maxg Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Day 2 from the show. Spent about 7 hours there listening to all sorts of systems. Finally got to listen to the RF7 properly and compare it to the KHorn which was interesting - more on that later. First up a few more snaps: This is the big Tannoy speaker from Tony's room. They were brand new and not performing very well - although they had improved sonically from day 1. He hadnt sold any by the time I have left - but he had sold 3 sets of Martin Logans and a couple of projectors just about covering the cost of the show immediately. I have no idea what make these tube amps are - or how much they cost but they certainly look different!! Sound was pretty impressive too. Those amps in situ - this was a big setup but I couldnt find any reps to explain what on earth it all was. The good news - if anyone is desperate to find out - is that the shop that offered this setup is opposite my office - so I can always go and find out I suppose. Some people seem to regard these as amongst the best amps in production today. I thought this opportunity to snap the insides worth a shot - especially for the techies out there. They aint cheap though - Lamm Industries by the way - forgot that. Those lamms in action. Sound was detailed, in a way, but missing something on classical music for me. Basically it seemed to have losts of leading edge to violins but no trailing edge resulting in a rather cold sound - odd for tubes if you ask me but I heard what I heard. Slurp - lick - drool. The Clearaudio Master reference table. Sounds every bit as gorgeous as it looks and cheap in the company of some of the TT's on display at a mere 14000 euros. Sadly many of the shots of the other TT's are not good enough to waste your bandwidth with - including an all new Simon York and a top end Transrotor at 25,000 and 55,000 euros respectively. Naked Heil speaker - a fascinating sound - intoxicating on classical and sensitive enough to run with a SET 300B apparently. Positively cheap at 4000 euros. I am not 100% sure I prefer the way this presents classical over mine - it is different - would love to have both for a while. Note the Project RPM 9 new version just at the edge of the shot. The perspex really adds to the look making it resemble a poor man's clearaudio - no accident I am sure. No idea whether the perspec changes the sonics at all - but visually there is no comparison. I mentioned in the last post the marantz TT - well this is it. You can also see the top of the underlying SACD player too - or is that a pre-amp or amp - hard to tell - they were all stacked up and look very similar to me. Eye candy courtesy of Pathos. I think this was driving some large Triangle speakers - and doing it rather well. Again no idea on price. A more affordable TT from Transrotor - only 4000 euro with arm and cartridge. Still kinda pricey but when you have seen projectors for 45,000 euro and TT's for 55,000 it looks reasonable! Does look cool in blue - apparently you can also get them in red. OK - that is all the good pics I snapped. I think I will cover some listening experiences in a reply to this post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted November 22, 2004 Author Share Posted November 22, 2004 Ok listening experiences and related. I spent yesterday going around the show with a videophile. This was an interesting experience as all the rooms I ignored the first time around we went into this time. It is nice to do this in the company of an expert - he can point out what is good and bad when you dont know. Even more interesting with video - when you are shown what is right or wrong it is suddenly obvious. Best thing in the show for him was the 45,000 euro projector (cant remember the company name). Technically it is a 3 processor DLP projector which makes it way way better than your run of the mill items. Picture was staggeringly good and enhanced by some form of pixel upsampler so that everything appeared to be in HDTV format - even lowly DVD (which I thought was supposed to have very high quality picture but apparently not). It is all ready for Blu-ray disks and high res movies but in the meantime they work around with this upsampler. The only thing in the show that had as good a picture was a Sony flat TV - plasma I now understand - that was running a native high res demo on a screen that appeared to be 5 foot across. Priced at 12,000 euro again this is a relative bargain. I wont go through all the listening experiences. Said videophile is in love with the KHorn and will be replacing his KLF 30's with a barnd new pair in the fullness of time. As it happens I got me first proper listen to the RF7's in a reasonable setup, and was suitably impressed. Soundstaging and depth are excellent - as good as I have ever heard from a Klipsch. I ran a variety of musical genres through them and they never missed a beat. Definitely would never need a sub in my listeing sessions. What really surprised me was how smooth they are. Even with a relatively harsh recording of a Paganini Violin concerto the sound never became piercing. Depth on this system was excellent, soundstage locations rock solid. I was surprised to conclude that this is a sound I could live with relatively easily. The cone midrange and woofer meld very well with the horn loaded tweeter. This is less of a surprise for me than it might have been as it is not dissimilar