I’ve never been to an audio show before. I thought I would maybe spend 2-3 hours there, but I spent 7 hours on Friday and 3 on Sat – so obviously I had a good time. Overall I was impressed by the number of equipment manufacturers and store owners displaying products, and the organization of the show. The show attendees: older (>>50), almost no females (last time I looked women had ears too. So what’s up with that?)
Some specific comments:
• Loved the big Harbeth 40 speakers. 12” woofer with great bass (very natural and full sound). A totally different design approach than the typical 6.25” woofer and mediocre bass of many (all?) American manufacturers (who want you to buy their subwoofer too). But at $15k a pair, a bit out of my price range.
• ELAC introduced some new bookshelf speakers – UB5. Coax driver. Lots of bass. Very nice, especially at $500/pair. They are relatively inefficient though, so need lots of power, and are 4 ohm. ELAC will be selling a new music server in a few weeks, the Discovery. It runs Roon Essentials (a lite version of Roon), and will cost $1100 (to be sold on Amazon). It has a DAC, plays all different file types (except DSD), and will stream wirelessly to other speakers using Airplay. I’ve heard of, but never seen Roon before – and I was impressed with it. Compared to Bluesound, the Discovery is over twice the price – probably a few hundred just due to the Roon software – and only runs with TIDAL for now, but also connects to a NAS or USB hard drive. The ELAC Roon Essentials (according to the salesman) is only limited in metadata stored (I think it was 15,000 songs). Seems to me a Bluesound is a better deal ($500), but if you really want Roon, this may be a good option.
• My opinion of the Magnapan MMG was the following: “you got to be kidding me, only $600 for the pair”. Wow – great sound. This speaker easily competes with other speakers 2x to 3x its price. And if it had better bass, 10x. Not only my take – but others in the listening room. Talking to another attendee, he thought it was tricky but possible to add a sub. I don’t know what ‘tricky’ means but a Magnapan dealer may know (I need to go visit one). I didn’t hear the music I normally play, so I’m not willing to make a final judgement (with cash), but I’m interested enough to look further.
• Spatial M3 speakers were quite impressive. These lack the speaker ‘box’, similar to the Magnapan, and like the Magnapan, the sound seems open and airy. Again, I didn’t get to hear the music I wanted (seemed like every room was playing classical music for some reason), but what I heard was very good – some of that goodness probably due to the very expensive electronics driving it (that I don’t necessarily want to pay for). Two M3’s are $2500. They are incredibly efficient (95) so don’t require a lot of power, but one online reviewer says you need a receiver with a high SNR in order to avoid speaker ‘hiss’. So if you bought this speaker, it may force you into a very expensive receiver. Anyone out there have these speakers?
• Listened to Steve Silverman (Audioquest) on Sat talking about computer music. I really don’t want to boot up my computer in order to listen to music, so I’m not interested in that, but I still picked up some tips; for example, USB is not the best way to go, why not just play uncompressed files because at $130/TB ,hard drive space is cheap, WAV files have metadata problems, CAT7 Ethernet cables have improved shielding (crap, I just threaded CAT 6 in my house), and how to use an ‘optical Ethernet bridge’ (type it into Amazon and see what you get) to avoid a lot of 'noise' on your internet signal.
Not possible to summarize everything I saw and heard, but I hope you find this interesting.
I’ve never been to an audio show before. I thought I would maybe spend 2-3 hours there, but I spent 7 hours on Friday and 3 on Sat – so obviously I had a good time. Overall I was impressed by the number of equipment manufacturers and store owners displaying products, and the organization of the show. The show attendees: older (>>50), almost no females (last time I looked women had ears too. So what’s up with that?)
Some specific comments:
• Loved the big Harbeth 40 speakers. 12” woofer with great bass (very natural and full sound). A totally different design approach than the typical 6.25” woofer and mediocre bass of many (all?) American manufacturers (who want you to buy their subwoofer too). But at $15k a pair, a bit out of my price range.
• ELAC introduced some new bookshelf speakers – UB5. Coax driver. Lots of bass. Very nice, especially at $500/pair. They are relatively inefficient though, so need lots of power, and are 4 ohm. ELAC will be selling a new music server in a few weeks, the Discovery. It runs Roon Essentials (a lite version of Roon), and will cost $1100 (to be sold on Amazon). It has a DAC, plays all different file types (except DSD), and will stream wirelessly to other speakers using Airplay. I’ve heard of, but never seen Roon before – and I was impressed with it. Compared to Bluesound, the Discovery is over twice the price – probably a few hundred just due to the Roon software – and only runs with TIDAL for now, but also connects to a NAS or USB hard drive. The ELAC Roon Essentials (according to the salesman) is only limited in metadata stored (I think it was 15,000 songs). Seems to me a Bluesound is a better deal ($500), but if you really want Roon, this may be a good option.
• My opinion of the Magnapan MMG was the following: “you got to be kidding me, only $600 for the pair”. Wow – great sound. This speaker easily competes with other speakers 2x to 3x its price. And if it had better bass, 10x. Not only my take – but others in the listening room. Talking to another attendee, he thought it was tricky but possible to add a sub. I don’t know what ‘tricky’ means but a Magnapan dealer may know (I need to go visit one). I didn’t hear the music I normally play, so I’m not willing to make a final judgement (with cash), but I’m interested enough to look further.
• Spatial M3 speakers were quite impressive. These lack the speaker ‘box’, similar to the Magnapan, and like the Magnapan, the sound seems open and airy. Again, I didn’t get to hear the music I wanted (seemed like every room was playing classical music for some reason), but what I heard was very good – some of that goodness probably due to the very expensive electronics driving it (that I don’t necessarily want to pay for). Two M3’s are $2500. They are incredibly efficient (95) so don’t require a lot of power, but one online reviewer says you need a receiver with a high SNR in order to avoid speaker ‘hiss’. So if you bought this speaker, it may force you into a very expensive receiver. Anyone out there have these speakers?
• Listened to Steve Silverman (Audioquest) on Sat talking about computer music. I really don’t want to boot up my computer in order to listen to music, so I’m not interested in that, but I still picked up some tips; for example, USB is not the best way to go, why not just play uncompressed files because at $130/TB ,hard drive space is cheap, WAV files have metadata problems, CAT7 Ethernet cables have improved shielding (crap, I just threaded CAT 6 in my house), and how to use an ‘optical Ethernet bridge’ (type it into Amazon and see what you get) to avoid a lot of 'noise' on your internet signal.
Not possible to summarize everything I saw and heard, but I hope you find this interesting.