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DIY hi-fi used to be an important aspect of audio magazine content 30 and more years ago, but these days it has migrated almost completely to the Internet, with just Ed Dell's AudioXpress magazine still waving the roll-your-own flag in print. Sharing a stand at RMAF were two of the Internet's most notable DIY engineers, Jan Didden from Holland (left) and Bob Cordell from New Jersey (right), and both were venturing into the print medium. Bob had advance copies of his new tome Designing Audio Power Amplifiers for sale, which I will be reviewing in Stereophile early in the New Year. Jan…
One of my two best sounds at RMAF was from Revel's Ultima Salon2 speakers ($22,000/pair), which have been favorites of mine since Larry Greenhill's review appeared in the June 2008 issue of Stereophile. At RMAF, the Revels were being driven by Mark Levinson No.53 monoblocks ($25,000/pair), which in turn were being fed straight from the variable output of a Mark Levinson No.512 SACD player ($15,000). Cabling was all-Transparent. The superbly stable soundstaging extended beyond the physical positions of the speakers, the tonal balance was one of the most neutral I heard at the Show, and…
Perhaps the best sound I heard at RMAF was in the large room on the mezzanine shared by Dynaudio, XLO, and Wadia. The Dynaudio Confidence C4s ($20,900/pair), which I first reviewed in March 2003, were sounding as good as I remember them sounding in my own room, perhaps even better. The rest of the system was obviously high-class: a Wadia 971 CD transport ($17,950) fed Wadia's Series 9 Decoding computer ($33,450, comprising the 931 controller and dual-mono 922 DACs), which in turn fed Octave MRE130 tubed monoblocks from Germany ($16,000/pair) sitting on Grand Prix amp stands. Cabling…
Some of my happiest sonic experiences at RMAF arrived in the last two rooms I visited: the Tidal Audio/Argento Audio Cables/dCS showcase put together by Doug White of The Voice That Is (Newton Square, PA), and the Simon Yorke/CAT/Synergistic/Lansche exhibit assembled by Tim Nguyen of Tone of Music (San Francisco, CA).
Tidal's founder, Jörn Janczak, previewed his 286 lb Tidal Audio Piano DiaCera speakers in midnight black lacquer ($37,690/pair). Although these show debutantes fell a mite shy of conveying the fullness of the double basses at the start of Mahler's Symphony 2, their…
Jeffrey Catalano’s High Water Sound provided my very favorite musical experience of the 2010 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Along one wall of the room, there were stacks and stacks of vinyl records, an obvious sign of something good about to happen.
Catalano had positioned two systems, facing one another, with seats in between. If we wanted to listen to one system, we turned our seats to face it. When ready to listen to the other system, we simply turned our seats around. The first system: TW-Acustic Black Night turntable ($40,000) equipped with a TW-Acustic 10.5 tonearm ($5500) and…
When I reported in our report from the 2009 RMAF that I perceived a degradation when Ted Denney of cable manufacturer Synergistic Research removed his tiny ART devices from the room, it triggered a debate that raged not just in the comments following that report but also in our website forum right up to today. The fact is that these small metal bowls are too small to have a significant effect on the acoustics of a room at frequencies below 10kHz or so, yet they seem to improve the accuracy and stability of stereo imaging and even tighten up the sounds of bass instruments. It is a…
Photo: John Atkinson
It's one thing to know that you're attending what has quickly grown into the largest annual high-end show in the United States. It's something else entirely to try to take in even a third of the 180 exhibits that were spread over the width, breadth and height of the Denver Marriott Tech Center.
RMAF 2010 drew such a huge rush of attendees on the first day (October 15) as to cause at least one overly packed elevator to spend what seemed like a minute in limbo, considering whether it should dare try to ascend. When it finally determined to go up rather…
The November 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Immediately after shipping the issue to press, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the 2011 Stereophile Buyer’s Guide. And almost immediately after shipping the Buyer’s Guide, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the December 2010. While the December issue was in its very final stages, we had to fly to Denver to cover the outstanding Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. It’s been a whirlwind and I can honestly say that I hardly remember working on the November issue.
Our designer, Natalie Baca, tried a few new things…
Photo: John Atkinson
On the morning of Monday, the 18th, just hours after the 2010 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest had come to an end, I was feeling the post-show blues, dissatisfied with the number of exhibitor rooms I had covered and convinced that I had done a poor job with the rooms I had covered. On the evening before the show opened, Jason Victor Serinus, John Atkinson, and I met for a beer and tried to figure out how the three of us would be able to cover the show’s nine floors, 180 rooms, and 400 exhibitors. We decided to divide the show evenly, each of us taking three floors…
Inside Box Number One: Sumiko’s new Okki Nokki record cleaning machine ($549)!
We are currently putting together the January 2011 issue of Stereophile. (That’s Volume 34 Number 1!) The January 2011 issue is especially exciting for me because it includes the first installment of our new monthly column, “The Entry Level,” in which I’ll attempt to uncover really excellent, affordably priced hi-fi components and explore how and why we become audiophiles. It should be fun.
While at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, we introduced the idea to several equipment manufacturers and…