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Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) 2017 Day 1

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amirm

amirm

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After that I went late to a party thrown by RMAF for press and award recipients. Had great conversation with one my industry friends. Came to my room at 9:00pm. Tried to order room service only to be told that it would take them 5 to 10 minutes just to take my call!!! I must say that was first for me. I am used food being late but not them being too busy to talk to me. So I went down to restaurant instead. Came back and post the pictures you saw. Went to sleep at 1:30 am. Had to brush my teeth, go potty, put on pajamas, etc. Come on now. The day is over. Stop reading!!! Day 2 will come next.
 

Superdad

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...Day 2 will come next.

Nice photos! Very helpful for those of us who were not able to attend (helping my elderly parents move this weekend). Especially enjoy the posts of some to the music being played. Already wrote down a few selections to add to my collection. Thanks!
--Alex C.
 
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amirm

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MSB Reference DAC and amplifiers. YG speakers.
Just an addition: I asked Vince if they were still committed to MQA and he said yes.

I asked Benchmark if they were in favor of MQA and they said they would only support it if it became very popular and they had no choice. Otherwise they had no interest.
 

tomelex

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$500 room:
If you were looking for small speakers, with advanced DSP, active powered design with DAC and wireless streaming, all for just $349, your wish has come true! These Vanatoo speakers were incredible.

They had complimented it with a $100 Polk sub (not typo). This is one smart speaker. When you plug in a sub, it detects that and it filters off the lows from the speakers and lets them play louder!

View attachment 8999 View attachment 9000 View attachment 9001 View attachment 9002


I am not surprised you found this satellites and woofer system sounding so good. It has been my experience too, and the song they played did not challenge plain old stereo, only a few instruments playing, that's where stereo can shine.
 

TitaniumTroy

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Slowww room service, and having to get your own food. Sounds like you needed an Audiophile Uber driver, I am sure I could have found some place with crappy food for you.
 
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amirm

amirm

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Slowww room service, and having to get your own food. Sounds like you needed an Audiophile Uber driver, I am sure I could have found some place with crappy food for you.
Ain't that the truth!
 

RayDunzl

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RE: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...n-audio-fest-rmaf-2017-day-1.1981/#post-52361

Thinking I like panel speakers, these caught my eye:

upload_2017-10-10_19-44-32.png
 

Duke

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Our member and my friend Duke from Audio Kinesis was hosting one of the "innovation" rooms at RMAF. As announced here, he had wired his speakers so that the up firing rear driver had its own amps. As a result, it could be turned on and off with a remote button. He had finely tuned its level and as such, it did add nice amount of ambiance without being overdone at all. Note that this is NOT the same as backfiring. the driver is angled and it was hitting the sidewalls. Front wall reflections in general are not a good idea.

Thank you very much for coming to our room and including it in your show report, Amir. Since our last show, Jim Romeyn has done a lot of careful listening to the level of the rear array relative to the front array, working in one decibel increments. He found that there was an "optimum" level, below with there is still room for improvement, and above which clarity starts to take a hit. This optimum level turned out to be lower than I had thought, but I agree with his findings. So we didn't conduct a Harmon-esque blind subjective analysis, but I think his efforts resulted in a worthwhile improvement over our previous setups.

There was room for improvement over the setup you heard Friday afternoon. That night we removed the room treatments, as I think they were absorbing too much lower midrange energy. On Sunday we had a significantly better amp, and that helped too. Still to my ears there are a couple of areas where I need to tweak the crossover a bit... I'd barely gotten the crossovers soldered up in time to ship to Jim for installation in the cabinets, so that show was the first time I got to hear the parts installed in their proper cabinets, and in stereo.
 

edd9000

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Thank you very much for coming to our room and including it in your show report, Amir. Since our last show, Jim Romeyn has done a lot of careful listening to the level of the rear array relative to the front array, working in one decibel increments. He found that there was an "optimum" level, below with there is still room for improvement, and above which clarity starts to take a hit. This optimum level turned out to be lower than I had thought, but I agree with his findings. So we didn't conduct a Harmon-esque blind subjective analysis, but I think his efforts resulted in a worthwhile improvement over our previous setups.

There was room for improvement over the setup you heard Friday afternoon. That night we removed the room treatments, as I think they were absorbing too much lower midrange energy. On Sunday we had a significantly better amp, and that helped too. Still to my ears there are a couple of areas where I need to tweak the crossover a bit... I'd barely gotten the crossovers soldered up in time to ship to Jim for installation in the cabinets, so that show was the first time I got to hear the parts installed in their proper cabinets, and in stereo.

These look like a constant directivity horn (seos) I use a Seos horn in my system, and do find you can end up with a "headphone" like sound. I'd been day dreaming about a rear driver for a little bit of ambiance.
 

Duke

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These look like a constant directivity horn (seos) I use a Seos horn in my system, and do find you can end up with a "headphone" like sound. I'd been day dreaming about a rear driver for a little bit of ambiance.

Good eyes! The horn is the 15" SEOS. My normal setup configuration has the axes criss-crossing in front of the listening area, which helps give a fairly wide sweets spot, and doesn't seem to be as dry a more conventional configuration can be. I can offer some thoughts as to why this might be if you would like.

In my opinion adding some fairly late-onset, spectrally-correct reverberant energy helps in multiple ways, and doesn't seem to have any audibly significant downsides as long as it's not overdone. I've been on-again, off-again about building a fairly high impedance dedicated add-on unit that people can add to their existing systems.
 

edd9000

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Good eyes! The horn is the 15" SEOS. My normal setup configuration has the axes criss-crossing in front of the listening area, which helps give a fairly wide sweets spot, and doesn't seem to be as dry a more conventional configuration can be. I can offer some thoughts as to why this might be if you would like.

In my opinion adding some fairly late-onset, spectrally-correct reverberant energy helps in multiple ways, and doesn't seem to have any audibly significant downsides as long as it's not overdone. I've been on-again, off-again about building a fairly high impedance dedicated add-on unit that people can add to their existing systems.
I use mine toed in 45 degrees to minimise room interaction and for a wide listening area, then usually use some for of room correction. For music that has been well recorded, especially live with its own ambient information its not an issue. On more conventional studio recordings I cant help but think and extra bit of ambiance would help, I will have to experiment at some point.

I don't have them set up right now, toying of upgrading to the Seos-30".
 

Duke

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I use mine toed in 45 degrees to minimise room interaction and for a wide listening area, then usually use some for of room correction. For music that has been well recorded, especially live with its own ambient information its not an issue. On more conventional studio recordings I cant help but think and extra bit of ambiance would help, I will have to experiment at some point.

I don't have them set up right now, toying of upgrading to the Seos-30".

Yup, 45 degree toe-in is what I use, for the same reason (minimizing early reflections).

That SEOS 30" is a MONSTER!! The biggest one I've toyed with is the 18".
 
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