Thank you for putting a heartfelt Super Hi End show last Saturday. Moving 2 tons of Cessaro horn speakers within 48 hours back and forth does not make any sense. But you did it for us for free. The system that features Wadax as phono, Lars Monica as Preamp, and Zanden Chouku as power amp driving the Cessaro Universe was truly a commendable experience. I am sure the Tripoint emperor Ground and AC Conditioner together with all the crazy ground cables contributed a big deal to the silence of this system.
I know that you were not contended with the performance of the Trinity/Goebel room. But please don’t put too much pressure on yourself because we all know what you are capable of if the baton is waved at the AE showroom. Here is my analysis of the issue. First, the room is not ideal. It is square. Second, the sweet spot zone is too small. I believe this zone is located from the 2nd row to 6th row in the middle. Third, the positioning of the speakers are meant for near field listening. Fourth, the integration of the main speakers and the subwoofer could have been better if there is a filter. But I understand it is very difficult to apply with an analog crossover that Oliver Goebel is using. You can tell him to use a digital crossover and that will resolve this issue. If you don’t use a filter at the crossover, the bass drivers of the main speakers sing together with subwoofers. Fifth, the quality of music software is substandard, especially the digital files. Most of the re-issue vinyl played during the LP session was unsatisfactory as well. In a top flight system, selection of music should be based on recording quality as priority. I wonder should you communicate better with Audiotechnique next year. (Those LPs selected by Big Grass were excellent – as he knows which recordings would bring out the strength of the system.) Better still, you should do one extra day so that people are free to bring their music to understand the electronics better.
I was lucky because you allowed me to sneak in to the Trinity/Goebel room around 11:00am. I was able to sit in the sweet spot. Dietmar was playing a cut of jazz on hi resolution file. And that was so life like! Another cut that Touraj of Vetere played was explosively dynamic. I was very impressed as I was able to reconcile with Kahw’s experiences at your showroom one week ago. However, as I started moving off axis, I knew that it was going to be problematic for audiences on the right, left and the back. I would say the worst position is at the far back because SPL is inadequate to reach that far. If the room is 30% smaller that what it is with a rectangular shape, it would have been much better. Please tell Oliver to change the crossover to digital solution or else he will never have the main and the subwoofer easily integrated.
Overall, from an audience perspective, I think it was a great show. The fact that a total of 8 designers traveled all the way to Hong Kong for one single company means you are already the real deal. . I have to say I was touched by the very last speech of yours. You paid respect to old masters by telling us how they wrestled with the “”irresponsible” Physical Emotion Caeles turntable until the very last minute. And through this incident, you discovered the insufficiency of your character – lack of patience relative to the old masters. This is very good sharing. Spend more time with your family is what you should do now. You have proven AE enough and the message was received across the globe in the high end community. I wouldn’t spend so much time regressing what should have not been arranged or done. I would rather channel positive energy to something else. I am already looking forward to the 4th Super Show in 2016. Because I trust you – AE radiates positive energy.
The AE Highend show for this year was completed on last Sat with raving successes. There is a total of 9 designers/manufacturers participating in the event: Dietmar from Trinity, Lee Dalby from Dalby, Javier from Wadax, Miguel from Tripoint, Oliver from Goebel, Ralph from Cessaro, Touraj from Virtere, Yamada san from Zanden. Over HKD20million worth of equipment including over HKD2million cables and accessories have been showcased in the 2 rooms of the event.
I will start with the Trinity/Goebel room:
Computer source: Trinity PC+DAC
Vinyl source: Vertere turntable and reference tonearm + Miyajima Madake cartridge + Trinity phono
Amplications: Trinity preamp + power amps (monoblock for Epogue, stereo for Baforce subwoofer)
Goebel Epogue/Baforce speaker/subwoofer
Cables & accessories: Dalby Reuben, Ode power cables, Celestial ground cable, Tripoint Troy Signature grounding system, SRA Scuttle rack, Trinity power plant, Vertere HB interconnects, phono, USB and power cables, Pranawire Extreme Line backer, Skogrand Beethoven power, speaker cables, Goebel power, interconnect and speaker cables.
