RMAF 2019!

The parking was a mess at the show.  One day I paid $18, another I stayed late and the gate was open $0.  The last day was $8.  The parking should be free for event attendees.  In general I thought the PS audio speakers were pretty good.  They played a track that I was very familiar with and they had great imaging, treble was good but there was a thickness or veil in the midrange that wasn't quite right.  I understand they are still tweaking the design. 

I got lucky with Parking and got out for free.  They opened the gate up Friday night.  It was a shame that I was walking to the parking lot with 2 guys that just paid $20, then the gate was open.

Honestly, since no one informed us that we were going to pay for parking, I would have hoped the damn curb on the way out.

I hope someone is listening and makes some changes for next year, otherwise I may not go either.  The new venue is an hour and half drive for me, whereas the last venue was a 45 minute drive.

Between the poor signage for rooms (some rooms were by themselves all the way down a long, quiet hallway and then around the corner.). Some rooms were difficult to find.

Also, that registration line was ludicrous.  And to have to pay $20 to park, then god knows how much to eat there, I may skip next year unless I know ahead of time that parking is free and registration won’t take more than 15 minutes, like years past.

Were any of you fortunate ones able to checkout the new Klipsch Cornwall IV?

Sanders Sound Systems by far the best sound. The only speaker I wanted to take home. The least impressive looking room.

Focal Scala Utopia my next favorite speaker.

The Sigma Acoustics/AGD room was where I spent the most time. Sounded mostly beautiful but the soundstage was enormous, as was the speaker, and occasionally I heard a little stridence in the upper treble. I couldn't decide if I liked them a lot or not at all.

Most of the other rooms were perfectly acceptable with the following exceptions:

P.S.Audio. I was expecting a lot. I didn't care for what I heard at all. Way too tilted towards the middle bass.
Alsyvox/Omega Audio. Too hard and grating for me. I was not expecting that, don't know what the problem was.
Kii. A lot of bass out of a little box. Tonally they were fine but the imaging was not. I would have blamed the room, but these are supposed to correct for room problems.
Klipsch Cornwall. Too soft at the high end, although I suspect this room was way too small for this speaker.
Troy Audio Hellena Mk II. Not bad per se, but disappointing. They are based on the Great Plains/Altec drivers. I made myself a horn speaker with Altec drivers, and I love them. The Hellenas have a horn tweeter and they sell for $80,000 with internal crossover, $120,000 with the external crossover. My speaker cost $4,000 with an active crossover (half of that was the tweeter, I could have built them for less). My speaker is better. Significantly better.

I am a rank amateur, I should not be able to cobble together a speaker that is better than most of what I heard at RMAF, but apparently I have done just that. I made the speakers just to go with my 2 watt amps. I went to this show because I have heard pretty much none of the new gear that everyone talks about here, and this was a chance to hear almost everything in one place. Except for perhaps the Sanders Model 10s, ($17,000--with a Sanders amp! Possibly the best value in the show) there was nothing that made me want to throw away my Altecs and my Sound Labs (O.K., I have two really good speakers), my Levinson ML-2s and my (handmade, the first by me) single ended triodes. The speakers are 1960 vintage for the Altecs, with a new RAAL ribbon tweeter, and 1983 vintage for the Sound Labs. The ML-2s are from 1978. The triodes range from 20 to 2, but they could have been built in 1930. I have long contended that there has been no real advancement in audio technology for a long time. I stand by that statement.

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.

I attended the show with my kids, so I will make some comments from their perspective.  

They wanted to spend most of their time in the headphone area - they loved the HiFiMan Headphones.  They also thoroughly enjoyed the new Manley Headphone Amp.  We met EveAnna Manley, who was super nice and patient - she knows how to relate to the younger generation.

