Rmaf 2008

[Lynn Olson]

Tastes and impression differ, particularly under show conditions. Alexander had a difficult challenge chasing out a 180~250 Hz bump in the response, and some other source of a hardness in the sound between 3 and 5 kHz. I know the drivers he is using, his crossover was well-thought-out, so the remaining sources of coloration come down to unfavorable room interaction and unknown quality sources.

Next year, he'll be doing what we did at Audionics - pre-assemble a complete system (including all wires) in a hotel-sized room back at the factory location, and then bring enough parts to do a complete field repair and modification at the show site.

Interaction of the polar pattern of the speaker with the tight confines of the room is always a tough matter in small hotel rooms. Unfortunately, the $2600 cost of the small rooms is more like $3500 to $4000 for the limited selection of larger rooms - and most of them are already "grandfathered in" by exhibitors that picked the same good-sounding rooms years ago. So most exhibitors, particularly the first-time exhibitors, are stuck with the small rooms, and have to make do under trying circumstances and very tight time schedules.

I'm pretty sure it's not possible to optimize the same speaker for a typical domestic living room and a hotel room - the environments are just too different. Speakers with unusual polar patterns are at particular disadvantage here, along with any speaker larger than a minimonitor. The common practice of "borrowing" power amps and music sources from other exhibitors makes the whole thing even more chancy and random - for better or worse, power amps and music sources do not sound the same, and there's not much correlation with price.

Having set up demos in hotels myself for several years running, and helped others over the years, I know how random the results are. That OMA had pretty respectable sound, for a first-time product, and a first-time exhibitor, is like getting a hole-in-one in golf. I did this for many years for Audionics (I was the one tasked with collecting the equipment and setting up the room) and it never happened to me - we were always twiddling around with the setup on Saturday morning and losing customers while the door was closed to visitors.

I like Wally Malewicz' approach - use bi-amplification with parametric equalization for the bass channel, and a quality passive crossover for the mid-high channel. That's what he does to individually optimize his speakers for his customer's homes, right down to making 1/2 dB adjustments in the critical 160 ~ 500 Hz range. Linkwitz also had the option of electronically trimming his speaker to the room, and I'm sure he did so.

As for a "classical music balance", many exhibitors have these annoying music servers with no option for playing the visitor's own CD's or records. Worse, typical show music is very sparse and minimalist-recorded, so it is impossible to get an idea of how the system sounds with ensemble music, particularly music that only has so-so recording quality (either historical or just not very well recorded). I was booted out of more than one room because the exhibitor didn't consider my recordings "good enough" for their system.

The current fashion in "mainstream" high-end audio is for systems with bass exaggeration in the 20~60 Hz region, and quite a lot of boost in the 2~8 kHz region - the old "boom-and-tizz" of years gone by. It sounds thrilling and exciting on vocalist-with-piano-and-bass-player and close-miked audiophile jazz and blues, but really terrible on symphonic and choral music, and also makes non-audiophile recordings nearly unlistenable.

Most of the mainstream systems at this year's show, as in years past at the RMAF, VSAC, and CES, had this kind of "audiophile" balance, with an extra bonus of breakup in the 3~5 kHz region - this is so common it is ubiquitous, and hard to avoid. The magazine reviewers are so clueless they describe the breakup as "detail", and consider it a positive attribute, which is why we hear more of it than 10 years ago. When you combine the HF peaking of a typical studio condenser mike with the bright, hard, metallic sound that is now fashionable, you end with systems that can only play "audiophile" recordings.

[serenechaos]

Originally posted by badman
The tone of your post notwithstanding, there is no such thing as 'bad show sound'. Unless something is truly terrible (improperly designed speakers driven into distortion or with major speaker-based FR anomalies), it's best to chalk it up to show conditions...

I think you're misreading my post...
I didn't think, or say the Oswald's Mill Audio horn system sounded bad.
In general, I thought it was a nice, warm system to listen to.

The real point was " how different people hear the same things differently."

My wife and I went back in that room different times, listened to different types of music, and always had the same impression-- that the individual drivers had nice tones, but they were so distinctly different, and the crossover points were so obvious, that it was a distraction.

Someone else posted what I read as pretty much hearing the opposite thing ("Superb crossover integration - absolutely seamless and natural-sounding...").

I thought it may have had something to do with what (the particular albums) they were listening to.
A luck of the draw kind of thing, or this system works better for this type of music kind of thing.
Like the Festrex--they were great for some things, fell apart on others.
Robert

[graaf]

Originally posted by Lynn Olson

The current fashion in "mainstream" high-end audio is for systems with bass exaggeration in the 20~60 Hz region, and quite a lot of boost in the 2~8 kHz region - the old "boom-and-tizz" of years gone by. It sounds thrilling and exciting on vocalist-with-piano-and-bass-player and close-miked audiophile jazz and blues, but really terrible on symphonic and choral music, and also makes non-audiophile recordings nearly unlistenable.

