AXPONA 2012

AIX and iTrax.com Go 3D

Jason Victor Serinus  |  Mar 11, 2012

At the same time that AIX Record's Mark Waldrep was in the Omni Ballroom B giving the first of two keynote seminars, "Realizing the Dream of Perfect Music Reproduction: Are we There Yet?", the large salon two doors down was presenting his new AIX Records Real HD-Audio sources Blu-ray discs using Dolby TrueHD Encoding. I confess that I find wearing 3D glasses awkward, and don't know if I'll ever become accustomed to the neck of a guitar beaming out at my gut like a foreign projectile while I'm listening to beautifully played classical music. Nonetheless, the quality of the picture could not be faulted, and the sound, especially when discomfort was erased with eyes closed, was very fine.

Equally fine, this time with less projectile dysfunction, was a performance of a Mozart String Quartet. In the two-minute clip I saw, the airplane-circling-the-landing-pad views of classical ensembles that I've found distracting on some AIX videos were replaced by natural, facing-forward, ground-level shots that, at least to my perhaps limited, backwards, and decidedly not with it old school sensibilities, made far more organic sense.

Associated equipment included an Oppo BDP-95 Blu-ray 3D player and server ($1000), Bryston SP-3 pre/pro ($9500), DH Labs Silver Sonic interconnects and speakers cables, 5B Bryston 7B-SST 600W monoblocks, B&W 802D loudspeakers (front left, right, and center), B&W 804D loudspeakers (surround left and right), JVC RS-65 3D 4K Projector ($12,500), and a Stewart screen.

COMMENTS
Dr. AIX's picture
Submitted by Dr. AIX on March 19, 2012 - 1:36pm

It's unfortunate that the reviewer didn't visit our room when I was present or I believe that he would have contributed more than 5 words of his show report to the sound of the room ("the sound...was very fine"). AIX Records and our partner companies presented a room with "sheer sound perfection", according to A. Colin Flood, an online reviewer and one of the panelists at the press panel at the show.

Others who visited the room raved about the quality of the music reproduction. Dr. Taraszka, a reviewer for HomeTheaterReview, said, "...the music in the AIX room was just fantastic. The sound was open and spacious and well balanced around the room. They are making some of the most important recordings going today in terms of cutting edge audio."

Even our die hard analog, two channel, tube and vinyl neighbor who had initially let me know in no uncertain terms that, "digital is harsh, unemotional and cold" posted the following at a high end blog,"The 3D video and 5 channel room that AIX Records set up was fantastic. That is coming from a person who is not that into 3D!" Rich told me as we said goodbye on pack up day, "you won me over"...high definition audio actually is capable of presenting fantastic fidelity.

I'll try to send Jason a photo of the room rather than an unattended table of our products. It's rather curious that the B&W 802D speakers, which are among the most beautiful speakers in the world, didn't merit a photo...but hopefully that oversight can be rectified.

At the New York AXPONA last summer, Art Dudley experienced the same tracks that we played in FLorida through a worthy although lesser system than what we had at AXPONA 2012. Addressing the very same work that the current reviewer incorrectly labeled a "classical" work, Art wrote in his show report, "one of the most convincing performance clips I've yet to see: fingerstylist Laurence Juber playing a number called "White Pass Trail" on his signature Martin guitar." With regards to the inclusion of cutting edge 3D Blu-ray in our demo, he continued, "By this time of the show my wife had joined my daughter and I, and she shared my surprise at how the 3-D effect enhanced, rather than tarted-up, the performance. An impressive recreation of superb music." It's certainly odd that the same presentation to two different reviewers results in such diverse and opposite reactions. I believe only one got it right.

In addition, AIX Records rolled out one of the most revolutionary advances in audio with its new Headphones[xi]™ "room-processed" downloadable files. On a separate table in the corner of the room was a Mac Book Pro hooked up to a Benchmark DAC-1 HDR and a pair of Stax Headphones. If the reviewer had bothered to take a listen, he would have heard a rendition of The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" as a standard headphone mix and another that replicated the sound of a surround version of the track in 5 discrete "outside of your head" virtual speakers. AIX is already uploading this type of track to iTunes and iTraxHP.com AND placing them on the ROM section of their new releases. Imagine having the sound of our 5.1 state-of-the-art studio in your headphones.

The title of this show report contained some incorrect information. iTrax.com, our HD download site, has nothing to do with "3D" and AIX Records, which is high definition audio label, has added 3D Music Albums to its line of releases.

In short, the largest presentation space at the whole show, one put together by the keynote speakers at the event (which wasn't covered at all), one that brought together the most cutting edge technologies on the planet AND one that provided some of the best sound at the entire event deserves more attention than the reviewer thought was warranted.

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