Bruce Edgar room was probably the only rooms at the entire show where form my prospective it was possible to begin to talk about "pure audio", so I will.

Bruce picked and smartly holds at "The Show" a wondefull room, the small room, but free form the typical bass problems and he loaded into it a lot of bass. This room can actually absorb bass and if you even dump into this room even extra 3-6dB at LF it still sound very nice.

Bruce Edgar brought up his big 3 ways horns (I believe he call them Titans) and a mono folded EQed LF section (I do not know the trade name). The LF was powered by some SS amps from ToyUSA and the horns were powered by Cy Brenneman small SET, built around KT-88, that looked larger to me then they should be. The non-interesting digital front-end was use. There was also a TT in there but I did not listen it.

The system was kind of major overkill for a room of that size but not for this room. The room was loaded very nice and responded very well. Furthermore, the room satisfactorily responded at any singly location where I was. I had no problems to listen the playback staying next to the speakers: it did all, necessary tonal deviation but still responded qute ambianic and musical, without too much losing of tonal and contrast discrimination. In other words: it was very-very lucky room.

I have listened the same setup last year and in the very same room.  Last year Cy used his bigger amp,  (I think Bruce should still to work on an amp selection) this year amp has a lot of upper bass problems but it was unspeakably better at the higher octaves. In fact I was very-very positively surprised how good HF Cy and Bruce managed to get out of thier system.  Ironically Bruce uses the Fane tweeters that I never considered interesting but they did perfectly fine in Edgar's system. Last year with the Cy’s 845 amp the HF had some nervousness and has some problems to be handled by the room. This year it was flawless. The HF is usual problem at the shows: unknown components, electricity, cables, mostly crappy industry standard tweeters and so on. The Bruce’s room was from a stand point of HF as good as it might be. It would be interesting to learn how Bruce used those Fanes.

Anyhow...

All together the system sound OK, yeas there were some problems, but still it sounded OK. Bruce kindly allowed me and some of people that I pulled into the room to play some our music and despite that we played some very demanding material the system swallowed it very effortless and quite "musical" (in the most loaded definition of this word)

About the problems of that installation. The room size – it was too small and had too short decay time. That is why Bruce was able to go away with obviously higher then necessary level of subwoofer and a very cheesy LF amplifier. If you place the same system in a larger room and add a second LF module (outside of the soundstage as it should be) then the miserable quality of that little SS fart machine will be well audible. Also, I feel that the bass amp use too sharp filter. In the small room it was OK but in a larger room it will be amusical. Bruce used very inexpensive MF drivers but to my surprise they do not sound so bad. I sincerely feel that the very proper and "smart" use of that tweeter made a good contribution to a way in which the MF performed. The biggest problem of the entire system was the upper mid bass – form my point of view the most important element of audio reproduction.  Last year, with 845 amps it was better then this year but still “not there”. This year the upper bass was even worth. Bruce, I do not knowingly of not, masked-out his upper bass by adding too much lower bass (and the room very nicely spread it around). I meant to ask Bruce to shut down the subwoofer for a second and to hear the horns "as is" but we played too good musik to make those experiments.

(To describe how the Edgar’s upper bass sounded I would give you an association: pretend that you have a collection of different colors and you are about to paint something on a canvas. For whatever reason you decided to reduce the intensity of the colors. You may add some water to the colors and make the more “pastel” but you added to all of them some white paint and instead of reducing the color’s intensity you reduced thier effectiveness. So, the Bruce upper bass sounded to me as a poly-colored picture with a severe deduction of distinctive differentiation between the colors by the “white-anisarion” of each color, and with a sever domination of purple and darkish-gray tones.)

