The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is less than a month away now. This will be the second year of the event. I attended for a few hours last year and only saw a portion of the show. There were dozens of rooms setup for listening by manufacturers and retailers. Most of the systems were high-end two channel setups, although there were a couple of multichannel setups. Systems included both digital and analog sources (including a couple of reel-to-reel setups) and ranged in cost from ~$1,500 to ~$150,000. For an excellent collection of pictures of last year’s event, see AudioGon’s gallery by company.

For information about this year’s show, visit the RMAF website.

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I’m finally getting around to putting down some more notes on the AV123 get together earlier this month. Here is a summary of the equipment present and some comments:

Theater room:

Mains: Rocket RS1000
Center: Rocket RSC200
Surrounds: Rocket RS850
Rears: Rocket RS550
Subs: 2x Rocket UFW-12
Pre/pro: Emotiva LMC-1
Amp: Emotiva LPA-1
Sources: Denon 2910 and Onix CD-2 w and w/o Perpetual Technologies P-1A
Etc: R-DES parametric EQ on subs, plasma display, Panamax power

I assisted Dave Tremblay, the inventor of R-DES, with measurement during the sub EQ process using the setup listed earlier here.

Multichannel audio room:

Mains: Onix Reference 3
Center: Onix Reference 100
Surrounds: Onix Reference 1.5
Sub: Rocket UFW-12
Pre/pro: Emotiva DCM-1
Amp: Emotiva MPS-1
Source: Denon 2910
Etc: R-DES parametric EQ, Panamax power

Smaller theater room:

Mains: ELT LRS with PBS powered woofer stands
Center: ELT center SE
Rears: ELT DPA dipoles
Sub: ELT SW-10SE
Receiver/source: Pioneer combo
Etc: 30″ LCD TV

Two channel room:

Mains: Rocket RS760 and XLS (Onix Reference 1.5 for a period of time)
Integrated amp: Onix/Melody SP3 and Onix X-empower beta unit
Source: Onix XCD-88 and Onix XCD-99

This room got a LOT of attention because both speakers are new, the SP3 is a popular item at the moment, the X-empower is new, the XCD-99 is new, and the designer of both the RS760 and XLS (Danny Ritchie from GR Research) was in the room discussing the speakers.

Static display:

Rocket RS850 in piano gloss rosewood finish
Strata Mini speakers
Onix Reference 1 and Onix/Melody SP3
Rocket UFW-10
Onix CD-2
Emotiva DMC-1 based receiver (using D2Audio amp module)
Emotiva BPA-1 two-channel, bridgable amp
Audio Protien rack

One of the focuses of the GTG, SOCS and MMK for the Perpetual Technologies P1-A, was not really on display, but there were multiple sessions to demonstrate the measurement technique, discuss the SOCS corrections, and demonstrate the difference SOCS makes in playback.

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The past four days have been a bit of a blur and I’m paying the price (now home sick). This year’s AV123 Colorado GTG was great. There were a lot of great folks there: Danny Ritchie (GR Research), Ron Stimpson (SV Subwoofers), Keith Allsop (Perpetual Technologies, etc.), Phil Bamberg (BESL), Rich Hollis (Hollis Audio Labs), Dave Tremblay (RDES developer), the AV123 crew (Mark, Suzanne, Steve, Sean, Greg, Kyle, John, Wendy), Chris Cahill and lots of enthusiasts. I’m glad to have had the chance to hang out with these folks, even if some of the conversations were half (or more) over my head.

There was a lot of good discussion on many topics and some work done on measurement and number crunching. It was great to get a variety of perspectives and input on some topics.

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