I made it through the rest of the rooms today and made it up to the 12th floor where they had the kharmas. I talked to little Mike about the MSB monoblocks. They are prototype amps that are 200 watts, not the largest ones that have been out for a couple years. They were using the MSB discrete connected to an Aurrender server. I honestly didn’t like this room at all. I felt like the base response was week and the overall tone was somewhat hard and cold. I think part of this could have been placement or the choice of music while I was up there. I felt like they were so close together that there wasn’t the best center image. Just my opinion and others might have liked it. Here’s a photo of their setup.
Here’s a couple more thoughts.
I was very impressed by the Borresen room. I had never heard of these but they were my 2nd favorite room. They were using all of their own electronics. What made it really interesting was that their amp is Class D. I heard so many great rooms with Class D amplification that I’m seriously starting to believe that there is no reason to keep buying these large Class AB amps. I recently auditioned at home an ATI signature AB amp and an ATI ncore amp and both were either on par or better than my BHK monos.
4 Likes
Wow. Thanks for the pics. Yes I have a place in Naples which I got recently and one in Ann Arbor which is 5 miles down liberty from the stadium. 
My Wife & I made it to the show yesterday, spent all day listening. After reading the OP’s comments about Synergistic Research we were curious ourselves and made that our first stop so we had “fresh ears.” We had no problem hearing the effects of some of the products Ted demonstrated. In particular, the Black Boxes were quite noticeable in their ability to tighten up the mid to lower frequency reproduction. The Purple and Gold Carbon tuning disc’s effects were so subtle (if at all) they seemed a waste of money. Same with the little round discs he was moving on & off the tweeters, little definitive improvement I would swear to hearing. The Ground Isolation, Tranquility Isolation Platforms, and Ethernet UEF switches all seemed to cause excessive sibilance and harshness as they positively affected other aspects of the sound. Admittedly, the Magico speakers and Soulution amplification made for an energetic and vivid system to start with so perhaps equipment with a mellower, more “musical” basic disposition might gain more from some of their tweaks. With the Magico/Soulution system, most of the items he demonstrated were sonic mixed bags and only the Black Boxes were anything I’d spend money on in that context.
Of the “Big Three” rooms; MBL, Borresen, and VAC/Von Schweikert, the VAC/Von Schweikert was the only one that really moved us with uniform positivity. Probably because both the Borresen & MBL rooms were so absurdly loud they made me leave their rooms after only a few minutes. There was little doubt the MBL room was very impressive though. Yes, the ballroom wasn’t an ideal space for the Von Schweikerts but they did so many things very well. When you closed your eyes the soundstaging was phenomenal, the layers of the orchestra’s string, brass, and percussion sections were enormously deep and expansive.
In the realm of the more affordable, the Margules and FinkTeam audio rooms stood out to both of us. The FinkTeam Kim was a really impressive smaller speaker that sounded far larger than its dimensions would lead you to expect. The longer we listened to the Margules room, the more we were impressed. I now know why reviewers uniformly write rather glowingly of their show systems. I had hoped to be impressed by the newish TAD Laboratories EVO-1but it was such a lightweight in the bass region I had a hard time concentrating on the other things it was doing well. Another standout room to our ears was the Takatsuki/Blumenhofer room. I didn’t get a chance to hear Mike’s room with the Kharmas for more than a minute or two, it was just too crowded at that time. The Krell/Gershman room was another room that was so loud it was painful IMO, couldn’t tolerate it for long at all.
All in all a nice show and it sure was nice to have a day where things felt quasi back to normal.
5 Likes