Once again, I missed a room that should have gone on the last page. I briefly popped into the AudioMachina room with their Ultimate Monitor ($10k) running on Thor Audio electronics ($27k+) (several rooms at the show featured Thor).

As lunch time rolled around on Saturday, I ran into Phil Bamberg from BESL (and formerly of Klipsch). Phil and I had met on a couple of prior occassions and we decided to have lunch together and then tour the show more.

Phil is a very bright guy who isn’t afriad to share his opinions on audio design. On his mind at the moment was a tendency for some designers to tip down the high frequency response of their speakers for comfort in longer listening sessions or to deaccentuate shortcomings in a speaker’s abilities of resolution at higher frequencies. We spent most of the rest of the day checking out the show together.

We started on the fifth floor of the more southern of the hotel’s two sections. This floor had the largest number of rooms including several I was looking forward to visiting. (On Sunday I revisited this floor to catch a couple of rooms we skipped because Phil had already visited them.)

One of the first rooms we hit was North Creek Music, which I was familiar with because their kits are popular in the DIY audio realm. I was surprised to see a non-DIY speaker featured in the room, the Advanced Ribbon Technologies Metro. A long ribbon covering from 350Hz and up combined with a 7″ cone woofer. I didn’t ask the price and it isn’t listed on the ART website, but other show coverage lists it at $7k. The speaker sounded very nice - not the best I heard, but it didn’t do anything wrong.

The GedLee room featured their Summa loudspeaker. The Summa resembled a large version of a portable PA system speaker or a very large monitor speaker. The 15″ driver is paired with an unusual looking foam hemisphere over the upper-frequency driver. In my listening, I felt it lacked energy and excitement. Phil spoke highly of Dr. Geddes and his knowledge of acoustics and picked up copies of his two books.

Here’s a pic of the Summa from their website:

Then we moved to the Selah Audio room which was one I was looking forward to. While I had done business with Rick Craig before (he tweaked the crossovers in my Aurum Cantus L2SEs), I had never heard one of his designs. He brought two very different setups with him: a XT8 line array ($7k) using a DEQX (~$3k) as a crossover and preamp and a RC4 ($5k) using a traditional crossover. Both used the DEQX as the preamp feeding Red Dragon Audio ICE-based monoblock amps. First we listened to the XT8, then we shuffled speakers around to listen to the RC4.

I was a bit surprised that I definitely prefered the RC4 to the XT8 considering the ~$5k price difference. The RC4 seemed cleaner and had better imaging (once Phil tweaked the positioning). This could be partially due to the almost near-field position of the RC4 when it was palced in front of the XT8.

Selah Audio RC4 and XT8

We briefly stopped into the Edge Electroncis room. While someone else was listening to their system, we checked out the demo version of their Signature 1.1 Pre Amp with a clear plastic top that allowed viewing the internals. The pre-amp has an interesting dual-power option that allows it to be run off of either AC power of a set of internal SLA batteries. As with all Edge products, it also had extensive custom CNCed aluminum in the chassis and controls. All of that will set you back ~$11k for the preamp.

Image from Edge Electronics website:

Down the hall was another room I was looking forward to: Salk Sound. Jim Salk brought multiple pairs of speakers: HT3 ($4k+), HT3a ($7.5k+), HT1 ($2.2k+), HTS ($1.4k) and EXT (unknown price - new model). All of the speakers were had beautiful wood finishes in a variety of species. While we were in the room, the HT3a which is a version of the HT3 using a DEQX crossover/pre-amp was in play.

Salk HTS and HT1s

Salk EXT and HT3

Salk HT1 and HT3a

A surprising room was next: the Schnell’s Video Kingdom room - a Nebraska A/V retailer featuring Intuitive Design’s Summit loudspeakers with Path stands and Pinnacle center channel speaker. I had previously not heard of these granite-clad speakers, but they sounded very good. I don’t have exact prices, but the host mentioned buying a Summit setup for under $13k and I believe he was refering to the speakers alone (and perhaps the stands as well).

Intuitive Design Pinnacle and Summit (on Path stand):

In the next room was another company I was looking forward to hearing: Avantgarde Acoustics. Their speakers have been highly praised in many venues. This was another room using Thor Audio electronics ($11k amps, $10k+ preamp), this time paired with Avantgarde Duo loudspeakers ($15k). I didn’t hear my own material on the speakers, or sit in the hot seat. While the speakers sounded good, they did not meet my expectations given the high praise I have heard for them over the years.

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