AXPONA Live

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by avanti1960, Apr 12, 2019.

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  1. BigE

    BigE Forum Resident

    My rules for Axpona. I go one day, since it’s in my hometown.
    If it ain’t playin’ , I ain’t stayin’.
    Diana Krall . . . , see ya’ll.
    If you’re talkin’, I’m walkin’.
     
    olson, scottschecter, Mike-48 and 9 others like this.
  2. lonelysea

    lonelysea Ban Leaf Blowers

    Location:
    The Cascades
    Sound advice!
    But I heard the Audio Note gear sounds great even when there’s no music playing.
     
  3. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    Good call - it only takes once - if you can sound really good at an Audio Show - then you can sound even better out of the show. I had YG Acoustics go from worst to first at two shows. And MBL.
     
    Frost likes this.
  4. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    My problem with most audiophile speakers are they may be very good audiophile speakers but I rarely ever "enjoy the heck out of them" which then makes you wonder if audiophile speakers are any damn good.
     
  5. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    You probably need to go to a smaller audio show - Dagogo's show is called the California Audio Show and will be held at the end of July - 40ish rooms. You can actually get in and sit sometimes by yourself and put on your own music. The hotel actually has above average rooms. I was actually impressed - perhaps because it is held at the Oakland Hilton near the airport they have better sound proofing. There were not bad sounding rooms as I recall just some systems a pushed to a strain which gave them a reedy thin quality - oddly the uber expensive rooms like Martin Logan's Neolith and I believe Pass amps.

    Audio Shows have a myriad of problems - they were initially designed for dealers to attend and decide which manufacturers they would like to pick up and carry in their stores. But with dealers disappearing the public goes and there are just too many people.

    Then you have one person complain - the music sucked in Room A not realizing that the musicmay have been requested by another attendee who happens to love it. I mean they play Diana Krall ALL THE TIME so the vast majority of people I assume LOVE her. Or Keith Don't Go - which mystifies me - it's a fine song and Diana is a fine singer but when it is played to death - you wind up hating the room before you even walk into it. You MUST play your own music and you MUST play it at the volume you like it at.

    I have gotten other people in the room to have a complete reversal of opinion on a stereo just by changing out the soft girl at the guitar to Guns and Roses - I did this with the MBL room - a few people walked out of the room when I put it on but 10 people walked in. The Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Krall, Mozart violin etc just doesn't work IMO for noisy show environments at the big shows. Crappy walls, blabbing people in the room, in the halls - the bass thump thump from the neighboring rooms.

    In Hong Kong - there are "audio buildings" where there ar 25 floors and on each floor is a different audio dealerhship - I can basically attend this every day - start on the top floor and work my way down - but it is vastly better than an audio show in that the rooms are dealers and they have had more than 3 hours to set it all up properly and the room walls, ceilings and floors are solid concrete - then treatments. You can't treat a room with plaster paper thing crap hotel walls. There is a limit to what a bass trap and a few pieces of foam can achieve. DSP changes the nature and characteristics of the loudspeakers so you may get flat response but a metal tweeter doing 8khsz a 90dB sounds different than a silk dome or ribbon or ESL doing 8khz at 90db. It amazes me that some audiophiles don't seem able to hear the actual signature of the drivers. But that's a whole other thread.
     
  6. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    yes the rooms that play the 6 tracks their speakers are GREAT at playing gives them an advantage - some manufacturers will play 1930 beat up records because the music is actually GOOD. But if the person walking in and judging based on a 10 minute audition will scratch their heads.
     
    Frost likes this.
  7. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    People have different taste in music - never go to an audio show without bringing your own music. And preferably a wide range of music. Too many opinions formed based on the fact they don't like the music being played. And I have seen reviewers who are respected (meh) tell the dealer to play something that represents the system. Then complain in the press that the sound was this or that - how the F would he know - for all that assclown knows that is the way the sound was recorded.
     
