Carolina Audiofest Extravaganza

Great time! Awesome experiences!

No praying or dancing vids?

Glad you guys had a nice get together

Need to start handing Tom a custom hat, cap, or beanie
The glare off the dome messes with the pics

3 Beastful setups

Sweeeet!!

VR3 wrote: »

Sweet Pic of me! 🤣

Dude, that photo is Hermitism worthy!

Tom

Notable quotables from today -

"Sweating like a fat chick writing her first love letter". - TroyD

"He can hear a fish f a r t in the middle of a waterfall". - Trey AKA "Sid the Kid"

Tom

Just got back to Charleston.....what a GREAT time!

I’ll post more thoughts in the morning but suffice to say I got a STILL have boner that’s harder than Chinese arithmetic

Actually, I can use an abacus....my first tour in Korea, one of my Korean counterparts taught me. Of course that was 20 years ago but it's actually really cool.

I digress.

So, this is a tale of three wildly different but awesome systems and some GREAT guys.

I left Charleston a little after 6am filled with coffee, bitterness and impure thoughts.....had to stop on the way to Tom's 4 times to piss and got to his house a few minutes after 9. Exchanged a few pleasantries and got right down to business.....Tom's system revolving around the Tyler Acoustics speakers was a lesson in resolution and squeezing every last drop of performance from what you've got to work with. Tom is the meticulous, measure to the nearest three places to the right of the decimal point kinda guy....and his rig shows it. Rock solid, laser sharp imaging. Inner detail and decay to the nth degree. What was missing....was the treble glare that seems to accompany high resolution systems. Now, less than perfect recordings are shown up for what they are but they also don't render them unlistenable....but if you've got an armload of cd's from the 1980's, Tom's rig is not for you. Good recordings are rewarded.....I have a one off recording of Amazing Grace recorded in a church downtown. Tom's rig put you in the church....it caught all of the ambient/ spacial cues of the church in a way I've not heard before.

So, after a Krispy Creme donut and some chit chat.....we go to Rick's. Everyone goes to Rick's (Casablanca fans will get that). Where Carl meets the caravan and Rick's friend...and I'm going to cop to being a flake and not remembering his name..but a REALLY nice guy. A little more small talk and up the stairs to Rick's listening room anchored by a pair of tricked out 1.2tl's with a uber tricked out VPI HW-19 turntable. WOW. The only other SDA demo that I was as impressed by is F1Nut's 2.3tl's. I'd REALLY hate to live on the differences there.....but what really got me was the midrange clarity of the 1.2t's and the image height. With the 1.2's I find myself looking up as opposed to forward...not a criticism but just an observation. This rig was uber musical. All smooth edges, top to bottom coherence and that SDA soundstage that we all lust after. Now, Rick has a collection of vinyl that I'd like to sit down and play record after record for days......and that's what's great about Rick's rig is that while it's not a highly resolving system in my mind, it's musical AF and just a joy to listen to. The big Audio Research tube amp and Cary preamp probably play a big part in that. Again, a very well thought out system with VERY complimentary pieces. I just want to know how he got all that gear up the stairs?? Two things NOT in my favor.....Rick is a great guy and the stairs. Other wise, I'd have considered stiff arming him and making a mad dash out the door with that ARC amp.

So, we cap off the day at Trey's place. Now, I don't mean this pejoratively.....but from the street, Trey's house is very unassuming. Small house in an older neighborhood. The inside? It felt like I was walking in to a uber modern, contemporary/luxury pad. Now, I'm gonna cut to the chase because I've been pumped up to listen to his Grand Utopia's for awhile now. I've been lucky enough to listen to a few cost-no-object rigs over the years and always relish the opportunity. Trey's rig is Goldilocks material. It does EVERYTHING extraordinarily well....and I mean EVERYTHING. It's musical. It's got resolution and transparency. Tonal purity. BASS. O-MFING-GEE has it got BASS and it's got an effortlessness in sound that I've never heard. The Bozaks have an effortlessness that I'm drawn too but the GU's are just mind-blowing in the effortless department. You know a system is great when you can play it at aurally traumatizing levels and it just doesn't seem all that loud. No congestion. No muss. No fuss. Frankly, it's a rig that were I to have, I'd have to ask....where could I possibly go from here? In which case the two great tragedies in life rule is invoked.....the first being not achieving your life's ambition but the greater tragedy is to actually achieve it.

