Your favorite 3 rooms at RMAF


I am sure by now you have had time to digest your findings at the show. What were your favorite rooms.
Mine are as follows: The Audio Research/Vandersteen room was set up extremely well and hearing the 7's again along with the ARC anniversary Edition was a great combo. Second would be the Magico Speakers, what an awesome speaker and seeing the exposed cabinet construction was bonus, and Third I have to say that I was extremely impressed with the Thor Audio room with the Duevel Speakers. Not only beautiful to look at but may be a perfect speaker for problem room.
And of course many more come to mind but these are my fav's.
128x128theo
Granted my favorite rooms may not have been the best sounding rooms at the show, but rather they had components and speakers that were interesting to me and within my price range. I attended all three days and almost missed my flight on Sunday.

Number one favorite room: Horning Eufrodite, TRON Seven, TRON Discovery and Raven AC(?). Okay maybe the Discovery is slightly out of my price range, but man I loved that amp and those Eufrodite. I had originally dropped by the High Water Sound room to listen to the Aspara HL1 and more specifically the Thoress preamp and the 845 amp. This match was wonderful as well. My next purchase may be the Thoress preamp and the...um somewhat ugly 845 monos. I must have spent several hours talking to Reingard Thoress and Jeff Catalano over three days. I loved their passion for sound, music and vinyl.

I also liked:

The Lowther open baffles and the First Watt.

Vaughn Zinfandel loudspeakers and the Wavelength Cardinal. It's always interesting when you hang out with Gordan. His sarcasm is very insightful when he's talking about something, but confusing when he turns it on you. On the other hand Jim Jordon is probably the most laid back exhibitor at the show.

The GR Research speakers and the Dodd KT-66 monoblocks (not the hybrids).

And of course the Classic Audio Reproduction T-3.4 but I wish I could hear these powered by something other than the Atma-Sphere (no offense I like the Atma-Sphere but I'd just like to hear them with another amp). Also I wish that John Wolff was a little more cheerful.

Of the three Daedalus Ulysses rooms I thought the one with the Berning 230 the First Sound preamp was the best.
1) audio note
2) Highwater sound.....tron,hornig......aspra, thoress(actually this might have been #1)...after jeff finally changed cables.
3)several kinda came in here....Harbeth....Doshi/Wilson...

The single best track I heard was in the room with allnic, MBL, and some super TT...I forget the name. A guy had a 45 lp of elvis singing "Fever" with just a bass player and a piano player. It was really freaky.
The room with the MBLs/Allnic/Onda cables was Xactaudio. There was another record he played called "The A Train" and one album "Belfonta Sings the Blues", which were trippy...

I thought the Audio Note room and the Von Sch... rooms were best for digital, the Vandersteen speakers were nice to, overall I thought digital came in second.

The Xactaudio room was up there in the top 5 and was always full.

Alot of rooms didn't sound very good but had some really great gear. Some rooms had synergy throughout and others just didn't get it or didn't care.
For me it was:

1 - Xact Audio (Steve Dobbins) - Allnic Pre-Amp/Phono, AMP, and Beat Turntable (beautiful to see and hear - maybe best TT I have heard).

2 - Wilson / VTL - I was really quite surprised by how good the Wilson Sasha's sounded.

3 - Doshi Audio - Nick Doshi's AMP and Pre-Amp are really special.

There were several good rooms this year, but these are my top 3.

Best Regards,
Cello