out Demian Martin's comments about the Nordost seminar in the Stereophile blog about it. Ouch.
I trust Demian, and I accept his input. I did not attend the seminar, so I can't say. Please remember that Demain works for a competing major cable company. I don't think that he would be biased, but he might be competitive about his own products and knowledge of how wire works, just like I might be about a competitive solid state design presentation.
I don't know why anyone here wants to display their ignorance, what is the point?
Wires count for me, that's for sure, and we heard differences in connecting wire, when we were setting up. I had not heard either cable before, but there was a difference, and everybody heard it. We were not trying to impress customers, we were just trying to get the sound 'right' in the room, before the doors opened.
Wires count for me, that's for sure, and we heard differences in connecting wire, when we were setting up. I had not heard either cable before, but there was a difference, and everybody heard it. We were not trying to impress customers, we were just trying to get the sound 'right' in the room, before the doors opened.
$100/meter? That's budget stuff! Have a look at the prices here, keeping in mind that the pound is about 1.6 U.S. dollars.
What amazes me about this is Stereophile's coverage of it. They used to be completely uncritical of the industry, but now they have become outright toadies.
Another amusing touch - here's a quote from Jason Victor Serinus' web site about the stuff he does:
What amazes me about this is Stereophile's coverage of it. They used to be completely uncritical of the industry, but now they have become outright toadies.
Another amusing touch - here's a quote from Jason Victor Serinus' web site about the stuff he does:
Last edited:
"There will of course be a free 7 day Burn in. For more info..."
Bargain! LOL!
That is beyond retarded.
Last edited:
We determined that the burn-in time should be more than 300 hrs, so 1 wk may not be enough. Yes, we discussed it amongst each other. Another problem is new cables that have not been broken in at these shows. I discussed burn-in with the guys to the right of me, at the bar. Bob Cordell and Andy C were at my left, and they may have missed out. However, cryoing can reduce burn-in time in many components.
I didn't, but I probably wouldn't have recognized him if I had. Back before I let my Stereophile subscription run out (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster!), I read his article on last year's Burning Amp. He was quoting the blurb that was modified slightly from the spiel for the Burning Man Festival, without actually realizing that the Burning Amp takeoff on this was satire. Whoosh!
I don't think he's the right guy to cover that event, because he lacks a technical background. But I guess he lives closer than the other Stereophile reporters, so it makes sense from that viewpoint.
Isn't Nelson going too?At any rate, it will be fun to read about if Stereophile puts it on their web site. And I'm sure there will be lots of info here, certainly more than what Stereophile will present.
Last edited:
When I was there there were some excellent workshops from people like John Siau (sp?) from Benchmark en 'JJ' Johnson from Reference Recordings, so if the format this year was similar it would have been my worth. I like to think of RMAF as Snake Oil Merchants sponsoring a really interesting audio engineering event. There's some justice in it. After all, audio IS engineering...
jd
I think of audio as ART, with a little engineering thrown in. Yes, Jan, you probably would have found interesting seminars to attend. I met fellow audio designers that I have worked with over the past 30 years. Even some old 'enemies' where we buried the hatchet between each other, as our differences were based on incidents long ago. I got new ideas about capacitors, and was able to follow up, just today, on some of these new ideas with real cap designers.
Bob Cordell got to see that I was actually associated with a new amp, and he got to see what Jack Bybee was doing with wires. We all got to try the new exotic memory players, that attempt to fix virtually everything that we have found wrong with CD playback, and more! They sound pretty good, too. In one of the Ayre rooms, I saw the most outstanding projection video that I have ever seen in my life.
I found myself comparing notes with designers from all over the world. Most believe in differences in components to a great degree. I have little or no trouble with other audio designers at all, as we share the same design experience. Some were a little over the top, but their sound was often pretty good anyway. My only disappointment was not talking privately with Charles Hansen of Ayre. I saw him at a seminar, but he was not publicly available, to the best of my knowledge. I normally learn more from him than anyone else. I also bought an audio book called:'Get Better Sound' by Jim Smith, an audio consultant. Easy reading and open minded too, without selling anyone anything in particular. He and I essentially share the same audio philosophy, which is based on experience. I recommend it.
Bob Cordell got to see that I was actually associated with a new amp, and he got to see what Jack Bybee was doing with wires. We all got to try the new exotic memory players, that attempt to fix virtually everything that we have found wrong with CD playback, and more! They sound pretty good, too. In one of the Ayre rooms, I saw the most outstanding projection video that I have ever seen in my life.
I found myself comparing notes with designers from all over the world. Most believe in differences in components to a great degree. I have little or no trouble with other audio designers at all, as we share the same design experience. Some were a little over the top, but their sound was often pretty good anyway. My only disappointment was not talking privately with Charles Hansen of Ayre. I saw him at a seminar, but he was not publicly available, to the best of my knowledge. I normally learn more from him than anyone else. I also bought an audio book called:'Get Better Sound' by Jim Smith, an audio consultant. Easy reading and open minded too, without selling anyone anything in particular. He and I essentially share the same audio philosophy, which is based on experience. I recommend it.
John,
There will always be those that say that we can't and those that know that we can
Last edited:
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.