On the way out we stopped in the PS Audio booth - I saw Paul, the PS Audio celebrity walking around, answering questions and being extremely cordial.   Scott McGowan came up to my son who was looking at the Sprout.  Scott was super, patient, answered all objections well.  The merchandising in that booth was exemplary.  My kids earn their own money, and the price of the Sprout is A LOT for them, never the less, they bought it.  My son received his new Sprout 3 days later, brought it over a couple of days ago and is ecstatic with the purchase.  I almost forked over for some of their gear - but really wanted time to listen.  My kid said the Manley was the best sounding headphone amp by far, but could not afford it.

I am kind of looking at a streamer/dac and was looking at the PS Audio stuff - but I noticed almost every room was using the Blue Note - they must know something I don't - I am going to check them out.

I forked over for an Astell & Kern high res player.

We were all let down in the Wilson room, we have Wilson's and were expecting something better.

Magico was a letdown. 

We all like Klipsch (we have their speakers in our movie room) but I think we have all outgrown them - they just don't sound good except in a multi-channel movie type application.

The new Vandersteen's were blah.

I am not a Focal fan, but the big Focal speakers were simply stunning - I have never heard them sound so good.

My kids dragged me into the Parts Express room saying "you have to hear these" - they were playing music off a phone, through a $30 tube amp from Amazon, through a pair of $350 DIY speakers - IT/THEY SOUNDED INCREDIBLE - THE BEST BOOKSHELF SPEAKERS I HEARD.  And if the RMAF show is the cream of the crop, then these are the best bookshelf speakers made.  Of course, they wouldn't sell them.

Some of the best speakers we heard were the Warfedales - they were not out yet - were like $2500 for the pair - sounded GREAT.  I am going to find the dealer and go listen to them, I can see purchasing them.

We all agreed that most rooms need to expand their musical tastes - there is plenty of good, contemporary, well-recorded music out there to demo.  Hearing Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Diana Krall, and Kind of Blue and the same sounding jazz - some did not have anything available to play other than dead people.

We had a ball and will go again next year.

@labtec 

I had forgotten about the Polk room. You are correct the Polk SDA
imaged amazingly well and sounded great.  Don't know what they cost.
They were playing in one of the suites at the end of a hall, big room.
The only weirdness was there were only four chairs and they were in
a line front to back (one row four deep).  So, it appears the sweet spot
is very narrow.  Several show goers attempted to move one of the chairs and the "gentleman" running the room rather gruffly told him to "put it back".  I tried to talk to the "gentleman" and he was totally disinterested.
Not sure what was going on.  Just calling it the way it happened. 

I liked the new venue, and thought all of the rooms sounded better than the Tech Center.  I had no problem with the restaurants because I made reservations a week in advance. 

I loved the YG Acoustics and Joseph Audio Pearl 20.20s. No one has mentioned the Rockports. Loved them. The Salks were great, especially for the money. 

@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.

Dang it, I can’t believe that I missed the SDA room... ugh

I always like to find something at RMAF that I can get excited about in my price range... this year it was those Wharfedales coming out soon.  The $2500 floorstanding speakers...  they sounded fantastic and are some that I will definitely consider purchasing in the future. Cool to hear about your story attending RMAF with you kids!  👍👍 for being a great Dad :-)

I sat in the 3rd chair back of the Polk SDA demo. 

I had my Sony 4k video camera and used it in many of the rooms at or near the “sweet spot”. 
I had brought it for my youngest kid’s wedding (main reason we were there) but decided to break it out for most of the rooms we went in. 
Not sure what type of indication I’ll get of the audio reproduced but at least it’ll be something. 
Just wish I had more than one day. 

The SDA have that huge soundstage but seemed like something “musical”was missing to me. 

Regarding the spokesperson for each room, I have to give the award to Andrew Jones. 
Very informative, interactive, and humorous with the “audience”. 

The Polk room was more formal and controlled. 



The oddest presenter room goes to the  “amp in a tube”, where the spouse of the tube designer was telling me what they cost when I asked for the specs. 
She pointed at her husband and told me he designed these as she handed me a “tube” with the circuit boards inside.  
Very nice lady but not what I would expect for the show. (the audio was just ok) 

Late in the day we got to hear the Magico speakers with some high volume “non-audiophile” Billy Squier.

