RMAF 2009

The sixth annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest had already closed when I finally had the time to stop by Reference Recordings’ booth to check out their latest mouth-watering HRx high-resolution master WAV file DVD-Rs. There I encountered Demian Martin, who, together with Ray Burnham, has produced the Auraliti (pronounced Aurality) disc player ($800).

There was full program of seminars and workshops at RMAF, as well as my own "Squeezing the Music Till the Bits Squeak," the session featuring Harry Pearson, and Michael Fremer on "Turntable Setup," I moderated a panel session, "How to Get the Most Out of Computer-Based Audio," on Saturday afternoon. The A-List panel—(from left to right) Gus Skinas (SACD Center), John Stronczer (Bel Canto Design), J. Gordon Rankin (Wavelength Audio), Charlie Hansen (Ayre Acoustics), record producer Joe Harley, and Chris Connaker (www.computeraudiophile.com)—discussed the best way to use a computer as a legimate source component in a high-end audio system. All concerned felt this was the way forward for the high-end audio industry, particularly with the increasing availability of hi-rez downloads, and it was a shame that the session was limited to an hour.

Where, you may ask, are the speakers? All you see are light fixtures.

When I walked into the room of Chicago-based Acoustic Technology LLC, I thought I was listening to speakers that only had tweeters, because the only visible drive-unity was a single 3" unit. Yet the sound, a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Schererazade, was definitely full-range,and the soundstaging, as you might expect from such a small radiating diameter and a narrow cabinet baffle, was well-delineated.

Bless Ray Kimber's heart. For at least the last three years, Kimber Kable has transported live musicians to RMAF so that we could always have a fresh, live reference in our heads as we traipsed room-to-room listening to canned performances.

My attention was caught by the USB flash drive sticking out of the side of the Aura Premier CD player/receiver/headphone amplifier ($2595) in one of the April Music/May Audio rooms. And so it should have caught my attention, because it was styled by noted English industrial designer Kenneth Grange, responsible for some of ther classic B&W designs on the 1970s and '80s. The Premier will play MP3, WMA, and Ogg Vorbbis files from its USB-B input and it also has a USB-A port that will accept data sampled at up to 48kHz with 16-bit resolution.

"This wasn't our choice of music," whispered German Physiks' Robert Kelly when I entered the room they were sharing with Danish electronics manufacturer Vitus Audio. "No problem," I whispered back, " I love Howard Shore's symphonic score to the movie trilogy Lord of the Rings," which a visitor had asked to be played.