The event room, from the acoustics perspective, is not as good as the other one because at the rear end of the room, it is not a solid wall, instead, it is just movable partitions thus creating a hallow at the back when bass energy traverses from the front to the far end back. When I was listening to the system on Friday without any other public audience, I could hear some reverberation from the back. Notwithstanding this, the overall bass attack generated from the almighty Trinity power amp and Epogue speaker is one of the fastest that I have ever heard. It is the precision of the musical wave from the leading edge till the winding down of each group of musical notes that is so focused and sharp producing layers of structured harmonic decays. The dynamic surge was strikingly real and I could still recall on one occasion when I was chatting with Dietmar sitting on the 2nd row, both of us were shocked and stopped talking at the same time. That was a vinyl record on a vocal with a sudden burst of emotions. I can still remember Dietmar put his thumb up to TJ for the selection of that vinyl demonstrating the wide dynamic range that system (from cartridge to speaker) can handle with the lightning transient attack!
To many attending the show, intuitively the toe-in angle of the speakers could be too much but I can understand it is not easy to set the speaker positioning ‘right’ to cater for the high expectation of the 150+ audience sitting in different locations of the room. Certain compromise needs to be made in a show scenario like this. If one is sitting in the middle position of the 2nd row, I believe this is the best position to sense the complete and huge soundstage produced by the system. Even at a high volume, the control is always there without any degradation on the noise platform, image precision and tonal balance. This is undoubtedly a concerted effort by all the noise mitigation devices and the distortion free amplification and signal transmission. Obviously the seamless integration of the Goebel speaker systems is also one of the key contributors for this.
In this room, the music comes out without any stress and compression. Both Trinity CAS and Vertere vinyl systems could deliver organically the full tonal spectrum and rich contents. There is always the big time debate between the CAS and vinyl , contents wise, I think CAS is a few steps closer to the vinyl in terms of resolution. A ‘competent’ CAS will bring the right tempo without delay on the time axis in the Digital-Analog conversion which I think Trinity has met this expectation with flying colors. Frankly, eyes closed, I cannot truly tell which source is which that I am listening!! All I can say is the Vertere arm/phono cable is so deceivingly quiet (I use the word ‘deceive’ because it is close to ‘unreal’ for the background darkness that I can ever hear from a vinyl)
The room was literally up and performing at 10am on Fri but the beat and momentum of the team did not slow down for the slightest second. The team was discussing and fine tuning relentlessly trying to achieve the optimal listening experience for as many seating positions as possible. If I can use 3 words to characterize the ambience of this room and the team: Organised, Precision and Lively
Room 2:
Source: Vertere turntable, reference tonearm + Miyajima Madake cartridge + Wadax Trio (digital phono)
Amplification: Lars Monica preamp (with silver transformer upgrade), Zanden Chuoku power amp
Cables & Accessories: SRA Craz rack, Tripoint Emperor grounding system and power distribution system, Tripoint Emperor power cables, Skogrand power and speaker cables, Vertere interconnects, phono and power cables, Pranawire Extreme Line backer, Goebel power and interconnect cables.
On Friday morning when I first went into this room, there were actually 2 shocking scenes, the first one is the 18ft wide subwoofer of the Cessaro Universe nicely disguised itself as a white liquered dinner table sitting behind the eye catching silvery blue bass horn of the main speaker stand. It is the most magnificent speaker system that I have ever seen carrying a sheer weight of over 2 tons!! Again, my salute to the robustness of the logistics team on AE moving in all the components and setting them up so systematically under the directorship of Ralph!! The 2nd shocking scene is the 10 ft X 10 ft floor space occupied by the parts of the Caeles turntable from Physical Emotion. The scene reminded me vividly but scaringly the starting point of a 500 pieces puzzle. Being in the IT field for decades, my natural instinct was to estimate the ‘up-time’ , ie, if there is sufficient time to set this monster up and be able to tune to the optimal state to meet the high expectation of the audience of such gigantic turntable.
