For those of you who dont know, Audiokarma is a very high end home audio forum. They are very educated, and there are a lot of members that are in to almost everything. They do this once a year in southeast Michigan. Basically, it is a smaller Rocky Mountain audio fest, where manufacturers get a hotel room and you get to sit in them and listen.
The following is some of my impressions on some of the rooms. All the pictures are from Audiokarma member Krikor. His complete album can bee seen here: http://s279.photobucket.com/albums/kk14 ... %20AKFest/
Favorites:
1. ASI Tek - This was one of the most surprising. Upon initially walking in, there were 2 relatively small Silverline Preludes powered by a panasonic reciever and oppo DVD player. The loudspeakers were only about 3.5' tall and 5" wide. It had 2 3.5" drivers with a 1" tweet. When this thing turned on, the sound was HUGE. I was looking around for a subwoofer and other speakers. The frequency response was excellent, dropping down to what I imagine to be roughly 30 Hz. They were smooth, and not too laid back. After speaking with the ASI guy, the entire set was only $4000. He was using a modified $250 panasonic receiver, and modded oppo as well. http://www.asi-tek.com/
2. Salk - Jim Salk had 2 rooms this year, both teamed with Van Alstine electronics. His room with the Song towers/HT3 was a little on the harsh side. I believe this was due to the amps he was running (500 w mono to each side). The song towers were extremely natural, however seemed to lose thier image on some notes. The HT3's almost ruined ribbon tweeters for me. They sounded extremely harsh. However, their image was excellent. They never seemed to struggle, regardless of material being played. (later we went to an after party at a members house. He had a set of Bubinga HT3's in a room that was built specifically for listening, and my god was it nice. The ribbon blended exceptionally with the mid. Im going to have to findsoe pics of this room.)
3. Salk #2 - These hybrid baffle speakers were finished about 3 days before the show (you could still smell the finish). Although I was initially turned off by the looks, the sound almost gave me an eargasm. These had the stage width and 'openness' of a baffle, but with a kick in the low end that was more felt than heard. These easily went into the mid 20's with no effort. My brother and I were so impressed that I believe he is ordering a set. There are well worth the price at some where between 3-4k.
losers:
1. Tyler acoustics - They had 2 rooms, and both were terrible. I had heard a lot about these, and have no idea why. They completely lacked any sort of response that I was hearing in many others. I felt as though the low end was somewhere in the 60's, they were enormous, and the finish was not impressive.
2. McIntosh - They brought out their big dogs in one of their rooms (XRT1K). These things are beautiful, and the electronics were simply stunning. These massive towers were probably 7' tall with 2 10", 44-2" mids, and 28 -3/4" tweets. However, the line array was not living up to its prowess. There was absolutely no bottom end during the three tacks I hear. i dont know what the deal is, because with that much cone area, I must be missing something. Also, it must be using hard dome tweets, as it was reletively sharp in the top end. The electronics were nothing short of beautiful.
3. MBL - I was excited to see MBL had a set of 121 there. I really wanted to hear what their proprietary 'Radialstrahler' sounded like. I was disappointed to find that it was very harsh. It sounded like a bad hard dome tweeter on steroids. The one good thing, is that it did fill the room quite nicely. The sound stage was extremely wide and dispersed. their technology did live up to its ability to radiate 360 degrees. However, the small woofer on these was struggling to keep up with the top end produced by the Radialstrahler. They were designed quite nicely, with the grill wrapping up and over the top. It was very pleasing to look at. But for $16,000 a set, I would look elsewhere.
