2010 RMAF Analog Reports + Meet and Greet
Hi Ecir38, At our Saturday night after hours tonearm play session with Frank Schroeder and Joel Durand (suite 1130), we'll have a few very nice phono stages, including my reference - the Atma-sphere MP-1 (whcih will also be one floor below, in the Daedalus room - 1030). Frank Schroeder never fails to impress, and has promised to bring a "radical" phono stage. I'm not sure if it is a retail product. While the Atma-spheres will be running throughout the show's duration, anything Frank chooses to bring will only be in my room for the Saturday festivities. Cheers, Thom @ Galibier (dealer & manufacturer disclaimer) |
Saturday night Schroeder and Durand Tonearm festivities - the tonearm play session in suite 1130. It dawned on me that there will be some "down" time if Frank and Joel choose do do a cartridge swap. If this is the case, I'll fill the dead air with a presentation on using an arc protractor to perform your geometry setup. I'm sure we'll involve whoever isn't involved in a cartridge setup at the time (Frank or Joel). Depending on how much dead air we have, I may give a humorous presentation entitled "Navigating the High End Mine Field" - a talk I gave at the Colorado Audio Society in January. When: Saturday evening 8:30 until we drop Where: Suite 1130 in the tower Cheers, Thom @ Galibier (dealer & manufacturer disclaimer) |
Lew, Sundays are indeed great, especially the morning. One other show hint (for all three days): work your way down from the top floor. Being in the top floor of the Tower, we're not all that busy for the first hour of the show. The majority of people work their way up from the bottom floor (herd mentality), and you can get some better listening sessions in by going against the flow. I just completed documenting the room lineup for the three rooms I'll be in: http://www.galibierdesign.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=155. Cheers, Thom @ Galibier |
Hi Dev, I'm just beginning to recover from the sleep deprivation we call the Audiofest. I think it's more appropriate that others chime in on this topic, but my take is exactly what I expected to occur - no clear winner, and how could there really be? This wasn't a shootout after all, and we used two different phono stages in order to accommodate the Soundsmith Sussuro cartridge that Frank brought to the party. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was the (scheduled for export only) Artemis Labs phono stage. One could hear all of that great Intact Audio iron in this LCR phono stage. Note that I'm not an Artemis dealer, and also that I'm a big fan of the iron that Dave Slagle winds. Due to other responsibilites, Frank wasn't able to bring this phono stage to the room before starting time, and everyone worked up a healthy sweat in a room heated by Atma-sphere OTL's, while we worked out the equipment placement in order to eliminate hum from this iron rich phono stage. It was a matter of shuffling equipment around to keep the Artemis away from the power supply of the Atma-sphere MP-1 preamp - not a trivial task with thick power cords and inconvenient outlet locations. While working through this, Wally Malewicz gave us a short talk on cartridge quality control. He's been studying sample to sample variance on SRA in various cartridge brands - yet one more reason why I argued against using "identical" cartridges in a session like this. It might lead to conclusions based on false assumptions of cartridge samples being identical. So, the end result? Quite a bit of beer and Tequilla flowed thanks to Dave Slagle of Intact Audio, new and old friends met, and two very fine tonearms strutted their stuff. I am honored that I was able to provide the platform for this session. I need to reiterate (especially since I sell both of these arms), that we could easily have included quite a few other arms in this session ... IF we had 6 or 8 hours for this. More than two arms in a three hour session is an unrealistic goal, and I think that the attendees would agree. We're talking about perhaps doing a phono stage comparison next year. Lessons learned for next year - nothing shows up on Saturday night that hasn't been fully vetted by Friday night. Time is short, and we need to be ready for show time. Cheers, Thom @ Galibier |
