2011 KL International AV Show - Pictures!

Ok here are some photos from the show :



At the bottom of the stairs




TVs




Mediaplex room




Tube amps in Mediaplex room




XTZ PC speaker system I guess carried by Mediaplex




These were reviewed in a recent issue of Hi Fi +




Earphones galore. Another source of poison...more on that later




Wo Kee Hong Electronics




LS3/5A + AB1 !




U know them lah

TT - nice




French TT - nice nice




Rega DAC




Cute Yamaha Mini compo





Electrocompaniet




Stein music




TT in Stein music room




This looks interesting




I like the singer featured in this room




Marten + Bladelius




The small Castles impressed me




Bought some Furutech stuff




Marten + Vitus Audio

This one interesting. Care to share a little ?






Jo's room

They got a huge one at RM 10K




The Goldmunds were not the ones making music. Behind the rack, an Audio Research ref 150 was driving the Sonus Fabers !








Perfect HiFI room

I like Jo Ki's setup... his room is always crowded probably cos everyone knows how good it is already hehe



but anyway is the new Rogers LS3/5A similar to the old ones? Didnt managed to hear them in action today....

They were only on static display.

unig wrote:I like Jo Ki's setup... his room is always crowded probably cos everyone knows how good it is already hehe



but anyway is the new Rogers LS3/5A similar to the old ones? Didnt managed to hear them in action today....

This UFO speaker really catch up my eye...

Mr "OLIVE" seriously explain and sharing information about music server that link latest technology into hifi world...How many of us is ready into this latest technology ??? While many of CD lover explore into "BLACK vinyl" Are we ready to purchase hi definition song via downloading...This is the latest trend most of the showroom at KLIAVS

Qoute of the day - " CD's ???? people carry THUMBDRIVE now days " Mr Jo Ki

in Jo's room exhibition, seen some crystal ball tweak on thier LS3/5A .Looks very impressive,he use 2 different type of crystal[secret underlying,, ]..it may be the focal point and the most talks of the show.

joeling and fizi, can you please send the photos of my system to maxx@htkaki.com? Thank you

Fizi pulled out a good CD to test in my room. Really took me by surprise.

1541 wrote:in Jo's room exhibition, seen some crystal ball tweak on thier LS3/5A .Looks very impressive,he use 2 different type of crystal[secret underlying,, ]..it may be the focal point and the most talks of the show.

The geodesic dome and Cleopatra needle was already in used at last year show.

More info can be found here.

I only went on Saturday this year. Didnt have enough attraction to go for anorher round on Sunday.



I feel that this year, there were less people attending which made easier for me to move around.



Sonos and Olive room performed a great demo of the system with clear explanation on the technology and set up. But I cant imagine repeating the whole explanation again and again throughout the 3 days. respect to the guy.



Two thumbs up to Jo Ki on a wonderful set up. Others that was to my liking were Spendor and also Linn.



Some of the set up were too bright on the high notes that really pinced my ears.



The home cinema set ups were awesome.



Discount wise, I got a bargain at Desa Home. Finally took the plunge to upgrade my AV receiver. Also for the first time I get to hear the True HD in my home. Freebies received were e-Pad, Sony DVD player and also Logitech Universal remote control.

Headphone stuff. Blew some money on some of these :







It's great to be able to demo some of the headphones & amps. No way to do this under normal circumstances...

German Physiks. I'm very impressed by the dynamics !

joeling wrote:



German Physiks. I'm very impressed by the dynamics !

Joeling, tumpang some comments from your pictures which is btw excellent..

Yes, like last year, the GP (and the Nagras in the room across) are impressive.

Wonder who are the new owners of the set up, while listening to the system (about 1.00pm Sunday), a lady (not in picture) was busy scribbling "SOLD" signs on pieces of paper to be displayed on the sold units. Was told almost all of them found new owners

Anyway, kudos to the enthusiastic gentlemen in the picture who even entertained my 9 y.o son to a few quick lessons on music/sound appreciation.

But by far I was most impressed with the Electrocompaniet system (went back in twice on Saturday and again on Sunday), and Rethm speakers from India (in Steven Ooi's Soundtech HiFi from Sg Petani) with it's sound and sculptured looks. Another toe tapping set up was the Spendor's room with the TT with a golf ball counterweight

Ohh just to add, maybe it's me, but thot that the crowd this year was not like last year's.. with my wife and 2 kids on tow on Sunday, (Satrurday was a lot less) moving around was a relatively a breeze and we had on several occassions literally having the room to ourselves when listening...

One of the best set up.....Audio note !



Simple and got ummpphhhhh...Harbeth !



Yummyyyyy discount!!!



The best for a start....Epos + Creek =

joeling wrote:


This one interesting. Care to share a little ?

Jo's room

Hi Joe Ling,
This is my 1 TB external hard disc; naked one!

I am exploring various tweaks on external hard discs including different types of hard discs, and I find one with dedicated power supply gives the most satisfactory sonic performance, even better than my SSD! This is with caveat that my SSD drive is utilising power via the USB cable linked to Bryston BDP-1. What has been shown on your picture is mere my current stage of exploration, hence it is by no mean absolute and conclusive.