There were some other problems but altogether it was quite illustrative that Bruce Edgar knew what he was doing and that he was in a fruitful direction. Considering that the system cost very inexpensive (a fraction of what many of other speakers cost) it still produced qute acceptable result. Put in that system a properly built none-forded upper bass horn with a good driver, add another sub, introduce a better bass amp (preferably the same amp the drives the horn), naturally EQ everything in the room and you might get very-very fine result out of those Titans or whatever thier name is. However, even “as is” the playback in that room presented a very nice “Audio Shows Survival Kit” that allows for little money, little efforts and with irrelevant associated component to get a quite satisfactory Sound.

Anyhow, the Edgar’s room was probably the room at the Show where might use some complementary language and non-insulting adjectives. Was it “The Best Room at the Show”. Nope, I do not know what it means. However, the Edgar’s room was a wonderful educational playground what people do out there… There was the only one other room at the Vegas that made me to think more about sound then the Bruce Edgar’s room and that “impressed and moved me”… I am sure I will mention about it sometime later on

So long for now,
Romy the Cat

To be continue…

Someone stopped me at the Alexis Park and told me: “Romy, there is a new Israeli guy in town with  his amassing horn. He has a room at the St. Tropes and you should go”. I was almost offended! There was a new horn guy and I never insulted him?!!! My ego was hurt and I decided to pay a visit to this “new guy” room.

:-)

The guy was in his room (I do not remember nether the name of the company nor his name but the company name sounded like “Magic” or “Magical”) and I asked if he is anew horn guy that I was told about. Parallel to this I noted the in the room was juts a small mini-monitors that played at absolutely barbarian volume leve as CD-copy of Burmester II disk and that this CD copy has a dynamic range of 50dB, no more.

The guy replied that he is the horn guy, “Welcome to the club” – I replied – “so do I”…

He replied : “It is you think that you are”.

-What do you mean?
-I mean that you Americans believe that you know something about horns or ever heard them but in fact you do not.

I thought: “This should be great! This guy or a genius of a complete idiot, now, I just have to fugue out what he is”

-OK, I admit that there is a lot of foolishness and ignorance going on in Horn World but do you think that it is not wise to make such statement to people who you do not know. If you wish I might explain to you what is doing on in US with horns and why you see mostly not impressive results

The conversation was flowing in this way; we contested our freaking egos and dancing our little hi-fi ballet. The guy was very reasonable, sounded quite intelligently but we did not talk about the horns.

Then I asked his if he has any actual material about his horns. He showed me at his computer a few pictures. Now my mischievous spirit inside my body was singing a victorious circus march. I instantly resigned the horns (I have seen the pictures of his very much foolish horns a year ago or so) but I did not let him know and begin to ask questions about the pictures he was showing. He was continuing showing to me the images of his speakers. The speaker reminded me the “back-man’s rims”with all his "high-grade aircraft aluminum surfaces" and while we were talking he kept demonstrating a complete ignorance not only about the basic of speaker building, but also about the history of the horns not to mention the elemental technical ignorance and very challenged taste.  I am not kidding. Looks at this dialog:

- What is it?
- Oh, this is the super-drivers by ALE, made in Japan.
- So, and how do you deal with the titanium diaphragms of your super-drivers?
- Do they have titanium diaphragms? Really? And what difference it makes?
- I can tell you but then I will send you and invoice for consulting
- OK, here is a picture of a super system: the 5 ways horn loaded
(I did not tell him that I know this faulty system very well but was continuing…)
- Hm, this is very nice, may I ask you: the driver you use looks like located quite randomly related to the baffle depth, so how do you keep them time-aligned?
- I do not know. Probably somehow in a crossover. I never thought about it.

Well, I decided, he is the idiot and he has all rights to consider that people around him are clueless about horns. With his whonnabe intelligence he can only make speakers that might be suitable in a homes of a typical American white trashes: all those Eds Sawyer, Bills Fitzmaurice, Rod Morrises, Magnetars, Waynes Parham, Edps, Robs Doorack and the rest infamies near-audio dirt...

