Listening Session at Grant's place - Apogee speakers and a nicely treated room

[ua100k]

I had the pleasure of being hosted privately by Grant at his excellent listening room. Makes anyone jealous to have a separate place like his and even more jealous to see it so well build, treated and furnished.

This is a place that is constructed with audio from the Studs onwards. Instead of Sandy's wrath, Grant turned it into Sandy's Reward and improved it even further.

I will let Grant give you all the millions of details from isolating the studs to the 4 layers of quietrock used.

First the apogee speakers were rebuilt for Grant and are superb in annunciation and clarity. I kept repeating how clean the speakers were, that is missing distortion. Grant has augmented the Apogee's with some nice subs. however the apogees themselves go down to a decent level.

Next the room is to die for. We played I-Ching Gadamaylin, Steve Struss Mr. Bones, Eiji Oui Rachmanoff Symphonic Dances, Blood Sweat and tears Spinning Wheel (vinyl Rip).
The orchestra was layered and open beyond the back wall. Each instrument was precise in its 3D layer. In addition, it simply did not appear that the back wall was there. The stage went beyond the wall - a really hard trick to pull off without smearing or phase shifting. Gadamaylin has spades of image with the phase shifting going on in the recording. It all appeared on the side wall also. A bit was missing from the left wall (probably due to the old AC duct), but such a minor detail.  BST was staged wide with vocals again in layers and 3D.

Excellent listening. Thank you Grant - if it was bigger we could have a RAVE there! Very nice and cozy for a small crowd. You will also have to listen to his Lampizator DAC. I did not have a chance as it was not fully burnt in yet.

[Lissnr]

Hi Merrill, Thanks for the kind words, it was a pleasure having you stop by and bring such great (and well recorded) tunes. As we discussed, I've been doing some upgrades since Sandy and overall I'm very pleased with how well they're coming along. I will let you know when the final pieces of the puzzle arrive and we can take it from there again. Just as an "aside" (pun INtended) the slight sound-skew to the left was due to that stack of boxes sitting on the floor in front of the left speaker and surrounding area all along the left wall..(I'm still in the process of wrapping up a lot of loose ends as you know). When it's clear/ back to normal, the L/R "fill" is right on the mark... Anyway, a big thanks again, it was a great session.

[rollo]

  It was a treat for me as well to hear the rebuilt Apogees. The Arions shure did make them sound wonderful along with the BG radia subwoofer system and that TRL Dude baby oh my !
  Apogees like power and 1000W into 4 ohms was a treat. The room is well "Da Room". Very well done sir. The new DAC had only 10 hours or so on it and still the sound was great.
  Thanks for checking out the Arions and the listening session.


charles