2014 California Audio Show

veindoc

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Apr 5, 2013
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Location
Northern California outside SF
Enjoyed myself at CAS today. Room highlights included YG Hailey with 2 Bryston 28 amps and Magico s5 room with Constellation gear plus the truly wonderful Berkeley Reference Dac. The red book CDs sounded like hi Rez with a very very quiet background noise floor. Zu speakers with inexpensive tube amps deeply seated in center of a large room produced lovely deep holographic sound with excellent vocals. Bass was less dynamic. Acoustic Zen cresendo had really neat setup with teeny amps that got input wirelessly from preamp. I believe dac is in amp. Sony room was huge but not too many people. They have some sort of business relationship with Pass and a gorgeous not for sale custom Pass exclusive amp was used to match with their reference speakers. Wilson Sasha room also sounded very engaging. I can't remember amps may of been Ayre or VTL tubes. Briefly heard huge sound lab panels. Big wall of sound but for my ears not a deep holographic sweetspot. Very impressed by Tannoy Kingston with older VTL tube amps. Adele video concert DVD sounded glorious. Lastly Mike
I got to chat with Clayton of Spatial Audio who had his hologram m turbo speakers with Audion tube amps. Even these lower end version did many things very well. Lovely guy and the top of the line Be compression drivers with two 12 inch woofers should b something very special. He seems very knowledgable and hopes StAtements will be at rmaf. He mentioned that he was wowed by the auto paint finish options available on the statements. He told me he just completed a pair in BMW metallic blue that were the bomb. I will try to load my photos as well. This show runs till Sunday.

Nick
 
Thanks Nick. I appreciate your report. I am intrigued by the Berkeley DAC. I am sure it's real nice.
 
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4415083951964&set=pcb.4415087592055&type=1&theater
link to CAH 2014 images. Joe the BAD RS dac uses a aes/edu interface which designer thinks produces the best sound with the quietest noise floor. The really large speakers with the Pass amps were built by a Pass employee using old Tannoy concentric drivers. The Blue speakers are the Zu and they always play wonderful vinyl. I was surprised how nice the Tannoys sounded. The 10k price is a very appealing pricepoint if you don't have a huge room. The Teresonic room uses a single concentric driver and also used reference Berkeley DAC with Baetis server. Burwell and sons used Altec horn drivers and played only vinyl with nice wood wook in their room and the Tubs room(white speakers) . Tall speakers were from Genesis with ribbon tweeters and rear located sidefiring amplified woofers driven by the black small sized Genesis amps on floor between speakers. Sadly the red Ferrari is not mine but was caught in front of lobby as I was leaving.

Nick
 
Enjoyed myself at CAS today. Room highlights included YG Hailey with 2 Bryston 28 amps and Magico s5 room with Constellation gear plus the truly wonderful Berkeley Reference Dac. The red book CDs sounded like hi Rez with a very very quiet background noise floor. Zu speakers with inexpensive tube amps deeply seated in center of a large room produced lovely deep holographic sound with excellent vocals. Bass was less dynamic. Acoustic Zen cresendo had really neat setup with teeny amps that got input wirelessly from preamp. I believe dac is in amp. Sony room was huge but not too many people. They have some sort of business relationship with Pass and a gorgeous not for sale custom Pass exclusive amp was used to match with their reference speakers. Wilson Sasha room also sounded very engaging. I can't remember amps may of been Ayre or VTL tubes. Briefly heard huge sound lab panels. Big wall of sound but for my ears not a deep holographic sweetspot. Very impressed by Tannoy Kingston with older VTL tube amps. Adele video concert DVD sounded glorious. Lastly Mike
I got to chat with Clayton of Spatial Audio who had his hologram m turbo speakers with Audion tube amps. Even these lower end version did many things very well. Lovely guy and the top of the line Be compression drivers with two 12 inch woofers should b something very special. He seems very knowledgable and hopes StAtements will be at rmaf. He mentioned that he was wowed by the auto paint finish options available on the statements. He told me he just completed a pair in BMW metallic blue that were the bomb. I will try to load my photos as well. This show runs till Sunday.

Nick

Thanks for the update Nick. Sounds like a fun show. Glad you got to meet Clayton and hear the little M1's.


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Thanks for the show notes. It's a fun show in a great city.

I really enjoyed going last year. But just fit it into the schedule this year :(
 
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