yes, I think they're something like this
http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/audioproducts/omegamikro_hub.php
Yes, kooky kables are a traditional part of hifi shows, going back to at least the early Eighties. Cables are very high-margin products (I'd guess 90% or higher profit), so vendors really want to demo their wares with the high-profile exhibits.
The catch is that cables (and other bits of the system) really can alter the sound in peculiar ways, so the exhibitor has to careful in mixing-and-matching. This, by the way, is why the sound is usually pretty rough on Fridays and Saturday mornings, and then better Saturday afternoons and Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the crowds are mostly gone by Sunday morning, so most visitors never hear the rooms at their best.
The catch is that cables (and other bits of the system) really can alter the sound in peculiar ways, so the exhibitor has to careful in mixing-and-matching. This, by the way, is why the sound is usually pretty rough on Fridays and Saturday mornings, and then better Saturday afternoons and Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the crowds are mostly gone by Sunday morning, so most visitors never hear the rooms at their best.
Although the sound in the Technics room wasn't anything amazing, the visuals were - a whole wall full of working tape decks playing music. These Technics decks, along with the Technics SP10 turntable, represented the pinnacle of Japanese analog technology, and are well worth refurbishing.
Once I get my hifi system going (the real one, not the Denon receiver it's currently using), the Technics will come up from the basement and get connected to the main system. Like many of the decks pictured, it has a full head stack for 1/2 and 1/4 track tapes, six heads in all - max fidelity regardless of format.
There's something satisfying about seeing physical media in action - the reels turning and the tape going by the heads, or a phonograph tracing the groove of a spinning LP. No mysterious software bugs, no missing bits, just a direct one-to-one correspondence between the magnetic domains on the tape or the microscopic wiggles of the groove of the vinyl. If the sound isn't good, it's up to you to get it right - degauss the heads, make sure the playback EQ is correct, clean the stylus, etc. Analog is the world of soft failure - the source of the trouble is usually pretty obvious. By contrast, the world of ones and zeros is a world of hard failure - no sound at all, or intermittent full-level clicks when a buffer gets too full or the device-interface timing is wrong.
People are finding this out with the transition from NTSC analog to DTV/8VSB broadcasting. A marginal location that might have produced a snowy and/or ghosty picture now produces picture freezes, macroblocking, or no picture at all. It would have been nice if the 8VSB modulation system was more tolerant of multipath, or degraded to a lower-resolution picture in the face of marginal transmission conditions, but it wasn't designed that way - it's all or nothing. (I've tried to get DTV with a set-top UHF antenna, and I can say from experience it doesn't work too well.)
I certainly didn't like the common use of music servers instead of CD players or phonographs. It's one thing if you're playing high-res recordings - if everything is correctly set up and a studio-grade (EMM, Weiss, et al) external Firewire DAC is used, it can give a really satisfying experience. But few exhibitors were doing that. Most were playing copies of CD's that were ripped onto a hard drive with iTunes or the Windows equivalent. Was Kmixer doing its sneaky - and low-quality - conversion of 44.1 originals to 48 kHz? Who knows? Certainly not the unwary show-goer walking into the room.
Many of the rooms had a hard, harsh, metallic sound, reminiscent of mid-Eighties CD's and transistor amps. Not quite shrill, but very harsh and aggressive. You could hear this out in the hallway - you didn't even have to go into the room, where the sound would be even louder. I started to avoid rooms with transistor amps and music servers, unless the music was exceptionally lyrical and beautiful sounding. It was a big show, with more than 300 exhibitors, and you had to keep going to even see a fraction of the rooms. I'm not a fan of transistor amps, and I certainly heard a lot of really bad ones. The few that didn't sound harsh were unusual - see comments in the other postings.
Once I get my hifi system going (the real one, not the Denon receiver it's currently using), the Technics will come up from the basement and get connected to the main system. Like many of the decks pictured, it has a full head stack for 1/2 and 1/4 track tapes, six heads in all - max fidelity regardless of format.
There's something satisfying about seeing physical media in action - the reels turning and the tape going by the heads, or a phonograph tracing the groove of a spinning LP. No mysterious software bugs, no missing bits, just a direct one-to-one correspondence between the magnetic domains on the tape or the microscopic wiggles of the groove of the vinyl. If the sound isn't good, it's up to you to get it right - degauss the heads, make sure the playback EQ is correct, clean the stylus, etc. Analog is the world of soft failure - the source of the trouble is usually pretty obvious. By contrast, the world of ones and zeros is a world of hard failure - no sound at all, or intermittent full-level clicks when a buffer gets too full or the device-interface timing is wrong.
People are finding this out with the transition from NTSC analog to DTV/8VSB broadcasting. A marginal location that might have produced a snowy and/or ghosty picture now produces picture freezes, macroblocking, or no picture at all. It would have been nice if the 8VSB modulation system was more tolerant of multipath, or degraded to a lower-resolution picture in the face of marginal transmission conditions, but it wasn't designed that way - it's all or nothing. (I've tried to get DTV with a set-top UHF antenna, and I can say from experience it doesn't work too well.)
I certainly didn't like the common use of music servers instead of CD players or phonographs. It's one thing if you're playing high-res recordings - if everything is correctly set up and a studio-grade (EMM, Weiss, et al) external Firewire DAC is used, it can give a really satisfying experience. But few exhibitors were doing that. Most were playing copies of CD's that were ripped onto a hard drive with iTunes or the Windows equivalent. Was Kmixer doing its sneaky - and low-quality - conversion of 44.1 originals to 48 kHz? Who knows? Certainly not the unwary show-goer walking into the room.
