Yesterday's trip to Northern Audio

[wkhanna]

some members of Head-Fi set up a get-together at Northern Audio in Pittsburgh yesterday.

lots of cans & electronics......but we migrated upstairs to the 2-channel rooms....

Majico S3's & Focal Sopra N2's powered with Hegal electronics took center stage.

other goodies included Rouge Audio powered Elac, Focal bookshelf, & Golden Ear.

[Burke Strickland]

You are very fortunate to still have a store like that in your area. The few hifi/home theater stores left in Houston seem to either be hanging on by selling big screen TVs (with very little else on display) or are "appointment only" custom installers.

[Alaric]

What a great way to spend a day. It's been too many years since I annoyed sales people with gear auditions.

Bill, what did you think of the Rogue Audio gear?

[wkhanna]

a little more info on the 'meet' over at Head-Fi

[wkhanna]

You are very fortunate to still have a store like that in your area. The few hifi/home theater stores left in Houston seem to either be hanging on by selling big screen TVs (with very little else on display) or are "appointment only" custom installers.

in fact, the owner had two separate stores, one for head phones on one side of town, & this one on the other side, which originally was a 'by appointment only' for HT & hi-fi.
he has since combined the two with an open door policy for the hi-fi/HT stuff.
it has, according to him, created a good synergy as business significantly increased as a result of the confluence.

.........what did you think of the Rogue Audio gear?

we were not able to play any of our reference material that we brought on a memory stick since the owner is not geared for computer audio.
he could not even burn to SeeDee the redbook files let alone allow us to runsome hi-res stuff.

what we did here sounded good.
i have heard the Rouge stuff at Capital Audiofest.
they, however, had a tiny room outfitted with some smallish, nondescript speakers.
so i have never heard their gear in optimal settings.
but i have always had an affinity to Rouge.
before i got my Carver C-19 pre/phono pre, i had always lusted for the Ninety-Nine Super Magnum.
besides, they are made in my home state of Pennsylvania.

[Hdale85]

Did you listen to those Elac Speakers there? The Uni-Fi's? Curious what you thought of those as they are only about $500 bucks each.

[wkhanna]

compared to either of the two small Golden Ear Tritons, the Elac's seemed a bit thin overall with far less depth.
the consensus from Finleyville, PewterTA & me was that all of the Golden Ear range were fuller with good depth & V neutral over the entire fq range, at least to our ears.

[Hdale85]

Well yeah, the Golden Ear stuff is all twice as expensive.

The Golden Ear Triton 5's which only have 2 6" mids with 4 passive radiators plays all the way down to 25hz. And that's -3 at 25hz! It's pretty crazy considering those don't have a powered sub in them, the Trirton Three+'s have a powered sub and play down to 21hz.

Bob and I were talking about swinging by Northern Audio sometime after the start of the year, so nice to see they have 2 of the options I was wanting to look into. Generally speaking the ELAC stuff is intended a bit more towards HT setups with subs I believe.

[wkhanna]

Well yeah, the Golden Ear stuff is all twice as expensive.

a case where you get what you pay for.....at least at a price point before the diminishing return curve takes that big jump in slope.....

[Hdale85]

Would you say the Golden Ear stuff is all greatly better than your NatP's? I know you didn't get a side by side listen.

[wkhanna]

i yet have to hear a speaker that betters my floor-standing 65 litre NatP's at anything less than $4k/pair retail.

[Hdale85]

So still would choose your NatP's over the Golden Ear Triton One's even? If so then I think I'm going to go a different route all together. I'll still have to go listen to them likely.....but if the NatP's are still better then I think it would be silly of me to go shelling out that much for commercial offerings =/

[Hdale85]

Although I guess the Triton One's are 5k a pair....lol

[JonMarsh]

Always a good idea to get out and hear good stuff at a dealer- to calibrate expectations (especially with electronics) and to set a comparative benchmark relative to DIY builds. :T

[Hdale85]

Yeah I guess I was expecting more in that sort of price range lol. I have always loved Bills NatP's though and was always surprised how good they were for the money.

[Alaric]

they are made in my home state of Pennsylvania

And over on my side of the state, too! I looked them up when I read your comment.

[wkhanna]

returned to Northern Audio last night.....

got to listen to a $13k stack of headphone electronics on a $1k set of Focal headphones.....

it was nice........the bass that headphone systems can muster these days is not even remotely fathomable to the stuff i knew as a young audiophile in the 70's.

still........i just cannot get the same kind of emotional bond to the music as I do with open-air speakers.
there is still a sense of being one step removed from the original event for me.
& i will never get used to a soundstage that is imaged between my ears, even though as we all know, there is no lack of 'openness' in there.

$13k Questyle mono-block stack





top view





$2 - $3k little brother





V bad pic of Moon DAC that was used as the source for my audition

[Patterns]

Yeah I guess I was expecting more from dbal in that sort of price range lol. I have always loved Bills NatP's though and was always surprised how good they were for the money.

They have a great setup.

[wkhanna]

Hey, Patterns!

welcome to the forum.

have you been to northern audio?

[PewterTA]

Yes, and if you're in the area, we tend to have get-togethers at each of our houses. Always room for anyone in the audiophile world!