Honestly I did share with Piano Tuner onsite that it is likely that Plan B is required to take place. PT told me, let’s wait until 6pm and assess the situation again. Master Chik and Master Wei worked non-stop, overcoming hurdles one after another until 6pm without taking lunch and notably even any water at all. The team hit a fundamental issue PT triggered Plan B to mobilise the 2nd Vertere setup to move in asap. There wasn’t any moment that I saw the vinyl team had given up the mission to setup the Caeles turntable even after PT has impartially asked the team to stop working and take some rest. During the ending remarks in the show, PT commended both Master Chik and Master Wei for the perseverance and passion enlightening him that we should never give up when facing challenges. I echo absolutely with PT and wish to re-iterate here that that this is the positive energy that we must possess and most importanly 'dissipate' in order to reach the ultimate goal!
With ‘Plan B’ immediately put in place, the tuning of the Cessaro Universe commenced without further delay. That left a very narrow window for Ralph and the team to fine tune the speaker setup especially taking into account the integration of the room acoustics relative to the frequency cutover point, phasing between the subwoofer and the main speaker. Setting up of the Wadax phono was relatively simple albeit the comprehensive set of parameters that one can adjust thru the color touch monitor in front of the Trio main unit. Lars Monica serves the preamp position exceedingly well together with the majestic Chuoku power amp which I was told by Yamada san have several fundamental improvements made from the previous version.
Everything set and done, the sound of this room is extremely lively and holistically fulfilling!! There was a song called Kaze sung by Osamu Kitayama which I listened frequently at home. This was a live recording in a small concert venue which I believe might be of similar size of event room of the show. It is a ‘ghostly’ experience for me to listen to it thru Universe as though Kitayama san was standing on the subwoofer (as the stage) while all the audience were sitting surrounding me singing the song together with Kitayama and his band. We often say in a living room of 200 sq ft, it is physically not possible to claim the entire concert hall was brought into the same 200sq ft space regardless of how high the fidelity the system is. However, in a venue like the event room and with the setup filling up the entire 2000 sq ft space, hands on heart, the playback of that music really put me back into the original venue and this is the truly top climax of my entire hifi journey, period. That moment of listening was ‘timeless’ and ‘priceless’ to me!!
Again, if I use 3 words to summarise the ambience of this room and the team: Perseverance, passionate and real!
To achieve such a high standard of resolution, not only the quality of the components is critical, the noise mitigations on various sources: current, ground, mechanism are equally important. Ralph has brought with him 2 active vibration prevention platforms which I forgot the brand, one was put under the Trinity PC in one room and other one was put under Vertere in the other room. I believe it is effective as otherwise Dietmar and TJ won’t endorse putting it underneath their products. Grounding by Tripoint and Extreme Line Backer by Pranawire have played a pivotal role to bring serenity to the background. As a cable freak, there are so many monumental class of cables used in the show which represent a complete spectrum of the latest SOTA in cable technology. I am utterly stunned by their performance, outlook and sheer weight, not to mention the price tag!!
As a feedback, choice of the music in the show is a ‘make it or break it’ element impacting the perception of the audience on what the system can do and cannot do well. I would like to propose a section called ‘Designer’s Choice’ in the show next year so that they can showcase the strength of their setup. Having said, I also enjoyed some of the music chosen in the show
It was AE’s 3rd super high end show and my 2nd time to attend this amazing event.
This time AE had 2 rooms of different set of equipments .
Both room brought me some extraordinary audio experience.
The 1st room had a full set of Trinity (DAC, Phono +Pre + Power) to drive a pair of Goebel Epoque Reference Loudspeakers accompanying with their subwoofer Epoque Baforce . The bending wave driver is really a breakthrough in the loudspeakers design with frequency response from 170hz to 31khz.
The sound from the loudspeaker was very interesting. All frequency (170hz-31khz) arrived the ear at the same time. The brain did not need to reorganise the sound from different drivers. The sound was very natural and free of tension.
Even I’m the fan of Trinity but I did think that the room of Cessaro Universe achieved a higher standard in music playback.