I know what I have done is not recommended as the static could kill my hard disc in a single zappp! In case you want to know, I did bring another hard disc which is loaded with the same files as back-up.

Jo Ki

elhefe wrote:

Two thumbs up to Jo Ki on a wonderful set up. Others that was to my liking were Spendor and also Linn.

Hi elhefe,

Thank you, Thank you.

1541 wrote:in Jo's room exhibition, seen some crystal ball tweak on thier LS3/5A .Looks very impressive,he use 2 different type of crystal[secret underlying,, ]..it may be the focal point and the most talks of the show.

Hi 1541,

The crystals on top of my speakers are important for me..., may be it is mere pscho-acoustics. If you dig up previous years' dialogue, these have been discussed.

Jo

unig wrote:I like Jo Ki's setup... his room is always crowded probably cos everyone knows how good it is already hehe



but anyway is the new Rogers LS3/5A similar to the old ones? Didnt managed to hear them in action today....

Hi Unig,

Thank you for your assurance. One reason why my room is always crowded is perhaps there is no pressure like sales talk??

I have not heard how the new Rogers sounded. I did run into sales manager of WKH and he said that he would arrange a pair for me... I would only know if that happened.

Jo Ki

[quote="jokiarch"]

joeling wrote:

Hi Jo,

Just my humble suggestion; possible to build a metal casing for the HDD? To keep it being "bake" by EMI.. and possible to mount it with it top cover facing up again, which is normally how HDD is mounted in the CPU. Will there be a possible sound improvement?



BTW, your system was great when listening from the sweet spot. I must admit that didnt strike me as hard as it was like last year. Last year setup just grab attention no matter where the sitting location. There were more body this time round... but kind of miss the fluidity. Again possibly I didnt see long enough to hear the music I would be familiar with.



I was surprised that you recognised me when I only intro my name. I sincerely thank you for your hospitality.

Joeling,

On behalf of the H4S members & team, we would like to thank you for the nice pictures.

If you are around KL/PJ the next time, PM me your number & do call me. We have a token of appreciation for you...no big deal, but hope it helps your system in a small way.

Cheers,

Hi-Fi 4 Sale wrote:Joeling,

On behalf of the H4S members & team, we would like to thank you for the nice pictures.

If you are around KL/PJ the next time, PM me your number & do call me. We have a token of appreciation for you...no big deal, but hope it helps your system in a small way.

Cheers,

Hmmm..... the 'thing' that you brought on Thurs night to our room?

Hi Joe, I have seen some of these photos on another forum. Makes me wish I was there! Thanks for sharing.

adrian4454 wrote:
Hi Jo,

Just my humble suggestion; possible to build a metal casing for the HDD? To keep it being "bake" by EMI.. and possible to mount it with it top cover facing up again, which is normally how HDD is mounted in the CPU. Will there be a possible sound improvement?

BTW, your system was great when listening from the sweet spot. I must admit that didnt strike me as hard as it was like last year. Last year setup just grab attention no matter where the sitting location. There were more body this time round... but kind of miss the fluidity. Again possibly I didnt see long enough to hear the music I would be familiar with.

I was surprised that you recognised me when I only intro my name. I sincerely thank you for your hospitality.

Hi Adrian, I do recognise you when you introduced yourself as Adrian, I remembered you as "Adrian with numbers" (Adrian 4454). Good to meet up with you.

Thank you for your suggestion on the hard disc; I am exploring its responses to various tweaks... sort of, in the midst of it and KLIAV show comes. I do have a casing for it but it sounded far less desireable when compared to the 'naked' state like the one shown in the pictures. I have managed to fire up my system tonight, and the same hard disc is now sitting on its side... By next week, it will be hung between the rack... and once I have done all these, I can more or less settle down and let it sit correctly as suggested. One thing for sure, I would understand better on hard disc in audio application.

Well, I was in 8040 last year, which is a much bigger room and it has better room acoustic than 8038 I have this year. Also I am hoping to increase the sonic metaphor, the stature. With the main power cord, AOR-003, which is a fantastic cable but when it is freshly made and only plugged into my system on Thursday night, I do not expect it to be as flawless as I had wished. But if you had a chance to listen to it on Sunday, perhaps you would understand better as it begins to sound more "free" and open.

Jo Ki

Hi Jo, Thanks for responding.You are certainly 1 hardworking tweaker

Just to share some pointers over the HDD as I work as IT Tech long time ago... Although I never try out computer music yet, but I think the same principle still apply.



The HDD that u use, is an install to CPU internal HDD, is a real fragile baby. Worst case, a 10cm drop at edge will render it completely useless. Although nowadays unit is more resilient, but dont bet on it.



Some of the high rev unit has momentum enough to move itself when speed up to very high rev. So need to be careful when putting it at a compromise position and handling.