I was really ready to leave but he told me that I should to talk with another guy in his room. I asked who he was and then a revelation came to me: he new born “American horn guru” used Convergent Audio Technology preamp. I shadow of a guess run in my head and then he confirmed that he do share the room with estimable Mr. Stevens – the designer and manufacture of Convergent. The CES events of 3 years ago (click here to lern about it)  came to my memories and I decided that THIS match between the “new horn guy in town” and Mr. Stevens was the match made in haven!

I did not tell this story to anyone in Vegas but later on, when I was meeting at the alleys and corridors of CES some guys who I feel knew something about horns I asked them if the meet the “new horn guy in town”. All of them replied to me “Come on, he is not serious.” "Why", I asked and then we looked at each other and begun to laugh.

Anyway, the moral of this story is the following:

The only things that distinct the stupidity of this “new horn guy in town” and many of well-know and “reputed” audio manufactures is 2-3 reviews of some king of retard-reviewer (there is a huge pool of them out there) published in some kind of foolish audio publication. I have to testify that I have met in Vegas a very large amount of manufactures, dealers and distributor who have the very same level of understanding what they deal with as the “new horn guy in town” has about horns. Today, those idiots run the show in the industrya and this is very-very sad….

To be continue...

Unquestionably it was Clark Johnson with his ultimate cure for CD misery. Clark is balanced mentally and psychologically (as far as a person who professionally spent tens years in the audio industry could be balanced) but when he showed me his new discovery I was kind of afraid.

Clark took form his pocket a small piece (.5 sq inch) of metal imbedded into plastic and told the if you place this gismo for a second atop of a CD player/transport then it permanently change sound (of course improves it) of a currently played disc. The most interesting part the this .5 sq inch of metal that cost ~$15 is active only for 20 applications and if I want the same gismo that would be available for 35 application the it will cost two or tree times more. (I do not remember the exact numbers). Of course that all was accompanied by some king of explanation that this piece of metal consist form the particles that existed at the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang and those particles are capable to convert the Second Law of Thermodynamics directly onto the Newton's Second Law. (It was not exactly what he told but I came up with something equally ridicules)

After seeing this gismo and Clark treating it very seriously I did not know if to cry or to laugh. Clark is perfectly fine but he constantly brings some absolutely absurd things on the table with absolutely ridicules proclamations. I sincerely feel that in his ultimate wisdom he very much know what he is doing and he deeply under his hood treats all his “improvement” as the ultimate mentality test of Audio Moronit. What scares me is that he plays his role of “believer” too naturally.

Anyhow, the Clark’s “CD charger” was the funniest joke at CES. His joke even suppressed the former biggest joke that a friend of my just invented a few days before CES: “Lamm Industries sent to all their customers the holyday congratulation cards and next day they sent invoices for the post stamps”.

To be continue…

The most interesting sensation was ironically the very best sound at the show.

Friday night around 2AM I found myself completely lost in the Nevada desert approximately 40-50 mines from Vegas. To understand how it was it should be explained that the CES days were rainy days with very low and very dark clouds. So, I was driving, following the wrong mapquest direction, smoking my Cohibas, and thinking about something completely unrelated to the road… Any signs of civilization ended many miles back but for whatever reasons it did not alarmed me. I was driving throughout some kind of mountains because there was snow on the ground and I the road was waving up and down very aggressively. It was dark, very dark and I was not able to see anything inches away from my window….

Eventually after 1 more hour of driving the road ended. I mean I saw cactuses when asphalt should be not to mention that the road long time ago lost any sighn of an urbane asphalt. Here I started to pay attention that I am not exactly where I intended to be….

I stopped the car and stepped out. It was not just wonderful out there but it was unspeakably magnificent. It was cold, dark so much that I did not see my hands and it was a compete absent of any sounds. That silence was shocking! A friend of mine told me that he experience the similar driving in Arizona, I know this feeling from my boat trips in Black See when I was young, but here it was very different. The complete silence was accompanied by a spectacular “space” and a complete absents of any visual sensationss...

