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RMAF 2012 Postmortem

Doesn't seem to be an RMAF 2012 thread yet.

Wondering what people thought, so I'll make a start.

Best in Show:

The big Ventures. Hard to describe how good these speakers sounded without being sappy. IMHO, embarrassing to other "statement" speakers at the show, like the big TAD and Lansche.

I was mostly interested in high efficiency speakers. Especially good were:

Zu Defintion IV
Devore Gibbon 93 and 96
Sonist C4

The Sonists, playing in the Snake River system, sounded especially good considering their (comparatively) reasonable price.

A few other noteworthy speakers were

Vapor's new 3 way

Vivid's space alien rendition of a mini-tower in the Tweak geek room

The Evolution mini-monitor was the best (reasonably) accessible speaker I heard, at 2500. Very good.

Opinions based on information overload, over a day and a half of listening.

Any other impressions?

John
jdoris
david12
1,398 posts
 
Not wishing to be disloyal to Audiogon, but Audiocircle.com have a very good and thorough show report and some lively feedback from attendees. Give it a look if you have'nt already.

I only attended once in 09 and won't again, not that I did'nt enjoy it, but coming from the UK, it is just too expensive. Best show I've been to though.
shsohis
119 posts
 
What I really like - Speakers with their front setups - Vivid K1 (I can stay in this room forever), YG Anat, Brodman, Joseph Audio new Pearl, PMC monitors and Sonus Faber Vorere. Hope I got their spelling right.

Really disappointed that some brands like Magico and Avantgarde are not represented this year.....
calgarian5355
103 posts
 
This was my first year at RMAF and I'll be back for sure. I had a GREAT time...getting to listen to dream systems that I wouldn't be able to audition anywhere.

My favorites were as follows:
-The MBL 101's ...stunning sound! I visited this room 3 times!
-The Vandersteen Model 7 with Audio Research
-The Vivid Audio Speakers in the Tweak Geek room paired up with Luxman equipment.
-Joseph Audio Room
-Roger Sanders Electrostatic Speakers
-Estelon Room
-Gershman Black Swan

I know I'm missing many other rooms that I enjoyed as well....but that's my quick and dirty run down!
jdoris OP
852 posts
 
Mrtennis: Like others, I found the Sanders impressive. The MSRP seemed pretty reasonable, as these things go, at 10k -- although I note that's a lot more than the Maggie 3.7. Unsurprisingly, the Sanders are big: not super wide, but maybe 7' tall.

Phaelon: did not hear the Vaughns. Probably should have. Lots to hear, though.

John

stickman451
529 posts
 
I thought that the big Ventures were the best sounding rig that I have heard in my last 5 trips to the RMAF. It's too bad that they retail for $139,000; none of us will ever own a pair...Saturday evening at 8pm they switched-out the FM Acoustics SS amps for a set of Thrax Audio class A tube mono blocks and the sound got even better!

The April Music room with the Stello Ai 700 and Marten speakers sounded really nice as did the Devore room.
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