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Anyone else attend the California Audio Show in Oakland?

I went yesterday 7/28, heard some really good stuff, including:

Old Forge Studios room. The Soundkaos Vox 3F standmounted 3 ways were incredible! My favorites of the show. Tiny boxes and 35Hz on the low end had many of us looking for a subwoofer. The Wand tt and PureAudio electronics were excellent.

Tidal Contriva speakers speakers were my 2nd choice as favorites. Just a bit more expensive than the Soundkaos at $65,000, they were beautiful to look at and gorgeous to listen to, or vice versa. Open and airy, great bass extension, with the equally fine Bricasti amps and preamp, they would surely be even better in a larger room.

Aurender streamers and dacs also pulled me in. I’m looking for new gear, and they have a great selection. The combo dacs and streamers start at around $3500 and run to $22,000 for the W22SE, which was playing in their room. 

On on the down side:

Audio Vision SF Room
I didn’t care for the Naim/Rega/Focal gear. It sounded very shut in, muffled to me. Sibilance was not pronounced, and the Focal speakers sounded blurred. 

Wyred4sound

I've never been a fan, so maybe I’m biased, but the new gear just didn’t add up to me. Disjointed is the word I come up with. The new W4S speakers were these hulking boxes, with drivers arranged in MTM configuration. The tweeters are ribbons, which I usually enjoy, but these sounded too laid back to me. 

Any other attendee thoughts?

pumper24
mtdining's avatar
mtdining
131 posts
 
I re-learned one thing I already knew - Nordost cables are in your face, bright and lack depth! 
I was surprised at how few good sounding rooms there were. The venerable Joseph Audio speakers were in one of the best. The only new to me speakers that sounded fairly good were the Salk. The Berkeley Reference DAC was really good, but I knew that.
The free Reference recordings cd, some great deals from the Audio Nerd, and the benefitted charity made the ticket price worthwhile.
phomchick's avatar
phomchick
209 posts
 
I think I must have missed the Old Forge room. I thought the best sound was in the Bicasti room on the Tidal speakers. I also liked the open baffle PureAudioProject speakers.

I was in the Martin Logan room for a bit. They had the biggest room, the biggest speakers, really serious electronics and Honest-to-God Master Tapes playing on a 1/2" professional tape deck, but the sound was decidedly ho-hum and I left.
drawding
16 posts
 
While I agree that the show was not the best location and rather small, it was nice to have a show in the Bay-Area.  I hope they keep having it.
russbutton's avatar
russbutton
410 posts
 
I also liked the Sound Kaos system.   I thought the loudspeaker design was interesting in that the crossover points were at 200 hz and 10,000 hz.  This solves a LOT of problems.

What's also interesting in this $6700 loudspeaker pair is that this magic, wide range driver is from Tang Band and can be bought from Parts Express for about $57.   But I'm a DIY guy and most of the people here buy their audio the way they buy their luxury cars.

What I'd do with this driver would be to mount it on an open baffle, add a couple of decent super tweeters, facing front and back, and add an open baffle bass bin.   I'd put in a 12 db/octave passive crossover at 10k hz between the tweeters and Tang Band.   Then I'd use the miniDSP DDRC-24 active digital crossover with DSP EQ at 200 hz.

There are any number of choices on what to do for a bass bin depending on your budget.   The bass bin that Linkwitz used for his LX521 would be easy enough to do, but would cost you about $1100 for both sides.

With a bi-amp setup like this, you could run a tube amp for the high end and a good, inexpensive solid state amp for the bass bins and a system that would be BETTER than the Sound Kaos rig.    Now THAT would be fun!
kevinkwann
85 posts
 
"...solid state amp for the bass bins and a system that would be BETTER than the Sound Kaos rig.   Now THAT would be fun!"

Only to you. For everyone else it would be torture."
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