T.H.E. Show Newport: June 2 - June 5, 2016

Only had a chance to go yesterday morning. Had a B-Day party today and yesterday it was cub-scouts graduation.

Anyhow.

The first floor of T.H.E. show was not disappointing to me. Nice flashy cars:



The following are the Reflex G7 Headphones driven by an Elekit DIY TU-8200DX:



The combo to me sounded fun and perhaps a bit u-shaped. Not annoying though. Good impact. Very elegant and nice looking set. The G7 driver is 40mm and I was told that the diaphragm material is proprietary. Impedance is listed at 32 ohms which should match well with portable applications. The cups swivel, but the particular demo pair seemed a little hard to adjust. Anyhow. Liked the combo.

The Elekit tube amp is listed for $725.0 and it's a 6L6GC Integrated Power Amp. It can be used to drive speakers (about 8W per channel depending on mode). The kit looks fairly attractive. Here is a pic of the internals:



Next I visited Parts-Express boot. Oh boy! All the speaker drivers I've been looking for quite sometime where there:









In particular, I salivated quite a bit about the Tang Band W4-1879 4" Full Range Driver. That little driver is heavy! and $$$

Next visited the headphone stuff. Heard the AudioQuest Nighthawk cans which I thought were warm and nice. Also checked out the microZOTL amp table which also had an SRD-7 driving some Lambda cans. These Lambda's actually fit me. I was told that the pads where replaced. Good classic Lambda sound signature. Here are the microZOTL and the Lambdas:







(To be continued...)

 

The ZMF where awesome out of the microZOTL:



Next I visited MrSpeakers table. At once I got my ears on his new up and coming electrostat driven by a black Blue Hawaii. I was told there are two different prototypes with the latest iteration sporting a thinner diaphragm, which is welcome since the older prototype seemed a bit difficult to drive:


I think the new prototype sounds better than the old which IMO was a bit too dark. The new prototype is warm relative to the Stax, and I welcome the signature difference. I actually liked the new prototype, and would probably be on the look when they get released. I was told that they are gong to be < $3K which is proly outside my range. Again, I welcome this new development and hope the final iteration sounds great.

Next comes speakers.

This time around I heard the Revel stuff in a much larger room. Folks need to turn the volume a little lower and put decent music. I don't think the material I was hearing helped sell these.



Next to these where the Blades which were just sitting there doing nothing:



And here is the room I liked the most:



In the past I thought these (MBL Radialstrahler 101E) were electrostatic. I think I was wrong. These are dynamic it seems and require quite a bit of power to drive. They were reviewed by Stereophile in the past (http://www.stereophile.com/content/mbl-radialstrahler-101e-mkii-loudspeaker#hVbzL2KoFgJRiuwK.97)

I think the room was pretty well treated and demo material well chosen. Some big dude to my left lost his marbles and started to sob. The music was good. These can become a little lively though with some material. In any case, I liked what I heard in this room.

I also heard these below...



... and walked away. Did not like.

(to be continued ...)

 

Going up some floors (I think floor 2), everybody and their mother where showing up their amps and DACs with Wilson speakers. I think Wilson speakers are OK, but they did not blow my mind or anything.



Then came the KEF stuff. I like KEF stuff, said that before, say that now:



Then came the Scansonics MB1s which surprised me because they made me look around for a subwoofer. Picture is shitty. Sorry.



Also heard the Voxativ PI which IMO did not suck as bad as the other Voxativ I heard in there. There were IMO better though.



Another surprise was this little midget:



It's called the "SUN" by Trenner & Friedl. Here is a little linky with info (http://www.trenner-friedl.com/index.php?menu=product&sprache=en&second=sun). Boy did these played low. They have 4 little ports at the bottom of the enclosure. It's a 2 way coaxial design, which is supposed to reach 55 Hz in a 210 x 160 x 140 mm enclosure which I like lots! Dunno the $ though.

Another pleasant surprise where the Stein V6. I found these pretty good unlike other similar designs I've heard in the past.



Other folks have already commented about the Stein room, and I agree. These were very good.

(to be continued ...)