    Fruff76 likes this.
  8. Kyhl

    Kyhl On break

    Location:
    Savage
    From the Salk page on another site, they weren't there as a manufacturer so were not listed until late, but they were supposed to be sending a couple pairs to be used in a couple demo rooms by other amp and pre manufactures.
     
    samurai likes this.
  9. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    I think the people with real money mostly listen to classical and jazz - electronic DJ music - the attitude is sort of "get a set of Cerwin Vega CLS 215 for under $2000 and be on your way." And they are actually very good speakers for the money. Not your father's Cerwin Vegas.

    But higher end audio is about capturing unamplified instruments and sounds that exist in nature - not computer generated, auto-tuned, processed sound. The system that belts the bass the deepest. Chances are the Cerwin's will actually beat the crap out of a LOT of $16,000 speakers when it comes to sheer impact and provide more toe tapping factors. IE; you don't need to spend a lot of money to capture DJ music properly - you do if you want to capture other kinds of music.
    [​IMG]
     
  10. Fruff76

    Fruff76 L100 Classic - Fan Club President

    I agree, your own music is ideal, but show some sense of creativity for crying out loud
     
  11. Fruff76

    Fruff76 L100 Classic - Fan Club President

    There was a shop in Montreal that used to always demo with really cool music. Sometimes I’d leave with a list of new albums to look for. It doesn’t have to suck
     
  12. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    I agree - I mean let's say your system does Female Vocals and Girl at a piano very well - so you always play Diana Krall. My argument would be okay fine - this is the music the show runner loves. But maybe actually play OTHER artists who do similar music but are at the same time well recorded.

    Umm - Sophie Milman - also a Canadian female jazz singer - Eva Cassidy, Loreena McKennit - the list goes on and on - so yes same type of music but not a steady diet of Diana Krall. And Sophie's a better vocalist IMO. And Eva definitely is.

    People love their female vocals. So I get it - but maybe expand from Diana.

    Personally - I would prefer this to Krall but I know I am in the minority.

     
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  13. Fruff76

    Fruff76 L100 Classic - Fan Club President

    “These Bones” by “the Fairfield Four”. It came on and I had to laugh. It’s the go to for male vocals. It made us get up and walk out of the Paradigm demo.
     
  14. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    What sucks to you doesn't suck to someone else though. I mean what constitutes sucking? I may not like some artists or I find it to be too elevator music for me and perhaps it's because I have an extremely wide music taste - I hate pitting ART against other art. I can listen all day to classical and all day to cheese ball pop music. I respect musicianship over fiddling with equalizers - DJ's pressing buttons doesn't in my mind make them artists. I can enjoy it but I have more respect for Krall and Lady Gaga - who write and can actually sings, and actually play a music instrument than pretty much anyone who fiddles at a computer.

    But I am not argumentative about it - people like what they like which is why I say - bring your own music. The best Audio Note Demos IMO have been when the owner of the company rubns the room because he plays Nightwish or Noisia as well as classical - all the other show runners play violin solos or light ass music.

    When I play female Vocals I try to bring something else. Last show I used this from the Seasaw album. And played it at nice loud levels

     
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  15. Fruff76

    Fruff76 L100 Classic - Fan Club President

    What sucks is the same songs, same genre and music picked to specifically highlight the equipment. I mean the demo doesn’t have to suck by being trite.
     
    Seafinch likes this.
  16. Fruff76

    Fruff76 L100 Classic - Fan Club President

    Make it seem like you care. Like you’ve listened to your own creation so many times, with so much music, you can bring something new to the table. Not the sanctioned standard tracks.
     
    ThorensSme and Richard Austen like this.
  17. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    Agree

    Also nice to leave a room discovering new music to purchase.
     
  18. heathen

    heathen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colorado
    James May used to complain about the Nurburgring on Top Gear, and the gist of it was that cars were being designed to do well on the Nurburgring rather than doing well on the roads/tracks most people actually drive on. Diana Krall and the like are kinda' the Nurburgring of audiophilia.
     
