Thanks for the reminder. I got over today for a couple of hours. Managed to take in floors 3&4. Might go back on the weekend to fill in the rest.
If you have must see advice let us know.
Walter
Looked like I missed you too!
I really like the sound of the SP1 in the Muraudio room. Great sound stage (really 3-dimensional). The sound was very clean and detailed and the base was amazingly solid. But then when I stopped by the second time, not as great. Probably related to the piece of music that was playing. Totally out of my league though (~ 16500 cdn I think).
The rooms with the Gershman speakers sounded fine too.
Yeah, I was nicely surprised by the Triton one.R too.
Did you get a chance to hear the Wilson Alexa in the Audio Excellence room?
The concert we attended was pretty impressive. Something not to miss if you want to hear real low frequency music.
Right. St Paul's Bloor Street has concerts a few times a year and a great organ.
The annual Phantoms of the Organ event (to raise scholarship money for students of the organ from free offerings) is at Holy Trinity this year for the first time. The organ might not be quite as grand but the event is always a hoot.
B.
Thanks for the tips. I too enjoyed the Muraudio and the Gershmans. I'll check out the Wilson Audio today. In the past, not so great.
I was impressed at the number of rooms with tube / vinyl combos. In general I think digital has progressed so to my ear in this compromised listening space, I really saw little difference between these formats.
My vote for best in show - VKMusic
Today I took in most of the remaining exhibits.
My vote for best sound in show, hands down is VKMusic.ca on the 12th floor.
Vicktor Kung appears to sell kit tube amps from his home in Vancouver. Paired with some AER drivers mounted in a large Horn/open baffle, the sound was exquisite. It really contrasted with all the congested boom bass sound that is so pervasive in these commercial shows. I could have listened for hours. There were several rooms that appealed to my taste. Open, natural, dynamic... layers of harmonics. His was the best by a country mile. And I see that he is on DIYaudio. How cool is that?
I did check out the Wilson Audio room and the Focal room. I was so happy that I really disliked the Wilson room. At a system cost of $215k CAD, it would be so disappointing if it turned out I felt it made better sound than my meager DIY efforts. Whew. I hated it. Congested and closed. It would fill a larger room than I run, but at 20x25ft, my room will never be bigger.
I finally heard klipsch la scala. Good, but not amazing.
I did enjoy some PCM speakers. But they were $28k, so no way.
I went back to hear the Muraudio and the Gershmans. Still enjoyed them both, but again not nearly as much as Victor's AER setup. Again whew. They are way beyond what I would consider spending.
Today I run some 10" Coral drivers without crossovers supported with some 18" pro drivers for bass support. I need to get off my butt and build some cabinets. Or maybe just buy some AERs.
Today I took in most of the remaining exhibits.
My vote for best sound in show, hands down is VKMusic.ca on the 12th floor.
Vicktor Kung appears to sell kit tube amps from his home in Vancouver. Paired with some AER drivers mounted in a large Horn/open baffle, the sound was exquisite. It really contrasted with all the congested boom bass sound that is so pervasive in these commercial shows. I could have listened for hours. There were several rooms that appealed to my taste. Open, natural, dynamic... layers of harmonics. His was the best by a country mile. And I see that he is on DIYaudio. How cool is that?
I did check out the Wilson Audio room and the Focal room. I was so happy that I really disliked the Wilson room. At a system cost of $215k CAD, it would be so disappointing if it turned out I felt it made better sound than my meager DIY efforts. Whew. I hated it. Congested and closed. It would fill a larger room than I run, but at 20x25ft, my room will never be bigger.
I finally heard klipsch la scala. Good, but not amazing.
I did enjoy some PCM speakers. But they were $28k, so no way.
I went back to hear the Muraudio and the Gershmans. Still enjoyed them both, but again not nearly as much as Victor's AER setup. Again whew. They are way beyond what I would consider spending.
Today I run some 10" Coral drivers without crossovers supported with some 18" pro drivers for bass support. I need to get off my butt and build some cabinets. Or maybe just buy some AERs.
Most of the rooms we saw today were using their smallest speakers to demonstrate with. Why would they short change themselves so severely? As a result, most of the rooms suffered from "one note bass" and severe cabinet involvement in the rooms. Really not the way to sell anything.
The Klipsch products were nice and had clean bass, as did the Solen room where I heard a really nice dome mid-high combination. The PMC speakers were also very good as were the Totem exhibits. Some of the McIntosh rooms sounded "okay" but not great. I missed the Bryston booth/room. That was too bad because they impressed me last year.
One room really blew my mind. Expensive little audio components that were made in project boxes! They had some plexiglass on the front with labels, but that flat project box metal panel on the back. These things were mostly priced in excess of $1K !!! I'd say someone has a very high opinion of themselves and what they can do.