The playback of violin and piano from the Big Grass selection demonstrated very stable and well defined image position . The harmonics was abundant and the treble was airy and open.
The play back of the large scale music was magnificent. The starting of Also sprach Zarathustra had a piece of 40hz music and the playback was hands-down in this room. The another piece of Pipe Organ music was the best I’ve ever heard in any occasion. The base was extensive but not excessive. The presentation of music was authoritative with assertive mass .
I understood that PT ad AE would like to demonstrate the Sense and Sensibility of the two systems. If they could play back the same piece of music , it could better to serve this purpose.
From my listening, there were some playback were are out of phase, like Stars wars, Nat King Cole singing. It discounted the whole system performance. If it is possible , it’s better to check and prepare for it.
From my point of view, it is not only a high end audio show event but also a opportunity to meet with some friends, whom I knew from the forum long time ago, in real person. It was a very good occasion to learn from these guys. Mr. Zanden’s opinion on using the CD instead of LP to tune the system is very clever approach. Big brother Marvel’s Rach Sub ’s experience is enlightening.
I did spent some amount of time to talk with dB and then I started to know why the Trinity enclosure was hard to produce and what the important cable measurement parameters are . When we talked about the loudspeakers from Trinity and the end-to-end all Trinity components setup, I saw the sparkling from dB’s eyes.
The AE people, the designer and the audiophile friends , I met in the show, share some common attributes - the devotion to the music playback , the commitment of quality , the mutual trust among partners (AE, designer and the customer).
These virtues build the momentum of growth of AE today and contribute to the foundation of glory in AE’s future.
Everyone attending the show will agree with me that the show is a great one and both systems are the best of breed. I also appreciated the final speech by PT which came out from the bottom of his heart and we are touched by the professionalism and persistence of the old masters and PT himself. Yet, I have to express very frankly that the selection of songs ruined the show especially for the Gobel room. I can't understand why the organiser did not use the best pieces of recording in the show. Maybe I am not sitting in the "king position" in the Gobel room but the sound of StarWar as heard from my seat was worse than the sound in a cinema. I hope that more attention must be paid on getting the best software to play in the systems. Having said the above, there were still stunning music like the organ played in the Cassero room. The image of the organ was so vivid. It was a good demonstrated to all the audience the level of the entire system.
One of the contributing factor for the organ music diving so deep in the lower octave is the connection of an Extreme Line Backer to the active subwoofer of the Cessaro Universe. This cleans up the noise which would blur up the sub bass resolution. PT did the same to my Rach subwoofer, my son told me last night after an extensive audition that Extreme Line Backer is a 'point of no return'.
Marvel bro, but the delivery of XE linebacker is real fucking pain in the ass! Ralph can deliver the 2 ton Universe in 5 months but Pranawire took more than 7 months to send a few pieces to AE. What the fuck is that!
Comments
Thank you for putting a heartfelt Super Hi End show last Saturday. Moving 2 tons of Cessaro horn speakers within 48 hours back and forth does not make any sense. But you did it for us for free. The system that features Wadax as phono, Lars Monica as Preamp, and Zanden Chouku as power amp driving the Cessaro Universe was truly a commendable experience. I am sure the Tripoint emperor Ground and AC Conditioner together with all the crazy ground cables contributed a big deal to the silence of this system.
I know that you were not contended with the performance of the Trinity/Goebel room. But please don’t put too much pressure on yourself because we all know what you are capable of if the baton is waved at the AE showroom. Here is my analysis of the issue. First, the room is not ideal. It is square. Second, the sweet spot zone is too small. I believe this zone is located from the 2nd row to 6th row in the middle. Third, the positioning of the speakers are meant for near field listening. Fourth, the integration of the main speakers and the subwoofer could have been better if there is a filter. But I understand it is very difficult to apply with an analog crossover that Oliver Goebel is using. You can tell him to use a digital crossover and that will resolve this issue. If you don’t use a filter at the crossover, the bass drivers of the main speakers sing together with subwoofers. Fifth, the quality of music software is substandard, especially the digital files. Most of the re-issue vinyl played during the LP session was unsatisfactory as well. In a top flight system, selection of music should be based on recording quality as priority. I wonder should you communicate better with Audiotechnique next year. (Those LPs selected by Big Grass were excellent – as he knows which recordings would bring out the strength of the system.) Better still, you should do one extra day so that people are free to bring their music to understand the electronics better.
