RMAF 2008 - Your impressions,...

Jazdoc, you are right about the best room in the show, shouold become an annual gathering. One room I forgot to mention, must be the jetlag, was the Atma-sphere room with the Classic T1 speakers; I have never heard symphonic music done so well. I don't know about the system in my room, but they were mindblowing on large scale music; the best I have heard with this type of music - I'm sure small combos would have been special, but did not heard that type of music on the system.

Just got home. The show help me realize that I am unlikely to ever change from my Merlins which remain the speakers that sound best to me for my room and the kind of music I listen to (chamber, small jazz combos, acoustic folk, bluegrass etc.) What I learned at the show is that I almost never like speakers with a lot of drivers. They are impressive in some ways, but the never sound natural to me - oversize instruments, incoherent sound stage, etc. I agree that there were some nice sounding speakers from AV123, I especially like the small 2-way they were using with the Dodd pre and poweramp today. I also like the Von Gaylord setup with all electronics and speakers made by them. The Reimyo room also sound very good with there small concentric driver speaker ($6,000), and I was also impressed with the Wilson Benesch speakers, the small Curve speakers was very nice paired with DeHavilland amplification. With all I heard, I kept going back to the Merlin room (Joule electronics) and I realize just how good and sorted out the VSMs are - one part part of my system that I have ceased to question.

I neglected to mention the Avalons, they sounded might fine indeed. Also the Harbeth M40s driven by McIntosh sounded fantastic too. The Apogee Divas were very good as well - I wasn't aware that Apogee speakers were still being made. They were driven beutifully by Pass XA100.5 and Audio Research Ref preamps.

A very good point about "getting to know" the reviewer (professional of A'gon). I clearly like soft dome tweeters (Merlin, Harbeth, Wilson Benesch ,etc)and two-way speakers. I too experience rooms that make my ears bleed and that others find wonderful - so to state the obvious, there is no best, and you need to know where and from whom opnions are coming from. I enjoyed almost no "cost no object" rooms (I di like the Verity room - if that counts) and I think I'm inherently turned off by large speakers and speakers with many drivers. Obviously there a sound out there to suit every taste, and it takes a few years to know what you like - shows like this help a lot. Plus it is fun being surrounded by others with similar "obsessions".

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't sure what the deal was. I thought the design may have been sold to a new manufacturer and then brought back to market.