Anyone else attend the California Audio Show in Oakland?


I went yesterday 7/28, heard some really good stuff, including:

Old Forge Studios room. The Soundkaos Vox 3F standmounted 3 ways were incredible! My favorites of the show. Tiny boxes and 35Hz on the low end had many of us looking for a subwoofer. The Wand tt and PureAudio electronics were excellent.

Tidal Contriva speakers speakers were my 2nd choice as favorites. Just a bit more expensive than the Soundkaos at $65,000, they were beautiful to look at and gorgeous to listen to, or vice versa. Open and airy, great bass extension, with the equally fine Bricasti amps and preamp, they would surely be even better in a larger room.

Aurender streamers and dacs also pulled me in. I’m looking for new gear, and they have a great selection. The combo dacs and streamers start at around $3500 and run to $22,000 for the W22SE, which was playing in their room. 

On on the down side:

Audio Vision SF Room
I didn’t care for the Naim/Rega/Focal gear. It sounded very shut in, muffled to me. Sibilance was not pronounced, and the Focal speakers sounded blurred. 

Wyred4sound

I've never been a fan, so maybe I’m biased, but the new gear just didn’t add up to me. Disjointed is the word I come up with. The new W4S speakers were these hulking boxes, with drivers arranged in MTM configuration. The tweeters are ribbons, which I usually enjoy, but these sounded too laid back to me. 

Any other attendee thoughts?

pumper24

Showing 1 response by strateahed

I'm probably somewhat biased, since vinyl is my preferred source. That said, once again Zesto did a fantastic job with their room. I believe there was only one other room featuring vinyl; everything else was digital ... mostly streamers.

I really liked the rooms featuring Exogal - to my ears, one of the most natural sounding DAC's out there. The Exogal fed by Salk StreamPlayer, with Salk SS 9.5 speakers was very impressive. I had to catch myself to keep from clapping at the end of Coltrane's "Blue Train" demo!