Jason Victor Serinus

Fortune found in the fortune cookie that accompanied my evening meal of Chinese take-out: "When in doubt, let your instincts guide you."

For some system configurations, hotel rooms present near impossible challenges. Such was the case in one padded cell on the 5th floor of the Marriott Denver Tech Center, where the frustrated purveyors of a modestly priced A/V surround system raided the linen closet in a desperate attempt to tame errant sound. I didn’t have the heart to ask if the reflective surface of the black plastic tape might be making matters worse.

Photographed in a state of mild panic, as your truly was trying to figure out what was wrong with his new Canon digital camera [<I>Answer: nothing but his brain</I>], the dedicated Serinus RMAF work area at the Marriott is pictured in its characteristically unglorious state.

At the suggestion of a fellow BAAS (Bay Area Audiophile Society) member, I abandoned futile attempts to cover every room on a given floor, and instead pinpointed systems that had turned my brothers on. In this case, it was the room shared by Flying Mole Digital and Green Mountain speakers.

As mentioned in the <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2006/102006welcome/">introductory post</A> to this blog, Peter "PJay" Smith (above), Bob Cordell, and Darren Kuzma presented gratis "Amplifier and Loudspeaker Listening and Measurement" clinics throughout the show. One of the clinics, which I was unable to attend, interpreted amplifier measurement data supplied by <I>Stereophile</I>'s John Atkinson.

Somewhere on the 5th floor, around the corner and through the woods on the way to Grandma’s house, I discovered a lovely woman distributing CD Clarity, a water-based, non-toxic spray said to clean, protect, and restore CDs and DVDs. ("Reduce background noise, improve tracking and enhance musical balance, while cleaning and protecting discs from future scratches," says the label). Developed by the late Dave Herren of Oregon, CD Clarity joins an assortment of highly touted treatments, some of which include products from Walker Audio, Jena Labs, Audiotop, Classic Records, and Optrix. Add to that batch Nordost’s Eco3 static inhibitor, which can be sprayed on the label side of CDs.

I began my Sunday in the Nordost room on the Tower mezzanine. Familiar with the sound of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/cables/1101nordost/">Nordost Valhalla</A> interconnects, speaker cables, and power cables in my reference system, as well as the benefits of the Nordost Thor power distribution center that I have for review in another publication (and will not be returning), I was wondering how they would sound powering completely different components.