Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2015 • TABlog
Two different rooms, two demonstrations that were different from the rest of the show. Ayre Acoustics continued its tradition of a special themed room where the audio system on display was secondary to the atmosphere of the room. This year’s theme was a recording studio, where attendees could escape the madness of the halls and pretend they were involved in a recording project. The musical detail achieved in such a small room was quite remarkable.
Russ Andrews USA, the US arm of the UK hi-fi mainstay, appeared at the RMAF with a smartly appointed sales booth on the main floor of the hotel. Andrews markets a line of cables, power strips, Linn parts, system racks and supports, and other odds and ends, and a high percentage of show attendees wandered the halls with a Russ Andrews bag in tow.
Even more interesting was the room upstairs
used to demonstrate how much a change of cabling can make in a system. Taking a page out
of the Nordost playbook, the five-to-ten-minute demonstrations were, if anything, even
more ear-opening when applied to simple and inexpensive products that anyone could afford.
The system was set up using cheap electrical components found on eBay -- in other words,
stuff any college student might assemble for a dormitory system. The demonstration swapped
out the stock power cords, interconnects and speaker cables for two Russ Andrews power
cords ($410 each), one set of Kimber Kable Timbre interconnects ($126) and one set of
Kimber Kable 4PR speaker cables ($126). The total investment of $1072 made a jaw-dropping
improvement in the sound of the system and no doubt accounted for all those Russ Andrews
bags carried about the show floors. |
