Your favorite 3 rooms at RMAF

***dealer disclaimer******
note: some of the rooms I sell, some I don't.

I did nto hear everythign at the show, however I did hear most of the top rooms.

Both T+A rooms using Dynaudio special 25s and Sapphires sounded very good.

The Stillpoints room was making great music.

The Avalon room with the new Transcendents was sounding very good also.

Hegel had an impressive demo driving B&W 802s with a 2K integrated amplifier

MITs demo using 14 guage zip cord then AVT in wall modules and then Oracle HD Matrix was impressive.

The Evolution Acoustics room with Dartzeel was my favorite room of the show - very lifelike effortless sound and a very visceral image/soundstage.

Another disclaimer: I'm a friend of Sjofn HiFi. That said, there were very few rooms that for me were as engaging as Sjofn's with their new speaker "the clue". I won't go into superlatives, 'cuz it'll just sound like I'm trying to chat it up. I will say, tho, that Stereophile gave it a fantastic review Saturday night that was posted on their blog about the show.

I loved Hegel's rooms (I own a CDP4A), and Sjofn also uses their gear in the reference system.

The other rooms which I particularly liked were Coincident Speaker's (Israel Blume rocked the nuts off the fourth floor with fantastic dynamic sound and the amazing vanishing noise floor) and Emerald Physik which just had a sick holographic soundstage with their totally open baffle design. Also really enjoyed Focal's room, a lot. I think the room which was the most visually engaging was a reel to reel demonstration on the 5th floor of the Atrium, whose name escapes me right now.

Cheers!

I agree with the (1) Evolution Acoustics room. I enjoyed it so much I placed an order for a pair by the end of the day Friday.

My other favorites were (2) O'Hanlon's Vivid room and the (3) YG Carmels in the synergistic research room; the other YG demos, however, were a little disappointing.

I missed some rooms but at SOTA was most impressed by:

Kaiser speakers w/GTE electronics & new Fono Acustica cables.

Classic Audio Reproduction field coil horns w/AtmaSphere.

VTL w/Wilson Sasha.

Below the stratosphere I particularly liked Quad spkrs & electronics with Merrill-Williams TT. Kingsound stats (w/VAC) also sounded fine and are excellent value, as did Lowther America field-coil open baffles with First Watt.

Ditto praise of Coincident, Evolution, and Thor w/Duevel. In large dipoles with digital crossovers I much prefer Legacy Whisper to Emerald Physics.

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