Most of the mainstream systems at this year's show, as in years past at the RMAF, VSAC, and CES, had this kind of "audiophile" balance, with an extra bonus of breakup in the 3~5 kHz region - this is so common it is ubiquitous, and hard to avoid. The magazine reviewers are so clueless they describe the breakup as "detail", and consider it a positive attribute, which is why we hear more of it than 10 years ago. When you combine the HF peaking of a typical studio condenser mike with the bright, hard, metallic sound that is now fashionable, you end with systems that can only play "audiophile" recordings.

so sad but so true

best regards!
graaf

[Lynn Olson]

One of the reasons I am so cheery about this year's RMAF is that the tide may be turning; although still a small minority, I heard more musically-balanced systems at this year's show than any time I can remember at previous shows (including the CES).

It's significant that the high-profile new introductions this year - OMA, CAR T1, RAAL, and several others - have designers who believe in traditional balances, and not the boom-and-tizz sound of the mainstream. This is a really good sign for the industry, and I hope the trend continues.

Maybe the hard and metallic sound of iPods is finally waking people up and making them ask for something better. By the way, I was very pleased to see that Wadia is making a gizmo for $379 that extracts the digital output of your iPod and sends it on to a high-quality external DAC of your choice. I have a 5th-generation iPod myself, and the Wadia gizmo makes it a pint-sized music server that should sound as good as a decent-quality CD transport.

[nullspace]

I also thought the OMA and the CAR T-1 were the best sounds of the show. Duke @ Audiokinesis with his Planetarium Betas + Swarm were also very good. The Feastrex were quite nice (I liked the 9s better than the 5s if only because of the 5s sounded like five-inch drivers), but I can't fathom spending that much on fullrange drivers and still need to build subs.

I know diddly about analog, but there seemed to be some very nice turntable setups, and the master tapes from The Tape Project I heard were sublime.

Regards,
John

I should mention, full disclosure and all, that I use a pair of Bill Woods' 1000hz conical horns. Bill did the technical heavy-lifting for the OMA speakers.

[roland bios]

Originally posted by Lynn Olson
Having set up demos in hotels myself for several years running, and helped others over the years, I know how random the results are. That OMA had pretty respectable sound, for a first-time product, and a first-time exhibitor, is like getting a hole-in-one in golf. I did this for many years for Audionics (I was the one tasked with collecting the equipment and setting up the room) and it never happened to me - we were always twiddling around with the setup on Saturday morning and losing customers while the door was closed to visitors.

People will Always judge on what they hear on an audioshow. No matter how bad the acoustics in the room are. I really believe it's unnatural / impossible for humans to not judge what they hear. Some audiophiles even brag they have the magic ability to hear true the acoustics and still make a proper review.

I am quite curios as to what is wrong acoustically in the RMAF rooms. Flutter echo, flexible walls eating bass or big surfaces of glass?

[Eric Weitzman]

Originally posted by Lynn Olson
The truly surprising thing is that the OMA and the Orion have nearly the same voicing - on the slightly warm side, with no upper-midrange hardness or harshness, and balanced for classical music. And both play a lot louder, and more effortlessly, than you'd expect.

With all due respect, they're not voiced for classical. They rock harder than anything I've heard (if you add a sub for loud deep LF response beyond the dipole limitations), play acoustic music as realistically as anything I've heard, present human voices as flawlessly as I can imagine, and so on. They're voiced for accuracy. It just so happens that they work very well with classical music too. See why I wasn't unhappy to give up the eXemplars for Orions, Lynn?

- Eric

[angeloitacare]

My wife and I went back in that room different times, listened to different types of music, and always had the same impression-- that the individual drivers had nice tones, but they were so distinctly different, and the crossover points were so obvious, that it was a distraction.

hi Robert

i have never heard the RAAL Ribbons, heard however other Ribbons in combination with direct radiating speakers. Last year i had also to decide what tweeter to use with a midrange compression driver. I did read already about the RAAL's, and had also some conversations with Aleks over the phone. Jonathan Weiss also told me the RAAL sounds better than the Coral's. Finally i decided to go for the Coral horn tweeters. You seem to confirm what i suspected. Ribbons do not sound dinamic enough, the sound character is different, and integration is difficult. Beside the sensitivity mismatch, and low horizontal dispersion.

Nobody mentioned NNAcoustics from Serbia. And Evanui Signature. How did they sound ?

Angelo

[jlsem]

I don't much care for opamps or solid-state amps, but I must admit the sound in the Linkwitz room was one of the best at the show - and those small hotel rooms were a difficult environment to contend with.

That's interesting. I thought the Orions were awful, easily one of the worst at the show. On one orchestral piece, I and a friend of mine couldn't run out of the room fast enough when the violin section came in. A real assault on the ears.

On the other hand, there were a pair of speakers in the Santa Fe Audio room with plasma tweeters that were to die for, but expensive.

Everything that used a RAAL ribbon sounded good, and the CAR field coil speakers in the large room were great, having the advantage of using Michael Stahl's fantastic digital front end.

John

[jlsem]

My first thoughts were that the drivers had distinct voices, and you could hear right where they crossed over, and my wife leaned over and said that's a nice mid, but you can sure tell where it changes to the high or low driver.

This is absolutely true, but I still felt that they showed a great deal of promise and will probably work much better in a larger room, like the Cogents did last year.

John