In few minutes when the sensitively on the inner-ear amplifier boost itself up I begin to hear how the engine of my car was cooling down. I stepped far enough from my car in order do not hear it. After spending I guess 10-15 minuts in there, being submersed in that stunning sensory depravation chamber I decided that it was too cold and it was time to go back. Here I realized that I have no idea where is my car was.

A biblical fear attacked me. I was so frighten, as I never was before. It was so dark that I did  see absolutely anything and I was in total sensory vacuum. I begin to walk to a direction where I thought the car should be but it was not there. I knew that I was ~50-60 steps from my car but I had no idea in which direction. Also I understood that if I make a move to a wrong direction then I might never find my car and might never leave this desert. The opportunities to be eaten by those desert coyotes or to die from the cold were not exactly in my itinerary of my Vegas trip....  It was scared, very scared but there was something in that fear prehistorically beautiful. I can’t explain it – but it was some kind of nature fear that did not derive from any actions of consciousness. I experienced something similar only when I found myself at within very large earthquakes…

I lower myself to my knee and begging to search ground “by touch”. To my pleasure I found some stones there. I collected them and begin to throw them in all direction listening how they lend. After a few minutes and a few dozen of stones I herd a stone hit something that was not belong the desert - it was my car. I walk there is here it was…

I prayed the engine start and it did. I turn it off then, looked up and once again heard the sound of the Original Silence. I knew that it was the best sound at the CES 2005 and I'll never experience anything similar again. I U-turned my car and in 5-10 minutes I found something resembling a road. It was my way back, the road to the sounds of the man-made ceramic tweeters and titanium woofers…. The next day was a next day at the CES…

The Cat

To be continue

My prize to the most interesting and educational room at the show goes to a room with WAVAC 833 power SETs. Visiting this room made me to think a lot and made me to draw a lot of very valuable to me conclusions.

I heard a lot about those amps. Recently some reviewers drooled about them stressing some typical mental propaganda: the 833 tubes, the unique 3 stages circuitry, unique PS, absents of any capacitors in the signal pass and the similar sort of things. I kind of was looking forward to hear it …

The amps were presented by presumably the US distributor of WAVAC or perhaps he was just a dealer, I do not know. He used them with small floor stranding speakers from Belgium’s Venture Audio. I know nothing about them. They sounded like ported speakers with low sensitively and very contemporary-like drivers but all together they still sounded OK…. for the goals of a salesperson. As I understand THM Audio hosted the room, which is Ohio-based international audio-pimping establishment.

The guy who ran the show in the room was certainly not in his plate. I do not know what he does for living: sells Nissans in his Ohio or sells real estate for mobile homes but he was as far from real audio as it theoretically possible. Perhaps he is a professional audio sale-person but then it puts him way behind the car-sale personnel of the marketing managers of the Vegas “Chicken Ranch”.

Anyhow, he made his verbal presentation about the playback and eventually shut up and started his CD player. The music that he played (hi-fi duet between the tweeter and subwoofer) was very affinity with his job description: to buy a box of something Japan and sell the box to the Ohio’s Magnetars of the similar white trash. I was tolerantly sitting and waiting when his sonic torture will be over and asked it he can play any more civilized music then a screaming teenager with destroyed soprano trying to over-scream a badly played upper bass. He replied that this is the music that he is playing and he refused to play any of my CDs.

After listing a few more cuts that sounded to me as Hollywood sound effects I asked a few more time if he wiling to play other music, giving that there was no one in the room who listened his playback. He was very annoyed and eventually agreed to play my CD. I pulled one of quite complex and demanding opera peaces that I had with me (the closing of the first act of “Cosi Fan Titte”) and gave it to him. He played it for 2 minutes (during which I heard some VERY unique things) and when the six singers where ready to introduce the main thyme of the closing  (that I actually expected) he stopped the CD player. I asked what happened and he said that he thought that it was the end of the song. .. :-(

After this he put in CD played more of his “female vocal”. I asked another 25 times to play any classical music or his choosing. He said that he does not carry any classical music. I suggested that I might look along with him and perhaps we could accidentally find any. He searched among his CDs and to his surprise he found the Stravinsky/Stravinsky “Firebird”. He played if for another 2 minutes and I mange to listen the amps and to collect another set of unique observations. 

