BAASnotes.com – Bay Area Audiophile Society

Bob’s 2009 “Best Five Rooms in Vegas (CES)”

Vegas was filled with great sights and sounds last week as CES and THE Show both descended on the humble desert village (along with the annual porn show).

Of the hundreds of rooms showing audio gear, I heard about twenty very refined systems. Narrowing these down to just five was tough, so I cheat and also cite some “Honorable Mentions.”

The best sound that I heard in Vegas was in these rooms (named after the speakers in them, with some mention of electronics):

1. Classic Audio “Project 3.3″ – BEST IN SHOW. Large, heavy loudspeaker system featuring modified professional horn and dynamic drivers. From $24K-53K, depending on options. Great bass, detail, and transparency. Extremely dynamic. Nice balance from ~25hz up, but just a bit warm & romantic. See them here.
2. Art “Deco 20″ - About $30K. Nearly flawless presentation: fast, tonally neutral, and able to resolve the fine detail and time coherency necessary for great ambiance extraction. Deep, tuneful bass. A sonic treat from Scotland. Excellent “Audio Techne” electronics didn’t hurt the cause. See them here (“20″ not yet shown).
3. Tidal Acoustics “Piano Diacera” – Accuton woofers and diamond tweeter combine to create SPEEEED: This is one fast speaker! Great presence on voice, and very good resolution of the finest detail. Beautiful finish. Small enough to be intimate (in a Teutonic way), but big enough to fill large rooms. See it here.
4. Magico “V2″ – About $18K. At last, a Magico floorstander to cuddle with and love. Combines the approachability of the “Mini”with the dynamics and range of the “V3.” I suspect that it’d even be relatively easy to drive. Neutral yet inviting – I liked these better than the uber-alles “V5.” Here it is.
5. Marten “Coltrane Sonata” – About $45K. Great tonality, bass mids and treble are seemless and coherent. Good detail with truly superb midrange resolution. Dynamics are excellent too. Ear electronics brought out their best. See them here.

So there we have it. These are really reference-quality systems, but it pains me that they are also all mega-buck systems. Didn’t any relatively-affordable kit sound good? Honestly, I didn’t see much in that bracket, but here are a couple:

• Zu “Essence” – A truly capable and dynamic speaker that’s also easy to drive. Quite attractive too (in a “modernist” way). Slight mid-treble emphasis. I think they were about $6K. See them here.
•  Sonist “3.4″ – A “Top 5″ speaker last year, these $3.4K beauties are simply stunning at that price point. IMO, these speakers are better than most (but not all) similarly-priced speakers on Audiogon. They are that good. Assisted by the always-capable deHavilland tube gear. BEST “BARGAIN” SPEAKERS IN SHOW. They are here.

And what about the RMAF “Top 5″? How did they fare in Vegas?

• My Best-in-Show Kaiser “Kawero” speakers had tough going in the Venetian. The room was small, placement was bad, and some “cap problem” was causing uncomfortably-aggressive treble. Very different from their stunning performance in a huge room in Denver. Yikes! (A good lesson for me, though, re factoring in the room.)
• The Eficion “F300′s,” on the other hand, were just as competent as at RMAF. Only the increased competition (and maybe choice in electronics) kept them off the podium. In fact, they are so good that I bought them. (You’ll hear them at the next BAAS event.)
• The Joseph Audio “Pearl’s” are in a similar situation – just as good as RMAF but nudged out of the medals.
• The Ascendo’s were a no-show (Laufer Technic brought something else.)
• The Sonist’s are mentioned above.

Other “Honerable Mentions” go to the rooms featuring products from TAD/Berkeley Audio/Pass, Evolution Audio/Playback/darTZeel, Reference 3A (Grand Veena), Gershman (Black Swan), Red Wine/WLM, and Sanders Audio.

Let me add a note about my “grading” methodology. A key point is that I use only my own material – stuff that I’ve played on 100 or more systems over the years. If I can’t, I may listen but I don’t grade.

Then, as I begin to listen to my selected tracks, I ask myself: “Do I simply enjoy this sound?” If I don’t, the deal is killed. This speeds my reviewing along quite a bit.

After that, I play 1-minute excerpts from tracks, each of which is designed to test one or two technical aspects of the presentation. Detail, speed, tonality, extension, coherence, soundstage dimension, and image placement are all given weight.

Finally, based on the 4-8 minutes of listening that I’ve done, I ask myself: “Do these sound real?”

That’s about it….