Overall it was a good show, and enjoyable. Even Yamaha had committed to two channel with some styling reminiscent of their (much) earlier products. Very good sound, another speaker with dome midranges. Are they making a comeback? They should, they sound great. I found Yamaha very interesting again after so many years building "me too" cheap products. I wish them well.
-Chris
The Klipsch products were nice and had clean bass, as did the Solen room where I heard a really nice dome mid-high combination. The PMC speakers were also very good as were the Totem exhibits. Some of the McIntosh rooms sounded "okay" but not great. I missed the Bryston booth/room. That was too bad because they impressed me last year.
One room really blew my mind. Expensive little audio components that were made in project boxes! They had some plexiglass on the front with labels, but that flat project box metal panel on the back. These things were mostly priced in excess of $1K !!! I'd say someone has a very high opinion of themselves and what they can do.
Overall it was a good show, and enjoyable. Even Yamaha had committed to two channel with some styling reminiscent of their (much) earlier products. Very good sound, another speaker with dome midranges. Are they making a comeback? They should, they sound great. I found Yamaha very interesting again after so many years building "me too" cheap products. I wish them well.
-Chris
Did anyone go down to the lower level. There are three large rooms, one took up by JVC to show off their projectors (very impressive I have to say), the other two are audio show rooms. One of them is Wynn Audio (with a Tidal system), the other one is the Nordst room( I think?).
I am surprised no one mentioned the Kii speakers (affiliated to Bruno Putzey's new company I believe). The smallish speaker contains everything inside (amp, DAC, ADC, DSP etc.) The base module consists of 4 drivers and is extra. Total speaker system, are you ready, 50,000 (US or CDN?). Without the base module, just 23,000$. When I was in the room, only the full range speaker was playing, sound is fine.
I did not get a chance to return today
. Overall, I think the show is pretty good. Hope it will continue next year.
I am surprised no one mentioned the Kii speakers (affiliated to Bruno Putzey's new company I believe). The smallish speaker contains everything inside (amp, DAC, ADC, DSP etc.) The base module consists of 4 drivers and is extra. Total speaker system, are you ready, 50,000 (US or CDN?). Without the base module, just 23,000$. When I was in the room, only the full range speaker was playing, sound is fine.
I did not get a chance to return today
. Overall, I think the show is pretty good. Hope it will continue next year.
It was a great show.
To me the Muraudio SP1 Hybrid electrostatics sounded quite pleasant, the PMC fact 8 as well. Esoteric needs to do more home work, the THD spec. don't quite cut it considering the rather substantial price tag. Japan used be much much better than that in the 80s. The demonstrated Hegel system sounded pleasant as well and easily beats Esoteric THD spec. at a much more moderate and in-line with reality price tag. Many vendors left a very good and lasting impression, some not so good yet still lasting impression, some whose products seem to defy the laws of physics while another vendor chief was highly unprofessional and quite jerky to his support site staff also left a very lasting impression.
To me the Muraudio SP1 Hybrid electrostatics sounded quite pleasant, the PMC fact 8 as well. Esoteric needs to do more home work, the THD spec. don't quite cut it considering the rather substantial price tag. Japan used be much much better than that in the 80s. The demonstrated Hegel system sounded pleasant as well and easily beats Esoteric THD spec. at a much more moderate and in-line with reality price tag. Many vendors left a very good and lasting impression, some not so good yet still lasting impression, some whose products seem to defy the laws of physics while another vendor chief was highly unprofessional and quite jerky to his support site staff also left a very lasting impression.
I also wanted to mention ELAC's demo so as Gershman Acoustics sporting an Accuton mids also sounded very pleasant. Mike's innovative magnetic ton arm and MC pickup caught some attention and was well received at the show, so as the fine passive components by Solen. I was interested to find more information on the acoustic panels as pictured below but could not find any. Apparently the vendor was on site but I must have missed it. Does anyone have vendor info on that ?
The McIntosh Christmas tree decoration however could not have been missed by anyone.
The McIntosh Christmas tree decoration however could not have been missed by anyone.
Attachments
I am continuing with the Hafler DH-220C re-design and the BC-1 amp design that is in Bob Cordell 2nd edition book. Bob will be showing these at BAF this weekend.
DH-220C has been measured and tested. It performs almost the same as his prototype. We made a small OPS pcb that fits between the heatsink ears to make wiring to the fets much easier. It adds filtering and a zobel network. After that was done, I did another rev to this pcb so that it has the reverse voltage clamps and allows one to use this design in a DIYAudio HiFi2000 chassis and/or use plastic Exicon fets so anyone can build this amp.
The DH-220C front end pcb will need another rev as Bob found some high frequency gain peaking which is attributed to the way I ran the grounds on the pcb.