I was lucky because you allowed me to sneak in to the Trinity/Goebel room around 11:00am. I was able to sit in the sweet spot. Dietmar was playing a cut of jazz on hi resolution file. And that was so life like! Another cut that Touraj of Vetere played was explosively dynamic. I was very impressed as I was able to reconcile with Kahw’s experiences at your showroom one week ago. However, as I started moving off axis, I knew that it was going to be problematic for audiences on the right, left and the back. I would say the worst position is at the far back because SPL is inadequate to reach that far. If the room is 30% smaller that what it is with a rectangular shape, it would have been much better. Please tell Oliver to change the crossover to digital solution or else he will never have the main and the subwoofer easily integrated.
Overall, from an audience perspective, I think it was a great show. The fact that a total of 8 designers traveled all the way to Hong Kong for one single company means you are already the real deal. . I have to say I was touched by the very last speech of yours. You paid respect to old masters by telling us how they wrestled with the “”irresponsible” Physical Emotion Caeles turntable until the very last minute. And through this incident, you discovered the insufficiency of your character – lack of patience relative to the old masters. This is very good sharing. Spend more time with your family is what you should do now. You have proven AE enough and the message was received across the globe in the high end community. I wouldn’t spend so much time regressing what should have not been arranged or done. I would rather channel positive energy to something else. I am already looking forward to the 4th Super Show in 2016. Because I trust you – AE radiates positive energy.
I will start with the Trinity/Goebel room:
Computer source: Trinity PC+DAC
Vinyl source: Vertere turntable and reference tonearm + Miyajima Madake cartridge + Trinity phono
Amplications: Trinity preamp + power amps (monoblock for Epogue, stereo for Baforce subwoofer)
Goebel Epogue/Baforce speaker/subwoofer
Cables & accessories: Dalby Reuben, Ode power cables, Celestial ground cable, Tripoint Troy Signature grounding system, SRA Scuttle rack, Trinity power plant, Vertere HB interconnects, phono, USB and power cables, Pranawire Extreme Line backer, Skogrand Beethoven power, speaker cables, Goebel power, interconnect and speaker cables.
The event room, from the acoustics perspective, is not as good as the other one because at the rear end of the room, it is not a solid wall, instead, it is just movable partitions thus creating a hallow at the back when bass energy traverses from the front to the far end back. When I was listening to the system on Friday without any other public audience, I could hear some reverberation from the back. Notwithstanding this, the overall bass attack generated from the almighty Trinity power amp and Epogue speaker is one of the fastest that I have ever heard. It is the precision of the musical wave from the leading edge till the winding down of each group of musical notes that is so focused and sharp producing layers of structured harmonic decays. The dynamic surge was strikingly real and I could still recall on one occasion when I was chatting with Dietmar sitting on the 2nd row, both of us were shocked and stopped talking at the same time. That was a vinyl record on a vocal with a sudden burst of emotions. I can still remember Dietmar put his thumb up to TJ for the selection of that vinyl demonstrating the wide dynamic range that system (from cartridge to speaker) can handle with the lightning transient attack!
To many attending the show, intuitively the toe-in angle of the speakers could be too much but I can understand it is not easy to set the speaker positioning ‘right’ to cater for the high expectation of the 150+ audience sitting in different locations of the room. Certain compromise needs to be made in a show scenario like this. If one is sitting in the middle position of the 2nd row, I believe this is the best position to sense the complete and huge soundstage produced by the system. Even at a high volume, the control is always there without any degradation on the noise platform, image precision and tonal balance. This is undoubtedly a concerted effort by all the noise mitigation devices and the distortion free amplification and signal transmission. Obviously the seamless integration of the Goebel speaker systems is also one of the key contributors for this.