to my current home built speakers in that respect. I dont think comparisons with Khorns are really applicable - these are very different animals indeed. Owning both would certainly add something to ones listening pleasure. There are elements of RF7 playback that are superior to KHorn playback, especially that depth and of course, the reverse is true too. We also got to listen to some tiny Klipsch's I am not familiar with. They look like the old Quintets on steriods. We heard them without a sub (they only go down to 92 Hz so there is a lot of bass missing) but even in this guise the rendition was incredible for such small units. Midrange is killer on these and with the small image the clarity is razor sharp. Whether these things with a sub would be a better choice than, say, a pair of RF15's(?) I do not know. Pricing would be on a par I imagine. That will do for now - interesting? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edwinr Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Great pictures, Max. I love going to Hi-Fi shows. It's one thing reading about this stuff. It's another to actually see and hear the products. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted November 22, 2004 Author Share Posted November 22, 2004 Just as an update I think the tiny little Klipsch I saw were the RSX4 bookshelves http://www.klipsch.com/media/Products/2.RSX-4.pdf If you have a small room I would seriously recommend giving these a listen - and boy are they cheap!!! Aparently there is a matching sub to go with them - 8 inch I believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted November 22, 2004 Author Share Posted November 22, 2004 Can we have a bit more oooing and ahhhing over that Clearaudio TT please - if nothing else for the photography!!! Huh - guys - good pic or what - about the best shot I ever took I reckon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryC Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 ---------------- On 11/22/2004 11:56:04 AM maxg wrote: Can we have a bit more oooing and ahhhing over that Clearaudio TT please - if nothing else for the photography!!! Huh - guys - good pic or what - about the best shot I ever took I reckon. ---------------- Max, I'll be glad to ooh and ahhh -- you did a nice job of meeting some definite challenges in lighting, focus, angles of view, and composition, IMHO. What camera, lens(es), and flash? Larry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MagicMtnDan Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Great stuff (pics and captions) to read. Wish we could have shared the experience - would've been a fun field trip! Thanks for sharing pics of stuff I'll never own. I'm happy to have my LaScalas and room to listen to them (my first priority was always having great speakers and then worrying about when, where and how to enjoy them to their fullest - guess that's why for years I was speaker-room and home-poor ). Thanks again for the pics! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebes Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Max, thanks for taking the time and effort to share all of this with us with both of your posts. Plenty of eye candy and drool factor in these posts and the one picture of the TT is simply awesome. Your commentary and particularly your views on the RF 7's vs. Khorns was cogent and informative. Now all I need is a Sugar Mommie so I can get me some of this stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicholtl Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Very nice pics, Max. Those Lamm tube monoblocks you saw were the Lamm ML2.1's. 18Wpc into 4, 8, or 16 lhms at up to 3% THD. Input impedance of 41k ohms in parallel with 470pF. Input sensitivity is 775mV for max output, freq response of 20Hz - 20kHz. Those beasts weigh 70lbs and retail for $29,290 a pair. Interesting that you thought they were lacking, though. These are supposed to be THE definitive amps of Lamm to date. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dzapper Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Thanx Max. Very nice picture of the Clear Audio TT I must add! Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted November 23, 2004 Author Share Posted November 23, 2004 Crikey Nicho - that is some info you came up with there. Larry - you caught me out - I know next to nothing about photography in reality - I have a Sony digital camera that is about 4 years old - a DSP-P1 3.2 megapixel jobby. I just point and click and let the camera sort out the rest. Normally it does quite a good job but that day was a good one for it methinks. To give myself a little of the credit I did take that shot twice - once with flash and once without - this was the better result. Rick, How kind of you to notice. All, Cheers! Just 362 days to go to the next high end show! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdm56 Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 Thanks for the great pictures, Max, and thanks for the RF-7 / k-horn comparison comments. You know, one thing that really irks me about some "real" audio reviews, is when the writer acts as though whatever they are reviewing exists in a vaccuum, you know? Knowing something is good or bad is helpful, but it is much better to know how product A compares to product B. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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