So Dave,
The pcb's I gave you will need a couple of pcb track cuts and wires to fix the grounding issue which is causing the hi freq gain peaking. I have pictures of that for you to follow along. I can give you a couple of these new DH-220C(OPS) pcbs for you to use in the modifications of your DH-220's. I have done the layout changes for DH-220C-A1, but need to get Bob's approval/review before I fab another set for testing. It is slow but we are making good progress.
Bob wrote to me last week.
That's it for me, hopefully we will have something working for our next meeting. I am going to get a DH-200 chassis in exchange for doing a mod to another so I have one to try out and show.
Rick
DH-220C has been measured and tested. It performs almost the same as his prototype. We made a small OPS pcb that fits between the heatsink ears to make wiring to the fets much easier. It adds filtering and a zobel network. After that was done, I did another rev to this pcb so that it has the reverse voltage clamps and allows one to use this design in a DIYAudio HiFi2000 chassis and/or use plastic Exicon fets so anyone can build this amp.
The DH-220C front end pcb will need another rev as Bob found some high frequency gain peaking which is attributed to the way I ran the grounds on the pcb.
So Dave,
The pcb's I gave you will need a couple of pcb track cuts and wires to fix the grounding issue which is causing the hi freq gain peaking. I have pictures of that for you to follow along. I can give you a couple of these new DH-220C(OPS) pcbs for you to use in the modifications of your DH-220's. I have done the layout changes for DH-220C-A1, but need to get Bob's approval/review before I fab another set for testing. It is slow but we are making good progress.
Bob wrote to me last week.
That's it for me, hopefully we will have something working for our next meeting. I am going to get a DH-200 chassis in exchange for doing a mod to another so I have one to try out and show.
Rick
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Rick - I’m happy just to buy new boards when you have them ready.
I’ve held off doing much on the amp pending Bob’s review and updating.
Besides the Hafler rebuild I hoping to use Bob and Rick’s board in a Perreaux PMF 3500 rebuild with double die Exicon outputs with increased driver board heat-sinking and some resistor changes.
I haven’t done much building lately, been busy with work.
I also haven’t done anything about another DIY meet partly for the same reason, and thought you must all be tired of listening to the shop speakers and my medival musical taste
I’ve held off doing much on the amp pending Bob’s review and updating.
Besides the Hafler rebuild I hoping to use Bob and Rick’s board in a Perreaux PMF 3500 rebuild with double die Exicon outputs with increased driver board heat-sinking and some resistor changes.
I haven’t done much building lately, been busy with work.
I also haven’t done anything about another DIY meet partly for the same reason, and thought you must all be tired of listening to the shop speakers and my medival musical taste
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Dave,
Honestly, I love the music that you played at the DIY meet. I guess we are in a similar age group and were exposed to the same genre of music when we were "younger"
. Regards,
Hi Dave,
The whole idea of making a DH-220C prototype and powering it up, measuring/testing etc, is to uncover issues, so that when we do a another DH-220C rev, hopefully we have these issues covered off.
Instead of listening to music exclusively, we could be doing some assembling/figuring/testing of the DH-220C design. We could be figuring out the mechanical aspects, of using the DH-220C front end in the Perreaux and Hafler chassis, lots of stuff to do.
I welcome Chris and others' experiences into making the DH-220C as best we can. It is DIYAudio after all.
I know you are busy with work but I can work around your schedule when you have the time.
Running the proto in the Perreaux PMF 3500 or using a +/-90V supply is a good test as to what is required, esp in the heatsink requirements, because the DH-220 design case would not be stressing it as much. It is possible that a special OPS pwb be designed for that implementation to make the wiring compact.Maybe what i came up with would do the trick. It is not that much different than what Bob is suggesting with the DH-220 re-design. No pressure, just throwing this out there for you to chew on.
Rick
The whole idea of making a DH-220C prototype and powering it up, measuring/testing etc, is to uncover issues, so that when we do a another DH-220C rev, hopefully we have these issues covered off.
Instead of listening to music exclusively, we could be doing some assembling/figuring/testing of the DH-220C design. We could be figuring out the mechanical aspects, of using the DH-220C front end in the Perreaux and Hafler chassis, lots of stuff to do.
I welcome Chris and others' experiences into making the DH-220C as best we can. It is DIYAudio after all.
I know you are busy with work but I can work around your schedule when you have the time.
Running the proto in the Perreaux PMF 3500 or using a +/-90V supply is a good test as to what is required, esp in the heatsink requirements, because the DH-220 design case would not be stressing it as much. It is possible that a special OPS pwb be designed for that implementation to make the wiring compact.Maybe what i came up with would do the trick. It is not that much different than what Bob is suggesting with the DH-220 re-design. No pressure, just throwing this out there for you to chew on.
Rick