In this room, the music comes out without any stress and compression. Both Trinity CAS and Vertere vinyl systems could deliver organically the full tonal spectrum and rich contents. There is always the big time debate between the CAS and vinyl , contents wise, I think CAS is a few steps closer to the vinyl in terms of resolution. A ‘competent’ CAS will bring the right tempo without delay on the time axis in the Digital-Analog conversion which I think Trinity has met this expectation with flying colors. Frankly, eyes closed, I cannot truly tell which source is which that I am listening!! All I can say is the Vertere arm/phono cable is so deceivingly quiet (I use the word ‘deceive’ because it is close to ‘unreal’ for the background darkness that I can ever hear from a vinyl)
The room was literally up and performing at 10am on Fri but the beat and momentum of the team did not slow down for the slightest second. The team was discussing and fine tuning relentlessly trying to achieve the optimal listening experience for as many seating positions as possible. If I can use 3 words to characterize the ambience of this room and the team: Organised, Precision and Lively
Room 2:
Source: Vertere turntable, reference tonearm + Miyajima Madake cartridge + Wadax Trio (digital phono)
Amplification: Lars Monica preamp (with silver transformer upgrade), Zanden Chuoku power amp
Cables & Accessories: SRA Craz rack, Tripoint Emperor grounding system and power distribution system, Tripoint Emperor power cables, Skogrand power and speaker cables, Vertere interconnects, phono and power cables, Pranawire Extreme Line backer, Goebel power and interconnect cables.
On Friday morning when I first went into this room, there were actually 2 shocking scenes, the first one is the 18ft wide subwoofer of the Cessaro Universe nicely disguised itself as a white liquered dinner table sitting behind the eye catching silvery blue bass horn of the main speaker stand. It is the most magnificent speaker system that I have ever seen carrying a sheer weight of over 2 tons!! Again, my salute to the robustness of the logistics team on AE moving in all the components and setting them up so systematically under the directorship of Ralph!! The 2nd shocking scene is the 10 ft X 10 ft floor space occupied by the parts of the Caeles turntable from Physical Emotion. The scene reminded me vividly but scaringly the starting point of a 500 pieces puzzle. Being in the IT field for decades, my natural instinct was to estimate the ‘up-time’ , ie, if there is sufficient time to set this monster up and be able to tune to the optimal state to meet the high expectation of the audience of such gigantic turntable.
Honestly I did share with Piano Tuner onsite that it is likely that Plan B is required to take place. PT told me, let’s wait until 6pm and assess the situation again. Master Chik and Master Wei worked non-stop, overcoming hurdles one after another until 6pm without taking lunch and notably even any water at all. The team hit a fundamental issue PT triggered Plan B to mobilise the 2nd Vertere setup to move in asap. There wasn’t any moment that I saw the vinyl team had given up the mission to setup the Caeles turntable even after PT has impartially asked the team to stop working and take some rest. During the ending remarks in the show, PT commended both Master Chik and Master Wei for the perseverance and passion enlightening him that we should never give up when facing challenges. I echo absolutely with PT and wish to re-iterate here that that this is the positive energy that we must possess and most importanly 'dissipate' in order to reach the ultimate goal!
With ‘Plan B’ immediately put in place, the tuning of the Cessaro Universe commenced without further delay. That left a very narrow window for Ralph and the team to fine tune the speaker setup especially taking into account the integration of the room acoustics relative to the frequency cutover point, phasing between the subwoofer and the main speaker. Setting up of the Wadax phono was relatively simple albeit the comprehensive set of parameters that one can adjust thru the color touch monitor in front of the Trio main unit. Lars Monica serves the preamp position exceedingly well together with the majestic Chuoku power amp which I was told by Yamada san have several fundamental improvements made from the previous version.
