Steve Deckert
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As Randy suggested, and I would agree, this years fest was the best ever! There was great energy all three days and the place was packed with happy people!
Bob and Randy came early like last year to prepare. Randy brought some new Betsy Baffles that just look killer good and will be replacing the model that has been on the site all year. Look for the new model around Halloween.
Bob updated his HR-1 speakers with a brand-new top driver that is for the first time completely crossover-less! The update has shoved the sound quality up a whole plateau. Driven reasonably well by the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier... I should say driven perfectly up to a normal listening volume without clipping but not a single dB more. The ZMA and TORII's were simply magical with these new speakers.
Friday started early (as usual) and I had the new 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier warmed up and paired with the new DNA2 speakers. The combination was so compelling that unlike all previous years, no one asked to hear anything else until almost 12 hours later when the ZMA finally went in. It is the ultimate testament to how great the amplifier is.
Actually, the DNA2 and the updated HR-1's were almost the only two speakers played on Friday. We also had a nice fire on Friday (and Saturday) night, and some tunes in the soon to be new wood shop. With tons of rain in the forecast, we saw very little.
One of the fun things we did was play track one from the Squirrel Hillbillies first album on CD, which was quite good, and then I played a master tape of the same song that I made only days before when they were here and literally stood in person between the speakers in the Decware listening room and sang it. This made very clear the difference between 16/44 digital and analog master tape. Not only was there nearly 10dB more dynamic range, but the imaging was natural and believable. It sounded basically completely real.
There were also many great LP's played on my vinyl rig which I have to say is just stunning with the changes I made last year to the Fidelity Research silver coil cartridge. Some direct to disc 45 RMP masters sounded as good as the master tapes (if not better due to the glorious colorations of the world class moving coil cartridge). Listening to it turned a whole room of chatter-boxes into silent statues until the entire LP was finished, not once but eight times over the corse of a couple hours. These were played with the DNA2 and 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier and then later on the ZMA and HR-1 combo.
The sound of these LP's is so powerful and dense that the entire experience sounds twice as good as literally everything else that preceded it all day... which is saying a lot because not a bad sound came out of the room all day. I was secretly cheesing big time!
So to have some fun, I thought I would blow some minds and I slipped Randys Open Baffle speakers in there in place of the DNA2 loudspeakers and dropped the needle on the record once again. The sound was glorious. Just as rich and big as the DNA2 and the look on people's faces was nearly priceless. Of course the fun didn't stop there. Randy of Caintuck Audio was in the adjacent hallway listening through the doorway and conversing with attendees and didn't notice that I had switched speakers to his own. I asked, "Hey, Randy... do you know which speakers are playing?" He replied "No... which ones?" "Yours!" I stated, and the the look on his face suddenly matched everyone else's!
Dan, a world-class chef brought chicken for dinner and of course everyone had the same thought after tasting it which was how the hell does someone make plane chicken without any coatings taste 10 times better than regular chicken? His food is just nuts...
The last solders staggered out of the room sans about 3:00 A.M. and the morning team was in around 5:00 A.M. to get some alone time with the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier.
On Saturday the place was packed. We ran out of parking again, just as we did on Friday. The bulk of the day was spent listening to the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier driving different speakers and then as the evening set in we flipped back and forth many times between these same two amplifier and speaker pairings. Never before has the fest NOT been continuous and I mean continuous speaker and amplifier swapping all day and night.
Both of these amplifiers that occupied 97.4% of the fest are in a league that transcend anything we've ever offered in 25 years.
It's so sad that the gentleman who was hear on Friday, who wanted to hear serous bass didn't come back on Saturday! Holy Crap, did we have a bass demo! One of the guests and his lovely wife had very expensive gear with elaborate subwoofers and confided in me that he was still unhappy with the bass. He hates boom, and loves deep tight bass that would be able to move the earth...
I thought, great... I don't have a demo set up to accomplish this just off the cuff. I couldn't even in the pressure of the moment think of a good recording for the demo. What demo...? Imperial SO subwoofers. A pair of 28 cubic foot folded horns at the west end of the decware listening room, for which the entire room and building was engineered to accommodate for flat node-less bass response down to 20 Hz.
In the panic of the moment I asked for suggestions and ended up with electronic bass music and then used it with the SE84UFO3 two watt mono blocks connected to the Zen Open Baffles parallel with the Imperial SO Horns. This is an impressively musical demo that has captured the room in past years, so off we go...
After about 5 minutes of that, I could see we were demoing a modest volume, musically extended setup when this guest was really hoping to feel his balls shake. Thank GOD for Randy of Caintuck Audio!!! Saved my ass again... slipped me a CD of Bela Flecks Hungry Hippo track. An exquisite 6 string bass, keyboard, banjo track that both the amplifiers and the speakers liked enough to completely change the mood from failure to extreme success!
Everyone was marveling that a 2 watt amplifier can have such deep bass that you can feel in the concrete, as though there were a 500 watt subwoofer(s) staged around the room. Then someone made the comment based on how outrageous this just was, that they would hate to hear what the ZMA would do on the same speaker setup!
Instead of dragging the ZMA across the room I suggested we just hook up the Zen TORII 60 watt Mono-blocks that were already setting right there next to the 2 watt amps. 30 times the power ought to be fairly obvious... and believe me it was!!!
I got it all hooked up and turned the amplifiers up just past 1/2 way and pressed play. The first note of this track starts with a crack that felt like someone backed their car into the building. Then the incredible tone and texture of the bass just blew our minds now that it was easily 10dB louder than with the 2 watt amp, and as Randy said, the entire room just got a new reference for low bass. It was perfectly linear as it dropped and so clean and rich and natural and glorious. Frankly I've never even heard bass sound that good before, so when I looked over at my guest and his eyes were twice as big as the smile on his face, I knew we had hit a home run : ). God bless Imperial Folded Horns!
Besides the DNA2 and HR-1 the only other speakers that were played were the Omegas and the Zen Open Baffles, and the ERRx.
I have to say, that it is quite an honor to host such an event, and very humbling when so many people travel from all over, in several cases thousands of miles, just to hear in person what the Decware sound is all about, or what is new! Seeing nearly a hundred adults of all ages become kids again when they get here is not something I take lightly and is frankly why I can push myself and our products to continuously improve... it's where the energy and the commitment comes from, so for that I thank you all dearly.
Sunday after a nice breakfast, we spent some time listening to the ZKIT60, our solid state kit amplifier located in the DIY section of the Decware web site. It sounded great paired with Bobs HR-1s and I am sure took several people by surprise. Dan K., the designer has updated the chassis and was here to demo it all three days!
Another thing to watch for is a bluetooth ready portable rig that you can set outside when you camp, party, or just relax around the fire pit. It has a sub and stereo speakers and sounds simply fabulous! It's so damn refreshing to hear a frequency balance where bass is the foundation to the music and the music is not played loud. It's inviting, and pleasant. If you read my rant on the General Audio section of this forum about Radios, you know what the alternative is and what I think about THAT sound. Anyway it was a serious success and will be available on Etsy soon.
I think of all the deep conversations that took place during the fest, from non-terrestrials to religion, cars, stereo, and music. Just wonderful! Thank you all so much for coming and happy listening!
Steve, DeVon and the entire Decware crew.
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