The last room we heard was just down from our abode and was my wife's favorite. (Crown and water beverage from one of the representatives might have had an influence) 
Paradigm sounded very nice but they had the subs and ARC
Genesis setup. 

All in all it was a great experience and hope to do it again. 

Now back to my “lowly”
Revel Performa3. 
 
 
 

https://hifipig.com/rocky-mountain-audio-fest-2019-part-2/

Those ATC speakers look great.  How much will the Prana speakers be?  Cheers

Those Prana speakers are $35K, but the amps are all built in. 

@pranabindu If you're at all handy, you might consider building your own Nelson pass design... https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pass-labs/. Changed my life going there. 

And I came to a similar conclusion about the directstream. It seems like some people are sensitive to it in ways that others are not. It's very well loved, but just didn't work for me... And I have owned a perfect wave since 2011ish. Don't know what's going on there...

I live in Denver and have attended RMAF for the last 10 years.  I'm inclined to give the organizers a pass for this year's difficulties since they were making a big transition to a different venue, but there is certainly room for a lot of improvement.

THE GOOD

All in all, I thought the room acoustics were a lot better on the whole than at the Marriott.  That's a really important factor for an audio show.  I'd be curious to know if some of the sound improvement across the board was due to a new, more robust electrical system compared to what the old Marriott had.

Wider hallways.  The Marriott was claustrophobic.  Yes, you'll have to spend more time walking and the layout was a little confusing at first but I liked the space.

Rooms were spaced out and staggered from one floor to the next so there was less bleed over from other rooms and a lot less noise from the hallways.

Very close to the airport for those flying in.

Exhibitors finally seem to be playing less of the same old same old and branching out into a larger variety of music.  I tried to tell every exhibitor who did that how much I appreciated hearing something different.

THE BAD

Far fewer exhibitors than usual.  My understanding is that the switch to September caused conflicts for several exhibitors.  Hopefully, the move back to October next year will solve that problem.  The other factor was the cost to exhibitors to show at the venue.  I know of at least three manufacturers who didn't show up because of the cost.  My fear is that the cost will drive away a lot of the smaller audio companies and sellers of lower priced gear who simply can't justify the cost.

The line on Friday.  Ridiculous.  I can't think of a good excuse for not having the name tags ready to go for people who pre-registered.  

Paid parking. I got out of the lot for free on Friday.  A lot of people didn't.  The Gaylord is in the middle of a field.  Paying $18.00 to park in that location is total BS.  That's the same rate as downtown.

Captivity.  I basically hate resort properties so I'm biased.  Mediocre overpriced food with no walkable options for anything else.  The food trucks at the Marriott were great.

UNSOLICITED ADVICE FOR OUT OF TOWNERS

Stay in Denver.  It's a great city with a lot to do and a killer restaurant scene.  It's about a 30 minute drive from downtown to the Gaylord and from what I understand, the rooms at the Gaylord are expensive.  The Gaylord is in the middle of a big flat field near a suburb that looks like every other suburb.  Boring.  I'd also recommend you make time for the mountains on at least one day.  It is Colorado after all.

I'd give RMAF a shot next year regardless of some of the issues that occurred.  I suspect they'll have things ironed out by then and if the exhibitor numbers go up it will be a good show.

I belong to the Colorado audio club (new this year), and I know the organizers had a ton of frustrations with the venue as well. Lots of trouble getting anyone to cooperate. Hopefully things will be smoother next year. 

Also, I read this on the hotel's website, making it even more convenient to stay downtown. You can just take the train from Union station to the venue...

"RTD A-Line: Take the A-Line from the airport to the 61st and Pena Station; a free shuttle is provided to and from the resort to the station."

The a line goes between Union station and the airport, so you can stop at the resort/hotel from either direction.