Seemed like 99% streamed.
Seems like there were turntables in about 40% of the rooms say maybe half of those actually spinning.
But a lot of streaming awful metallic bubble sounds to prevent the brain from identifying bad design?
Many vendors complained about bad internet and slow downloads to get specific songs.
3 Likes
I just wanted to take a minute and thank all of you guys that stopped by to see me. Very much appreciated. As was mentioned earlier I only did the crossovers and contributed to some parts of the design. The company belongs to Tom Adamczyk and it’s kind of his dream to do this. The speakers are voiced to his liking and for his tastes he says perfect, but to others they may be awful. Tastes and preferences vary.
I’m looking forward to the next diy event I’m AXPONA 'd out.
7 Likes
Good? Did they sound symetrical?
5 Likes
Wow how many emotions went across her face?
4 Likes
Good or bad? When I went near the room the theater demo was so loud it was pointless to try to hear the towers.
In a good way.
1 Like
I took very few pictures. Bryan was quite the shutterbug however, maybe he will chime in with some of his pics.
Oh and the Jones Cerretto speaker was excellent.
2 Likes
…when powered by a flux capacitor amp
4 Likes
That 60” sub might have enough cone area to do it.
Somehow in 3 days I missed the 60 inch woofer.
Axpona Noob Show Report Overview
Approach lessons learned
- The point of going is to figure out what you do or do not like
- If you don’t take the elevator, starting at the top doesn’t matter, but packing water and a granola bar or two does
- Use the extra days to go back and listen to what you like
- asking for the same song to compare
- because material variation, quality and sound level is an issue for ear and choice optimization fatigue.
- Make a list of rooms you absolutely want to go in day 1 and then refine the list each day
- If you stay away from cable rooms you only hear about power absorbing crystal stick-ons once.
- Personally take notes on what you heard/like they run together
Observations and Opinions
subjective and likely linked (example 1 & 2)
- High Q bass and overly large speakers in small rooms [generally] suck
- I am biased toward dipoles, coaxial, concentrics, and full range [but not all]
- This is subjective, just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it won’t sell
- Large amps are irrelevant in small rooms, 1-5 watts goes a long way
Day 1 Observations
- I like dipoles
- large speakers in small rooms often suck
- the room treatments matter
- many horns are shouty/too loud
- coaxials are not or do not have to be as bad as people think [in online forums re waveguide distortion]
- I got to hear a ripole (Treble Clef Audio) and a compression chamber woofer dipole MADO
- Cool to talk to Scott Hinson
Day 2 Observations
- Yep confirm day 1 observations
- Identify built in bias against
- high priced equipment beyond what willing to afford or bigger than door speakers
- too loud materials
- the sound of bubbles [or other arbitrary electronic noise designed to hide spectral content]
- biased toward: most speakers I like are concentric, coaxial, or full range [not all]
- too many speakers in a big room makes it difficult to hear the difference. Looking at you Mofi. Sourcepoint 10 bass overwhelming smaller more interesting Wharfdale Denton 1s sound even if I want to hear both.
- $464k speakers and they still chose to play this high static album that sounded bad to anyone with 8kHz+ hearing
Day 3 Observations
- Beatles Come Together can induce nystagmus with good stereo
- Strong bass kills mid and high frequency dynamics by overwhelming the ears
- bias
- I don’t like high Q bass
- Prefer sealed and dipole bass
- Lower level or non-new hardware not shown … ie start at top floor is biased to expensive equipment generally, but also the vendors are biasing to new releases and expensive
- I should have been looking at what amps (power) was used in each room
Interesting or Different Builds
List focused more toward enabling DIY…but also large commercial commentary asides
- Glaxfi – glass woofer
- Dinaburg – coaxial passive radiator driver
- Nobius Audio – expandable volume speaker and cool flat pack speaker stands. They’ll sell you a vintage or modern crossover version.
- call out to Yamaha NS-2000A for consumer grade these were not bad, look at the resonator they are using on the tweeter and mid
- if you are KLH fan, the 3 was better than the 5 in a small room
- for the price the Dayton T65 were not bad
- La Dolce Audio has kits
Liked
At the risk of internet opinion damnation I’ll share what I liked. Please read my observational bias above first and consider that I’m trying to drive a 11x13 room. Not being on this list doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, just means I didn’t keep going back to listen or compare. These are not in order on purpose and I know I probably can’t put these giant dipoles in my room.
- Lockwood Universal Stanley 1 – sealed bass point source, and these guys designed many of the BBC pro speakers used to mix many decades of records, plus paint it whatever color you want
- Fern & Ruby Raven II – sealed bass point source
- Scott Hinsen’s speaker using SB Acoustics new coaxial driver, point source ish goes monopole → cardioid → dipole → point source as go up in frequency
- Treble Clef Audio – dipole, you want to spend 100k+ this might be a good start
- PureAudioProject Duet 15 – dipole, preferred 10” coaxial version but others close
- Wathen Cryotone – dipole
- Buchardt E50 – 2 way, solid oak cabinet CNC construction
- MADO Stony – dipole, with slotted woofer frame to create minor compression and lower dipole frequency. if you don’t have high f hearing, look at the Fork
- La Dolce Audio – their flagship is great, wish I’d heard the baby dipole and their kits
- Wharefedale Denton 1s
- Magnepans 1.7 and 2.7x
- Seas Toy Kit – coaxial
3 Likes
I appreciate your specific comments - I’ve looked at a couple of show reviews and there’s a lot to go through.
Addendum I tried to listen to Andrew Jones new speaker a second time but could never get in.
Also realize that list, excepting the treble clef, has no speaker over about 11k. Which even that is a large number.
My primary takeaway this year is that DIY has not a lot to worry about from a SQ perspective. The high end commercial stuff still beats us up (generally speaking) on a build quality perspective (definitely including yours truly), but we are neck and neck with them otherwise. In fact, I heard more “not fine” speakers than “fine”. Although it can be hard to really get an impression sitting off-axis but several rooms drove us out within seconds.
My other major takeaway this year was that the music selections were generally atrocious. I was lucky in that we got to request music in a couple rooms, and some other rooms were playing regular music - but for the most part I feel like these guys are competing to see who can find the most obscure “pop click ding” tracks out there. Most of it wasn’t really challenging to the speakers.
The room with the $78000 Sonus Faber speakers played “Ghost of Tom Joad” on vinyl for me, but the speakers were underwhelming with a significant glare to the Boss’ vocals that was really distracting. The bass was legit, however. I was able to play “Three Little Birds” on more than one occasion but for the most part you are stuck with music that has no signature or would sound good on a clock radio. Very disappointing in that respect.
Another takeaway was the sheer number of rooms with digital files playing. Very few were actually using analog sources. That was refreshing given how popular streaming is.
Ultimately, I believe we should continue with what we are doing in DIY and don’t sweat what commercial guys think about it. We got this.
7 Likes