California Audio Show ths wknd bttr than expected

Excellent blog posts and photos by Jason Serinus up on Stereophile.

great show. saw some stereophile writers there too. people were nice and the vibe was good. think it was because it was a smaller show. really enjoyed the evolution acoustics room...wow, it was great - especially when they where using the reel to reel tape. Legacy room suprised me how good it sounded. I always thought having all of those drivers would make an incoherent mess, but it sounded big, detailed, and balanced...of course the room was really big. Most of the rooms sounded good to really good. Only a couple provided a sound that drove me out. Felt the Genesis with Parasound room was too bright. Fun time!

I attended the show on Saturday, and had a great time. I thought Constantine Soo did a great job putting the event together. The venue was pleasant: conveniently located next to a major freeway exit, adequate parking, decent restaurant, easy check-in, and wide representation from the audio manufacturing industry. Many rooms offer different equipment in the morning and afternoon, and further varied their equipment selection from day to day – allowing the attendees to hear for a great deal more than just having the same equipment set-up for all three day of the show. All in all this was a great effort for a first time event, and I hope there are many more in future years.

My biggest concern was the small size of the rooms and how the vendors handled this limitation. With some exceptions the volume in the rooms overwhelmed the space. My guess is that vendors were trying to demonstration the potential of the offerings by filling the room with full spectrum sounds showing the power and extension of their equipment. Quite often this resulted in a harsher and more brittle top-end than I heard from the same equipment under other conditions. Even Audio Note, one of my favorites, which still sounded very very good, would have been well served to adjust the volume down slightly. Still, some room did sound absolutely great like Loggie Audio’s with Acapella and Audio Image’s with Magico for example; but, I believe these room were larger than most. Regardless of the room size limitation this show was a lot of fun, and I hope it happens again next year.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention Evolution Acoustics with Dartzeel and Playback Designs. To me this was one of the best sounding rooms playing digital front end ... smooth, natural, and engaging. This was my first audio show and one of biggest surprises was the "digital" sound in many rooms when employing anything but vinyl. The sound was not as natural as I expected. I wonder if this is typical of audio shows.

I too was impressed with the new Tonian Classic 7.1 1B, although it would have been nice to hear these speakers powered by tubes rather than a single transistor. Several people pulled out CDs and handed them to "mister not-enthusiastic" while I was in the room. I'm not sure whether any of the other recordings were Tony's unless he's a huge Dead Can Dance fan.

Also (begrudgingly) enjoyed the Lotus Granada. I just can't get into a single component that exceeds, depending on options, the US median household income. I awkwardly had to witness some vinyl carrying visitor just rip one of the members of the Lotus staff after they’d listened to one of his records. I've never experienced that before. Kudos to the staff member for handling it so well. Don't remember the recording or the sound after that.

Speaking of vinyl, I spent most of the day hanging out with the Clearaudio reps. and listening to Mike Zivkovic's Ingenium. For the most part I thought this was a wonderful sounding Lowther DX3 driver speaker (slightly expensive for what it is). I mostly enjoyed the people who hung out in this room; many brought along some great records.

I also enjoyed Quad ESl-2805, but my friend who lives and dies by his ESL 57 was not impressed.

Sadly I was disappointed with the AN display. They were too bright for my ears, although I have heard them many times before and have thoroughly enjoyed them. I also thought the YG (forgot to note which model), were very good but slightly glaring. The great thing about the Magico V3/VAC 200 was the Anouar Brahem recording that was being played when I walking into the room. Man talk about a visceral moment.