So, all that is all swell but none of it is worth a **** in a whirlwind were it not spent hanging out with such a great bunch of guys. Seriously...and we talked a bit about how this forum has engendered such a community. I've made life long, have the passwords to my bank account level friends (If anyone wants to make a deposit, btw)....and I'm a richer person (albeit poorer financially) for it.

Oh, and I have a set of L800's in my garage. Hopefully get them uncrated this week.....and listening to those rigs have got me motivated to actually dial mine in better.

TroyD wrote: »

Tom is the meticulous, measure to the nearest three places to the right of the decimal point kinda guy. <snip>

Troy, this comment is spot on. I don't know if you ever ran across this post before. I think I posed it about two years ago (can't remember, getting old).

treitz3 wrote:

What I ended up doing after much discussion online, with nearby professionals and the like, was taking each main speaker and loosely moving them around (Spikes on) until I found the best lower spectrum reproductive efforts (no subs at this point). As soon as I found the best location, I took measurements and found the "best spot" to place each main.....at this point, I was not paying any attention to mid and upper frequencies and this was done by ear, using many different passages of certain low frequency albums.

As soon as the "spot" was found , I measured the front and rear sides of the speakers to within 1/6th of an inch from the side walls. Both speakers were in the same exact position away from the wall. Then I verified the rear two corners of each speaker the same way from the back wall, making sure everything was within 1/16th of an inch. I then made sure that the speakers were perfectly leveled. At that point, I tilted the speakers back to where the direction of the tweeter went to the outside of my ears about 2". I then measured from my chest bone, without moving, the exact measurement from L to R speaker to within 1/16th of an inch, pointing the laser directly above the tweeter.

I kept going back and measuring everything I just mentioned again and again, until all parameters mentioned were within 1/16th of an inch, verified by lasers and a laser tape measure. I have box-type speakers [Tyler Acoustics Lynbrook Sig. Series, 1 piece towers], so I could easily mount the laser(s) along the fronts, sides and anywhere else to take precise measurements. I would mark with tape on the walls where the laser(s) left the speaker and traveled across the room to behind the listening position. Basically, I measured just about every conceivable parameter I could imagine that would alter the distance of any driver to my ears.

That yielded to date, the best imaging and spatial locationality cues I had ever heard from my system....or any system I had heard, truth be told. Ever since then, about every two months, I will go through the same thing, just to make sure one of the speakers did not deviate from the original positions. It took me about a week to dial everything in to perfection. Don't think that this is a "quick" procedure. Just adjusting the tilt knocks off some of the other measurements, for example. I just kept chugging at it until it was done.

Then I added the subs and did the same things with them, then dialed them into the room, then into the mains. Have not messed with it ever since. When I finally went to "test" the system after listening to many albums, I used the newer Isotek ultimate setup disc to confirm what my ears were hearing. The rig passed with flying colors on all test and tune up tracks. The 360 degree test was outstanding and spot on.

From now on, I will just keep tweaking the gear, as the speaker location/setup for me is done and done for good. I feel that there is no need or room for further improvement on that aspect.

The speakers have not moved (except once) from their original set up location ever since I made this post. Other things in the room have changed but the speaker location/tilt have not. We did experiment with something a little different about a year ago to "improve" the room acoustical/frequency readings but it was detrimental to the sound on some genre's of music, so they were put right back where they were and all measurements done once again, and again, and again.

The end result is what you heard yesterday.

BTW, if any of you have the FIM SACD/DSD #029? Slap that bad boy into your SACD player and give the last song a listen. It's called "Canon in D (Pachelbel)". Every time an instrument is played, hit, struck or made music? The spatial locationality cues are laser sharp. It will most definitely give you all aspects of height, depth and staging to a very precise image of being able to pinpoint a laser at exactly where the sound is coming from each time the instrument is struck. Speakers? What speakers?

Yes, it's one of those dreaded, "Audiophile" recordings that has music that you would never really "yearn" to hear but on the flip side, the recording is so clear, clean and precise that it's more than worth it when you go to give it a listen. The next time we do this? I'll have to let each of you sit in the sweet spot and give it a good listen.

Tom