Ya, IMO too, sometimes it seem complete absence of EMI can be a bad thing. As the initial design or fine tune of a equipment is done at the most common environment that it fill with this "distortion".~



Ya, did had plan to come at the last day, but overcrowding also mean no joy of listening. Will Check out on the power cord that u favor on... of course, just to check on the review and spec.. dont have the pocket deep enough to buy

jokiarch wrote:
Hi Unig,

Thank you for your assurance. One reason why my room is always crowded is perhaps there is no pressure like sales talk??

I have not heard how the new Rogers sounded. I did run into sales manager of WKH and he said that he would arrange a pair for me... I would only know if that happened.

Jo Ki

Hi Jo, thanks for reply and yes, if u ever get the chance to test the new Rogers please remember to put up a review here including comparison with the old Rogers. Wanna know whether it's worth the price...

I second adrian's comment on the HDD. At one time I pointed out that HDD at the consumer level, i.e. HDD like this, will eventually fail. So some sort of backup scheme is needed. At the TVX room in KLAVS, Raymond actually puts his movies on a RAID system. Of course he relies on his movies for a living, he has hundreds of them, and so he can't afford to lose any. But can we really tolerate the loss of one of our HDDs ? It is not a simple task if one has half a dozen or more 1TB HDDs. How to back up ? The cost of another set of disc alone is over 1.8-1.9k !! I don't pretend to have an answer because I myself have 7 1TB and 1 1.5TB disc and I am having a headache thinking of an elegant and cost-effective backup solution. I may resort to industry-type (which is typically catridge/tape based) backup in loseless compressed mode. But the startup hardware cost for those are not cheap either.

An interesting 'experiment' to try. With the HDD working (i.e. the internal disk is spinning), take it up in your hand. You can actually feel the gyroscopic effect due to the high rpm of the internal disks. As adrian points out, the HDDs needs to be put into a proper enclosure. Perhaps a NAS setup over a gigabit LAN is best (this rules out wireless BTW).

This is why no matter how I look at it, for absolute fidelity, relying on HDD based music serving still has a lot of limitations at the moment.

$$$ solve the problems.

Just do a NAS with RAID system running over Fiberchannel.
Then implement a weekly or monthly Archival system to dump all the warez onto a Data Archiving system from Hitachi or EMC2.

And yes, Internal HDDs are also meant to be nailed or bolted down onto something solid (or at least enclosed in a protective shell that should also be vibration absorbing). Otherwise the spinning harmonics actually causes more read errors (and hence more error correction triggering) between the heads and the platters. But thankfully since the error correction and error recovery onboard the HDD electronics are so robust, the user experience is not affected until something physical is compromised (ie worn bearing or head servo motor wear & tear), then all the S.M.A.R.T. signals will start wailing like an air raid siren. LOL.

SSD drives on the other hand, hold lots of promise. Totally zero mechanical parts. Just pure electronics (until the chips themselves also wear out due to read/write operations). But reading alone doesn't wear out the silicon fabric so much either. So, SSD is the way to go. Too bad its capacity is not quite as big as those mechanical precision frisbees and also still very cost prohibitive.

WongKN wrote:I second adrian's comment on the HDD. At one time I pointed out that HDD at the consumer level, i.e. HDD like this, will eventually fail. So some sort of backup scheme is needed. At the TVX room in KLAVS, Raymond actually puts his movies on a RAID system. Of course he relies on his movies for a living, he has hundreds of them, and so he can't afford to lose any. But can we really tolerate the loss of one of our HDDs ? It is not a simple task if one has half a dozen or more 1TB HDDs. How to back up ? The cost of another set of disc alone is over 1.8-1.9k !! I don't pretend to have an answer because I myself have 7 1TB and 1 1.5TB disc and I am having a headache thinking of an elegant and cost-effective backup solution. I may resort to industry-type (which is typically catridge/tape based) backup in loseless compressed mode. But the startup hardware cost for those are not cheap either.

An interesting 'experiment' to try. With the HDD working (i.e. the internal disk is spinning), take it up in your hand. You can actually feel the gyroscopic effect due to the high rpm of the internal disks. As adrian points out, the HDDs needs to be put into a proper enclosure. Perhaps a NAS setup over a gigabit LAN is best (this rules out wireless BTW).

This is why no matter how I look at it, for absolute fidelity, relying on HDD based music serving still has a lot of limitations at the moment.

this would be derailing the thread further, but oh well.



the most cost effective solution is to build and store all the data in an unraid hdd array. works like a raid 5 with a parity drive, albeit in software mode. slower than a true hardware raid but a few fold cheaper. even initial cost is cheap. you just need a working computer to plug in all the different hdd. unraid detects the hdd, and adds it to the array. a parity drive is assigned to a single, largest hdd in the array.



when a single data hdd gets damaged, the data stored inside the hdd could be rebuilt by using the parity drive.

when the parity drive gets damaged, the parity could be recalculated without affecting the data hdd.

when multiple data hdd gets damaged, you lose all the data stored inside the damaged drives. but then again, simultaneous hardware malfunction are *hopefully* rare.