After this I decided that it would be better to leave the room because he was becoming more and more annoyed and I knew that I would not keep myself shat up for any longer and was about to inform his that he behaves in the best tradition of audio sales-idiot and his behavior is very indicative to what type of customers he accustomed to deal with. I left and then I stopped by in his room 3 or 4 more times for a few seconds just to check out some things that I was interested to confirm. I never played anything in his room or made any attempts. However, knowing myself and knowing my ability to know “what” and “how” to listen while I am listening I get quite clear picture what the WAVAC 833 dose with sound. In fact it was necessary almost 30 seconds to “get” this amplifier. This is quite a compliment to WAVAC as usually it take for me 5-10 seconds to make a conclusion. (The people who personally know me know that I am not kidding with this estimate)

So, how the WAVAC sound? In short: it was the best worst amplifier I even heard in my life. Also, the WAVAC sound opened a Pandora box for a lot of conclusions and I full of appreciation to WAVAC that it helps me to do it. If you want further explanations then read on. The next post will elaborate on the WAVAC sonic advantages and misery.

The Cat
To be continue….

Actually it was not only the best worst amplifier at CES but it was the best worst amplifier I even heard in my life.

So what happen between the WAVAC 833 and Sound? A lot of quite unique things…

A spoke at the show with a friend of my who presumably experienced WAVAC 833 and he complained to me about a load of coloration in this amp. I did not hear any what he called “coloration”, neither tonal not dynamic. The WAVAC 833 sound very sterile, very hygienic and I would say very-very precise. It has a phenomenal transient response and it renders all frequencies very cleanly. I rarely use phrase “resolution” but WAVAC 833 has it in all glory of the word  “resolution” (and I’m not talking about the Spectral-type of resolution but about the very positive and very beneficial resolution). WAVAC 833 has also a fantastic and absolutely non-matched by any other amps resolution and articulation at the lowest volumes. I never experienced this stunning ability of an amp to dig into the very minute details way hidden into noise and ambiances, retrieve from there musical signal that has value and purpose and then present it with a very high level of discrimination of tone and contrast. It was quite a ride to hear how WAVAC 833 did it! In particularly it was surprising to hear how WAVAC 833 did it considering that it appeared that it not make sound sharper – the fashionable illness of most OLTs and many other so-called “high-quality” amplifiers. However, I have to say that I might be mistaken in my estimate of the WAVAC’s sharpening neutrality, as I would need more time and more familiar system to make this conclusion with a higher degree of accuracy. Prematurely: I did not detect any problems at the “# - quality” of this amp

So, if everything was so wonderful then why do I call the WAVAC 833 “the best worst amplifier”? Well, because whatever the WAVAC did, it did it wonderfully, but with completely wrong intentions. Musically WAVAC 833 was not just disasters but it was apocalypsicly catastrophic. It was obviously that the people who design, manufacture and sell the WAVAC targeted their 833 as much to music repudiation as mush the people who design the gas-mask care about the sex-appeal of their products.