Many of the rooms had a hard, harsh, metallic sound, reminiscent of mid-Eighties CD's and transistor amps. Not quite shrill, but very harsh and aggressive. You could hear this out in the hallway - you didn't even have to go into the room, where the sound would be even louder. I started to avoid rooms with transistor amps and music servers, unless the music was exceptionally lyrical and beautiful sounding. It was a big show, with more than 300 exhibitors, and you had to keep going to even see a fraction of the rooms. I'm not a fan of transistor amps, and I certainly heard a lot of really bad ones. The few that didn't sound harsh were unusual - see comments in the other postings.
Last edited:
Another low-key, pleasant surprise was the Gallo room. I can see why Mapleshade Recordings recommends and uses these speakers to monitor their recordings - transparent, near-electrostat quality sound with very smooth and broad dispersion. Last year, they were using a modest PP EL84 tube amp, and the sound was sweeter, more transparent, and more realistic. As it was, though, the sound was quite enjoyable overall, even with transistor electronics and a CD source. The Gallos are transparent enough that differences between electronics are clearly audible.
Like electrostats, if the amp has a metallic coloration, it will sound like the speaker is colored, when it really isn't - and changing amps will prove the point (the coloration disappears). There were several speakers - the Gallos and RAALs come to mind - where tube amps would have removed the upper-mid harshness that gave the illusion of speaker coloration. Class AB switching artifacts, combined with switching noise from the power supply, can sound very similar to stored energy in the 3~5 kHz range.
Like electrostats, if the amp has a metallic coloration, it will sound like the speaker is colored, when it really isn't - and changing amps will prove the point (the coloration disappears). There were several speakers - the Gallos and RAALs come to mind - where tube amps would have removed the upper-mid harshness that gave the illusion of speaker coloration. Class AB switching artifacts, combined with switching noise from the power supply, can sound very similar to stored energy in the 3~5 kHz range.
Attachments
Last edited:
Thanks for the photos and the comments, Lynn.
I was so busy and so exhausted that there wasn't much chance for me to hear stuff. I was there with Virtue Audio.
Did stick my head in the Feastrex room and it sounded odd to me. Surprised, because I heard the drivers last year and they were great. Should have given it a better listen.
Did hear a couple of nice systems running tape. That was fun.
Good thing I didn't try to run files off the computer! Was going to try, just wasn't ready. Wold have had CD back-up anyway, just in case. Danny of GR Research ran a nice Mac based system and I heard no glitches.
There sure was a lot to see and hear - wish I could have heard more!
I was so busy and so exhausted that there wasn't much chance for me to hear stuff. I was there with Virtue Audio.
Did stick my head in the Feastrex room and it sounded odd to me. Surprised, because I heard the drivers last year and they were great. Should have given it a better listen.
Did hear a couple of nice systems running tape. That was fun.
Good thing I didn't try to run files off the computer! Was going to try, just wasn't ready. Wold have had CD back-up anyway, just in case. Danny of GR Research ran a nice Mac based system and I heard no glitches.
There sure was a lot to see and hear - wish I could have heard more!
There is a layer in between of the high price pro stuff you mention and the low grade stuff - that works really well - even in case you not like to go the PC XO route.
In my experience sound is consistently at its best - meaning the *absolute* best you ever can get from CD format - if you ripped from that - not kidding !
You can further customize sound to your taste if you know electronics cooking by modifying critical areas - the DA-converters by them self are no longer the really limiting part in "good sound" IMO.
This is - as long as you avoid sample rate converters (check out my paper about clock issues for details - scroll down to chapter "Clock System Requirements for Digital Audio Chains")
Reliability is key, I agree - if you choose equipment and applications wisely - a stable system is certainly within reach.
Mine works to my full satisfaction for quite some time now.
Reliability under the tough circumstances of a show is a different story though.
Thanks for showing some beautiful pix !
Michael
With digital, even more than the rest of audio, the devil is in the details. Correctly implemented sample-rate conversion (preferably avoided), control of jitter, modern DACs that avoid noise from the computer, etc. etc. Based on the sound at the show, many exhibitors weren't getting it right - iPod convenience, but also iPod sound, too.
The best computer-based sound is superb. I'm sure it was at the show - somewhere - I just didn't get around to hearing it (there were more than 300 exhibitors, and I only saw a small fraction of them). My friend John Atwood sent a link to the folks at Computer Audiophile, who have their own comments about the "best of the RMAF show".
The best computer-based sound is superb. I'm sure it was at the show - somewhere - I just didn't get around to hearing it (there were more than 300 exhibitors, and I only saw a small fraction of them). My friend John Atwood sent a link to the folks at Computer Audiophile, who have their own comments about the "best of the RMAF show".
There seems to be some increasing awareness of the issues I focused on in my writeup about clock performance *in audio chains* - telling form the seminars at RMAF ....
The point is, we need the digital audio stream pulled by the DA converter not to be pushed by the storage device – this can't be performed by AES or SPDIF data connections (non-duplex !) – only with asynchronous data transfer or we side step the whole issue by locking the device' clocks (world clocking).
SRC's are the quick 'n dirty solution in this context.
#################
Happy to seen a new implementation of what I'm advocating in
http://members.aon.at/kinotechnik/diyaudio/diy_audio/CIC/Introducing_CIC.htm
with the Naim Ovator's "new Balanced Mode Radiator" – at least as far as mounting is concerned..
http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/avtour2009/rmaf_ss04.html
Michael
Last edited:
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.