Everything set and done, the sound of this room is extremely lively and holistically fulfilling!! There was a song called Kaze sung by Osamu Kitayama which I listened frequently at home. This was a live recording in a small concert venue which I believe might be of similar size of event room of the show. It is a ‘ghostly’ experience for me to listen to it thru Universe as though Kitayama san was standing on the subwoofer (as the stage) while all the audience were sitting surrounding me singing the song together with Kitayama and his band. We often say in a living room of 200 sq ft, it is physically not possible to claim the entire concert hall was brought into the same 200sq ft space regardless of how high the fidelity the system is. However, in a venue like the event room and with the setup filling up the entire 2000 sq ft space, hands on heart, the playback of that music really put me back into the original venue and this is the truly top climax of my entire hifi journey, period. That moment of listening was ‘timeless’ and ‘priceless’ to me!!
Again, if I use 3 words to summarise the ambience of this room and the team: Perseverance, passionate and real!
To achieve such a high standard of resolution, not only the quality of the components is critical, the noise mitigations on various sources: current, ground, mechanism are equally important. Ralph has brought with him 2 active vibration prevention platforms which I forgot the brand, one was put under the Trinity PC in one room and other one was put under Vertere in the other room. I believe it is effective as otherwise Dietmar and TJ won’t endorse putting it underneath their products. Grounding by Tripoint and Extreme Line Backer by Pranawire have played a pivotal role to bring serenity to the background. As a cable freak, there are so many monumental class of cables used in the show which represent a complete spectrum of the latest SOTA in cable technology. I am utterly stunned by their performance, outlook and sheer weight, not to mention the price tag!!
As a feedback, choice of the music in the show is a ‘make it or break it’ element impacting the perception of the audience on what the system can do and cannot do well. I would like to propose a section called ‘Designer’s Choice’ in the show next year so that they can showcase the strength of their setup. Having said, I also enjoyed some of the music chosen in the show
This time AE had 2 rooms of different set of equipments .
Both room brought me some extraordinary audio experience.
The 1st room had a full set of Trinity (DAC, Phono +Pre + Power) to drive a pair of Goebel Epoque Reference Loudspeakers accompanying with their subwoofer Epoque Baforce . The bending wave driver is really a breakthrough in the loudspeakers design with frequency response from 170hz to 31khz.
The sound from the loudspeaker was very interesting. All frequency (170hz-31khz) arrived the ear at the same time. The brain did not need to reorganise the sound from different drivers. The sound was very natural and free of tension.
Even I’m the fan of Trinity but I did think that the room of Cessaro Universe achieved a higher standard in music playback.
The playback of violin and piano from the Big Grass selection demonstrated very stable and well defined image position . The harmonics was abundant and the treble was airy and open.
The play back of the large scale music was magnificent. The starting of Also sprach Zarathustra had a piece of 40hz music and the playback was hands-down in this room. The another piece of Pipe Organ music was the best I’ve ever heard in any occasion. The base was extensive but not excessive. The presentation of music was authoritative with assertive mass .
I understood that PT ad AE would like to demonstrate the Sense and Sensibility of the two systems. If they could play back the same piece of music , it could better to serve this purpose.
From my listening, there were some playback were are out of phase, like Stars wars, Nat King Cole singing. It discounted the whole system performance. If it is possible , it’s better to check and prepare for it.
From my point of view, it is not only a high end audio show event but also a opportunity to meet with some friends, whom I knew from the forum long time ago, in real person. It was a very good occasion to learn from these guys. Mr. Zanden’s opinion on using the CD instead of LP to tune the system is very clever approach. Big brother Marvel’s Rach Sub ’s experience is enlightening.
I did spent some amount of time to talk with dB and then I started to know why the Trinity enclosure was hard to produce and what the important cable measurement parameters are . When we talked about the loudspeakers from Trinity and the end-to-end all Trinity components setup, I saw the sparkling from dB’s eyes.
The AE people, the designer and the audiophile friends , I met in the show, share some common attributes - the devotion to the music playback , the commitment of quality , the mutual trust among partners (AE, designer and the customer).
These virtues build the momentum of growth of AE today and contribute to the foundation of glory in AE’s future.
Thanks AE again for the great show.
The whole show sounds like a real treat. Wish I could have been there.....but its a little far to travel.