When music was playing via WAVAC 833, and am talking about music but not the “soprano-contrabass audio rap”, then I clearly did not recognize the music. It was like the musicians and singers all were singing being conducted by different conductors and like they all did not hear each other. Furthermore, each instrument and each singer suddenly did something absolutely unrelated to what they did. I mean the Ludwig singing Mozart suddenly begun to add the absurd accents in the end each 2th   and 4th line of her libretto and sound almost like a rock-&-roll singer. The string section suddenly begin o act like stop-moment from movie “Matrix” (and the did this “hanging” at completely unexplained moments) or suddenly the strings begum to accelerate without any reasons in the very middle of the phrases.  Another example: those mind-boogieing merging of the voices between Bohm orchestra, Kraus, Ludwig and Schwarzkopf were not only out of any harmonization but all they did totally different things with one being completely irrelevant to other: each of them had own bogus punctuation and infliction. The entire sextet instead of sounding like “We sing a Mozart’s opera” sounded like “wEEEE sINg a mOOotttzzAAaRt’s op-Op-OPERa”. It was so absurd and so unspeakably violent that I had a hard time to imagine that something like this could be even accomplished by the means of electronics.

Was this musical barbarianism auditable with those Hollywood soundtracks that the dealer played all time? I do not think so. I am least I have no references or understanding how that music should sound. I do not think that there are any references and that “audio-rap” music does not necessary based upon the rules of humane harmonies or musical culture. At least when I evaluate audio sound I do not pay attention to the sound itself but the validity of the delivered content. Considering that the music that the dealer played was not the content loaded music it was imposable to detect with that music the horrible things that WAVAC 833 dose to sound.

So, for whom the WAVAC 833 was made? The answer is simple - to satisfy the demands of the brainless and senseless idiots, that luckily for the distributor are well-presented within the audio.

Romy the Cat

To be continue…

For whatever reasons the trip to that WAVAC room and listing that WAVAC 833 made me think a lot about a needs of music understanding for audio professional. This is an old subject but after me getting my WAVAC 833 experience I got a deferent sweeping prospective to this thing. I suddenly begin to feel that my minimalism demanding from audio manufacturer in-depth understanding of the nature of musicality was not as strong as it should be. My experience with WAVAC 833 brought my intolerance to the subject to the highs where it never was before. I spent a lot of very useful time after the WAVAC room visiting some famous manufacturers, listening some specific aspects of thier products and correlating it with the manufacturers specific ignorance of sometime barbarianism in the subjects of understanding musical culture and appreciation of the expressive methods of musicality. Doing this I was staying at the very extreme position of disregarding any audio justifiable BS if it did not have any references to what I would consider was musically permissible…. The new would and the new level of audio despair was opening for me…. I had many conversations after this with quite popular audio manufactures and practically all of them sounded to me so idiotic that it was even insulating to me that I was taking with them.

In the end I was feeling very bad about myself. I was feeling bad because I kind of had "fun" despite of the fact that clearly understood that it was not fan. I was feeling bad about myself and could not believe that I could be such an idiot who would consider that the socializing with the CES crowd was something that I could actually call “fan”. I was asking myself if am I so freaking miserable that dealing with those CES's audio-Morons become a fun-spent time for me?

Anyhow, no mater what kind decisions about myself I would make I can tell defiantly that this my visit to the WAVAC 833 room at CES 2005 and my consequential experiments with audio people at the show did make some permanent changes within my relationship with audio. I released that I was wrong. My apologies to all with whom I dealt for years and with whom I shared my observations about audio - now I feel that I was mistaken in many instances. My major problem was that I never was radical enough in my audio judgments.  Now it is gone and I’m cured. Thanks for this shocking lesson that WAVAC 833 did to me at CES and it was really “eyes opening experience”.

It might be continue if I feel so...

The reply posted on behave of Clark Johnsen and with his permission: (Received by email on 1-1-05)

My attention was riveted: And I shall add a few comments:

Romy the Cat wrote:

Unquestionably it was Clark Johnson

Romy the Cat wrote:

with his ultimate cure for CD misery.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Clark is balanced mentally and psychologically (as far as a person who professionally spent tens years in the audio industry could be balanced) but when he showed me his new discovery I was kind of afraid.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Clark took form his pocket a small piece (.5 sq inch)

Romy the Cat wrote:

of metal imbedded into plastic

Romy the Cat wrote:

and told the if you place this gismo for a second atop of a CD player/transport then it permanently change sound (of course improves it) of a currently played disc.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The most interesting part the this .5 sq inch of metal that cost ~$15 is active only for 20 applications

