The Best Sound of KLIAV -How to tell?

Hi to all,
 
After visiting this year's AV show, I ended up more confused than ever. In my humble opinion, the sound was generally better than last year. I wanted to hear the best sound but ended up hearing many good setups. A fair comparison would be impossible. Each excelled in their own department.
 
In the end, of the many recordings I made, only one gave me a meaningful comparison. La vazina canine, was my choice for the day as the bandwidth is within the mediocre iPhone's microphone frequency range.
 
What sounded good to my ears in two separate venues turned out to be vastly different in the recordings. Maybe, it would be interesting to compare all the setups comparing same music recorded via a good studio/audiophile grade microphone. Can it tell the real picture without the influence of price and sexy looks?
 

Judge for yourself. 

Setup A

Setup B

I totally agree with you. Each system excel in its own way. However, for me, there were systems that I enjoyed more than the others.

Some were. But difficult to tell which one really sounded the best. Jazz Variant of Manger sounded fabulous in one system and Mystery Woman in another. Even with headphones, it wasn't easy as all three I tested was demo'ing with EQ set.

The room which livingvinyl2.com was demo'ing was very good with the 100dB over loud drums.

In another system, the depth and sound stage was outstanding but vocals sounded bit coloured.

Honestly, judging the best system for your home setup is rather risky if we were to base our decision of what we hear in the show.

Enjoyed the show. Kudos to the organizer for the effort.

I attended for the first time and found it was very well organised. The gear they all had on demo was truly a gigantic effort. If this same event in 2016 could be anyway near what it was during the past weekend, I would not miss it for anything. Congrats to all the management team and participants. A fabulous job well-done indeed. Impressive.

hi, av2day.com is inviting readers and audiophiles to vote for the best sound and AV systems. please click http://www.av2day.com/2015/08/kliav-2015-best-sound-best-picture-your-votes-please/

Interesting selection from the readers. Point to ponder – the super duper, big bucks system did not get nominated at all. It had all the necessary ingredients; best cables, amps, speakers room tuning, big room, cable elevator and professionals to setup it up correctly.
 
What could be the missing link? Any thoughts?

stc,

the rooms that received the most votes were the hifi creations rooms.
the components in these rooms were not exacty at budget, entry-level prices.
the kronos sparta turntable costs about RM100,000 while the kronos pro costs around RM200,000. The skogrand cables used to connect the systems cost more $$$$$... about as much as Nordost cables.
The cheapest components in these rooms were probably the Magnet amps.

SFLam, exactly my point. It wasn't the cheapest but it was only about half way of the most expensive system. The other choice was PMC/Bryston combo. 

I was thinking it could be due to the TT but then PMC's combo was all digital, I think. 

It wasn't the price, the size of the room, the lack of expertise and it wasn't about digital or analogue.

You guys are right! It's very difficult to judge an audio system on demo in a hotel room such as the recent KLIAV show. It's a bit like diferent chefs being given a free reign to use any ingredients, any recipe and cooking style, with the only constant being the plate!(in this case, the hotel room!) The result is that the culinery experience must invigorite your senses and make you forget about your life problems even if it's for just a brief minute or two.

All systems on demo sounded diferent at diferent levels, only because they all use diferent brands and types of equipment in the same room to do only one thing, make them sound as good as possible.

When setting up a demo in an event like KLIAV show, where you only have 3 days to set up and tune a system to sound it's best means at least 72 hours of little or no sleep for the exhibitors prior to the opening day! Those setting up big systems are generally disadvantaged by logistics of having so many big and bulky items to move in and set up within 72 hours. The smaller or simpler systems are easier on the logistics part, and smaller systems tend to be more room friendly too, so it's no wonder many readers of AV2Day and KLIAV show visitors prefered smaller systems as their choice!

I was actually not suprised that Hifi Creations got as much votes as they did, as they had a very agreeable, well rounded and non offensive sound. Many people I spoke to were actually astounded that they managed to make such a big system work in a small room, which is more about setting up skills then anything.

The Bryston/PMC demo by AV Designs is another succesfull showcase of setting up skills. The system was a simple digital system using just an integrated amp for power source, yet the fact that the exhibitor made the system work in a more open location is again more about setting up skills than anything. In this case, the trick is to make a small/simple system sound more robust and bigger than it actualy is. It's a bit of a mind game and about managing expectations, really.

It doesn't matter if the system is digital or analog, as demo-ed by the 2 top voted systems, as long as the exhibitor knows the limits of his equipments, the room behavior and with some setting up experience, one can do wonders given 72 hours! In the end, it's not so much about price of equipment, or musical storage format. It's all about the skills of setting a system given the limitations of time and the over damp acoustic feature of the hotel rooms.

The AV2Day team had our chance to try it out last year(when we did the "Golden Ear" double blind test with show goers!) and will always understand the amount of work and knowledge that goes in to a good show demo.     

KLIAV show is now one of the best in the region, and we should be proud that our industry people had put in much effort to make it a great show, every year!

Good observation. The Ocean LS did captivate me and defied law of physics. dCS Verdi was another system which again defied the law of physics with too much boom even though it was placed in a bigger room which marred the otherwise well balanced sound.  The PIC confessed that it was not ideally setup due to certain factors.

Our AV shows have been around for about 13 years. Most of the exhibitors would have been very familiar with the room acoustics by now. 3 days multiply with 13 years is a long time to understand the room acoustics.

Harbeth had used the exact setup for all their demo. This year, their latest speaker did not get a single nomination even though the Super Five did receive accolades in other foreign shows. I too did find it different and was wondering if my taste has changed.

The big rooms are not much different from many audiophiles' room. Speakers such as the Dynaudio Evidence were designed to eliminate ceiling reflection.

PMC was very clever to have a nice little stage for their speakers to control the real wall reflection.

Could the personal favourites influenced by the carefully selected tracks list which matched the system and room acoustics?