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RMAF 2019!

Just got home from a long day at RMAF.  I had a great time!  The venue is spectacular this year but definitely spread out.  Get ready to walk :-)

Some rooms you should check out are (in no particular order):

Vandersteen, Joseph Audio, Salk, Revel, Classe, Jeff Rowland (Vivid Speakers), Kii Audio (Bryston Room), Mark Levinson, YG Acoustics,

There were some I missed and some that I didn’t mention that sounded great but the ones I mentioned above all sounded really nice and are definitely worth checking out.   Hopefully my little list will help someone out Saturday or Sunday.  Enjoy the Show!!
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Showing 2 responses by labtec

labtec
189 posts
 
I've gone to countless shows over the years since the 90s.

The Polk SDA demo is one of the most impressive I've ever heard.  I can't even believe I'm writing those words, but it's the honest truth.  Every room I went into after that demo was boring and way overpriced for far less performance.

In terms of the big rooms, Alsyvox and the YG/VTL setups were as good as you will find at a show.  That's 2 years in a row that Alsyvox caught my ears and I suspect it will continue.

Elac still makes awesome gear for budget prices that embarrass the big boys.

A few companies with new speakers were duds (i.e. that point array speaker that looked like it had a tumor growing out of the cabinet and especially the room with the midcentury modern style speaker was as bad as I've ever heard at a show).  I won't name exact names of those companies, but you can figure it out.

One guy that's always at the shows and finally caught my attention with something was Steve Norber of Prana Fidelity.  His new speaker with DSP sounded REALLY good although it is way overpriced.
labtec
189 posts
 
@barts The Polks were $6k.

The reason for the 4 chairs only lined up in the center is that the SDA technology is designed for the sweet spot.  However, it was a good test to sit off axis too because it showed that they performed just as good as others off axis. 

What's nice is that even if you didn't hook up the terminals for the second set of drivers critical for SDA, you would still have a high end stereo speaker for a fraction of the cost of others with similar performance.

Fwiw, the guy running the demo was nice to me.  In fact, I give him points for running a semi-structured demo and keeping things under control. So many rooms you go into and nobody says anything... You can't get a seat in the sweet spot and there's no description of what they are demoing.  It's just a free for all.

I asked him several questions and was definitely skeptical when I entered, but those speakers convinced me. They did what almost no other speaker can do in terms of imaging.

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