Romy the Cat wrote:

and if I want the same gismo that would be available for 35 application the it will cost two or tree times more. (I do not remember the exact numbers). Of course that all was accompanied by some king of explanation that this piece of metal consist form the particles that existed at the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang and those particles are capable to convert the Second Law of Thermodynamics directly onto the Newton's Second Law. (It was not exactly what he told but I came up with something equally ridicules)

Romy the Cat wrote:

After seeing this gismo and Clark treating it very seriously I did not know if to cry or to laugh. Clark is perfectly fine but he constantly brings some absolutely absurd things on the table with absolutely ridicules proclamations.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I sincerely feel that in his ultimate wisdom he very much know what he is doing and he deeply under his hood treats all his “improvement” as the ultimate mentality test of Audio Moronit. What scares me is that he plays his role of “believer” too naturally.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Anyhow, the Clark’s “CD charger” was the funniest joke at CES.

Romy the Cat wrote:

His joke even suppressed the former biggest joke that a friend of my just invented a few days before CES: “Lamm Industries sent to all their customers the holyday congratulation cards and next day they sent invoices for the post stamps”.

Well, I realized that it is not good idea to revoke a reply option and particularly when I ridicule people. Therefore, I opened up this thread for replies. My initial idea was not to interfere with disagreements but rather to keep the initial posts connected. Now, since I’m mostly done, there is not need anymore to retract the reply options within this thread.

Anyhow, Clark:

1) You had a number of those items different sizes, and one of them, that I saw, was approximately .5 sq inch. Dose it make any difference if the thing was 1 sq feet instead of 1 sq inch? I did not mock your gismo or it “reported” sonic contribution (that do not necessary believe in or care) but rather I mock the fact of the limited applicability of this gismos and the fact that this gismo could permanently affect the disk (not the player or a sonic result be permanently change the disc).  Also, I did say that “I do not remember the exact numbers” because since you begin to tell that different amount of money would allow to use those gismos different amount of times I pretty much stopped to listen about it seriously…

2) So, if it was a “chip” as you said then why my comment that it looked like “metal imbedded into plastic” was not correct? It is exactly how it looked like.

3) I did hear the “phenomenon” when you applied it in the Edgarhorn’s room. I did not detect any result beside the rain instantaneously stopped and two Rochlin's reviewers in the cafeteria suddenly choked with hotdogs. Probably your “phenomenon” did not affect sound because you miscalculated the amount of times you ‘ve already used it. Probably it should be recharged with a credit card. If you want, I can write a nice add-in service for this “phenomenon” that would mange the amount of times it was used with a real-time CC proceeding…

4) “We all know that Romy fires blanks” – not necessarily. If you “all know” then can you bring one single other example when I did it? Considering that I did head the result of this gismo (and the fact that I did not hear anything do not necessary means anything) and the most important: considering that I laugh on the idea of limited use then I do not think that my perception of your “phenomenon” as a joke was very far from none-blank fire.