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  19. Benzion

    Benzion "Cogito, ergo sum" Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    I mostly listen to Jazz. Electronic downtempo is just one kind of music I like. Taste has nothing to do with "real money". To equate the two is just snobbery. I have no "real money" but believe I have taste. I also know plenty of people with "real money" and no taste whatsoever.

    Of course, taste is subjective - I might think to have it, you might think I don't. But the "people with real money" comment was still fishy.
     
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  20. Benzion

    Benzion "Cogito, ergo sum" Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    Wholeheartedly agree. Diana Krall is an artificial star - someone took a lot of effort and money to promote her, of all others, despite her quite average talents. There are way better vocalists than her, Sophie Milman definitely being one of them, Alexis Cole comes to mind as another. And if anyone thinks that Krall is "soulful" - she's got nothing on the venerable Shirley Horn and Carmen McRae - way better choices to play at shows.
     
  21. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    I don't associate it to taste - I am suggesting though that people into very expensive audio tend to be classical music listeners. In the United States it may be jazz but contrary to popular belief there is a world outside the US that have a lot of very wealthy audiophiles. I mean as much talk and as big as Audio Note is - Peter noted on Audio Asylum that they only do 5% of their business in the US. In Hong Kong and Europe and other parts of Asia - Classical music reigns.

    I don't like comparing one art form to another - generally because the world has enough other things that are competitive - I don't want Art competing as well. Still I understand why Classical holds a certain snob appeal or air of superiority because the difficulty level to master is far greater (arguably) than all kinds of music. Especially at the composition level. I don't view more difficult as better mind you I just understand why others view it as superior.
     
  22. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    It's hard to say - Krall has a unique voice - I admit I gravitate to unique vocals over superior vocals a fair amount of the time. Norah Jones IMO isn't particularly unique nor do I think she is a particularly great singer - yet like Krall she is played to death at Audio Shows.

    What I think happened was that some stereophile article raved about the sound quality of Diana Krall albums and then people who want to evaluate sound quality wanted to bring the best sounding disc. Personally just from Canada I would rather Alannah Myles, Loreena McKennitt, Amanda Marshall!! regardless of the damn recording quality. It makes far more sense to play the music you actually listen to than trying to evaluate at cymbal crash on music you bought because it is deemed a great recording. I did that with Patricia Barber - another overplayed audio show darling - and now we have Lyn Stanley - meh.

    I'll be bringing Aurora to the California Audio Show.



    LOL - I wish I could bring the actual Aurora - but just the disc :(
     
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  23. Benzion

    Benzion "Cogito, ergo sum" Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    Yes, Classical may be top shelf, I agree even if myself I'm not a huge fan. I do love Horowitz and Pavarotti, and own some of their records, but by far the biggest chunk of my music collection is Jazz. I am also aware that outside of the US audiophiles listen to different music. I was born and raised abroad myself, so I know it first hand. I've seen clips by an audiophile in Estonia playing the cheesiest 60's Russian "pop" (if you could even call it that) on a German high-end rig the level of MBL and such, or a Vietnamese man with literally a million-dollar tube/horn system playing local ethnic music, that to me sounded like cats in heat. Both made me wonder - is this what you assembled this wonderful system for?! But hey - tastes differ. I know it, just wouldn't equate money to taste, is all.
     
  24. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    Hey I live next to China - Hong Kongers don't view themselves as Chinese. Some of these people have more money than God and absolutely no class. Spitting all over the place - loud, buy stuff just because it is a brand label. So yes - you can have all the money in the world and zero class.

    I was in Macau last week and say that the max bet at a table was $2,500,000 HKD ($315,000US) and this was a regular table. Not the High Roller rooms (I would love to see what the max bets are there!!). I see these people making bets and they're obnoxious. Macau takes in around 7 times the money that Vegas takes in. The money just doesn't seem to be in the US anymore.
     
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  25. freesole

    freesole Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle, WA
    Thanks for the suggestions - I am checking them out as I type this :) Sophie Milman is far more enjoyable to listen to, for me, to Diana Krall.
     
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