The AXPONA show is not far away. I have good news on our demonstration room. My good friends at JBL\/Harman have come through with a complete set of Revel Salon 2 speakers for our demo room. I couldn’t be happier. I’ve heard these speakers only a few times but was very impressed. I can’t wait to them at the delivery end of our JAS HRA logo deserving, high-resolution audio, surround music presentations in the Landmark room of the Westin Hotel at O’Hare International airport at the end of April.<\/p>\n
I believe our room will be the first time that a partnership of high-end audio companies and a software provider has ever achieved real high-resolution audio. I have a great deal of experience in setting up high-end demo rooms and there’s always a component or bottleneck somewhere along the signal path. Last year, we had an amazing system that included a Bryston SP-3 processor for converting the output from an Oppo BDP-95 feeding a great set of amplifiers and speakers. Sadly, I discovered that the analog output of the Bryston was passed to a room tuning box that could only run at 48 kHz and subjected the sound to two additional conversions from analog to digital and back again. Very disappointing…although the room did deliver very good sound.<\/p>\n
This year things will be different. We’ll have 96 kHz\/24-bit PCM audio coming digitally out of a specially modified Oppo deck into three of the latest Benchmark DACs (the DAC2 HGC) and then through a bunch of AHB2 Amplifiers on to the Revel Salon 2 speakers. We’ll be capable of meeting the rigorous JAS requirements for high-resolution audio…meaning 40 kHz\/24-bits from end to end. Can anyone else claim the same thing? The vinyl LPs room can’t, the analog tape rooms can’t, the CD rooms can’t, and even the high-end file servers can’t unless they have similar hardware. This is the kind of room the David Pogue and Wilson Rothman need to visit.<\/p>\n
I’ve also informed the folks at AXPONA that I will be doing an abbreviated version of my “High-Resolution Audio Demystified” seminar after the show closes on Friday and Saturday evening, April 24th and 25th. I’ll be discussing high res from 6:30 to 8 pm and possibly longer. The seminar organizers apparently didn’t have a slot in their normal tech sessions for a presentation on high-resolution audio (although they made room for multiple turntable alignment seminars?), so I’m setting up my own “special event” on HRA to demonstrate and educate attendees on the latest information. You can check it out by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you’re going to be in Chicago for the AXPONA event, please include a visit to our demo room and stay after hours for an engaging and straightforward seminar on high-resolution audio. Just by stopping by, you’ll get a free AIX Records sampler…a $25 value.<\/p>\n