5) Clark, if that gismo “sent dozens of astute listeners scurrying to buy the things” then it means absolutely nothing to me. I have seen those CES listeners running from the show rooms directly to the public computers and in hurry buying the audio things at Audiogon. Come on, Clark, the Vegas crowd would swallow everything and you know it well, and it was the reason why you brought that gismo  in there.  You can bring in there solidified camel defecations and those Morons will buy it as a Hope Diamond. This is not just a Las Vegas – this is the most lunatic audio people gathered in desert in their search for a …. wonder. So, what you whant to proof me? You know all those answers.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Someone stopped me at the Alexis Park and told me: “Romy, there is a new Israeli guy in town with  his amassing horn. He has a room at the St. Tropes and you should go”. I was almost offended! There was a new horn guy and I never insulted him?!!! My ego was hurt and I decided to pay a visit to this “new guy” room. :-) The guy was in his room (I do not remember nether the name of the company nor his name but the company name sounded like “Magic” or “Magical”) and I asked if he is anew horn guy that I was told about. Parallel to this I noted the in the room was juts a small mini-monitors that played at absolutely barbarian volume leve as CD-copy of Burmester II disk and that this CD copy has a dynamic range of 50dB, no more. The guy replied that he is the horn guy, “Welcome to the club” – I replied – “so do I”… He replied : “It is you think that you are”. -What do you mean? -I mean that you Americans believe that you know something about horns or ever heard them but in fact you do not. I thought: “This should be great! This guy or a genius of a complete idiot, now, I just have to fugue out what he is” -OK, I admit that there is a lot of foolishness and ignorance going on in Horn World but do you think that it is not wise to make such statement to people who you do not know. If you wish I might explain to you what is doing on in US with horns and why you see mostly not impressive results The conversation was flowing in this way; we contested our freaking egos and dancing our little hi-fi ballet. The guy was very reasonable, sounded quite intelligently but we did not talk about the horns. Then I asked his if he has any actual material about his horns. He showed me at his computer a few pictures. Now my mischievous spirit inside my body was singing a victorious circus march. I instantly resigned the horns (I have seen the pictures of his very much foolish horns a year ago or so) but I did not let him know and begin to ask questions about the pictures he was showing. He was continuing showing to me the images of his speakers. The speaker reminded me the “back-man’s rims”with all his "high-grade aircraft aluminum surfaces" and while we were talking he kept demonstrating a complete ignorance not only about the basic of speaker building, but also about the history of the horns not to mention the elemental technical ignorance and very challenged taste.  I am not kidding. Looks at this dialog: - What is it? - Oh, this is the super-drivers by ALE, made in Japan. - So, and how do you deal with the titanium diaphragms of your super-drivers? - Do they have titanium diaphragms? Really? And what difference it makes? - I can tell you but then I will send you and invoice for consulting - OK, here is a picture of a super system: the 5 ways horn loaded (I did not tell him that I know this faulty system very well but was continuing…) - Hm, this is very nice, may I ask you: the driver you use looks like located quite randomly related to the baffle depth, so how do you keep them time-aligned? - I do not know. Probably somehow in a crossover. I never thought about it. Well, I decided, he is the idiot and he has all rights to consider that people around him are clueless about horns. With his whonnabe intelligence he can only make speakers that might be suitable in a homes of a typical American white trashes: all those Eds Sawyer, Bills Fitzmaurice, Rod Morrises, Magnetars, Waynes Parham, Edps, Robs Doorack and the rest infamies near-audio dirt... I was really ready to leave but he told me that I should to talk with another guy in his room. I asked who he was and then a revelation came to me: he new born “American horn guru” used Convergent Audio Technology preamp. I shadow of a guess run in my head and then he confirmed that he do share the room with estimable Mr. Stevens – the designer and manufacture of Convergent. The CES events of 3 years ago (click here to lern about it)  came to my memories and I decided that THIS match between the “new horn guy in town” and Mr. Stevens was the match made in haven! I did not tell this story to anyone in Vegas but later on, when I was meeting at the alleys and corridors of CES some guys who I feel knew something about horns I asked them if the meet the “new horn guy in town”. All of them replied to me “Come on, he is not serious.” "Why", I asked and then we looked at each other and begun to laugh. Anyway, the moral of this story is the following: The only things that distinct the stupidity of this “new horn guy in town” and many of well-know and “reputed” audio manufactures is 2-3 reviews of some king of retard-reviewer (there is a huge pool of them out there) published in some kind of foolish audio publication. I have to testify that I have met in Vegas a very large amount of manufactures, dealers and distributor who have the very same level of understanding what they deal with as the “new horn guy in town” has about horns. Today, those idiots run the show in the industrya and this is very-very sad….