Best Sound at the New York Audio Show?

Best sound at the show? It wasn't close and it wasn't fair. The best sound was, without a doubt, in the MBL / Sensorium AVR room where MBL importer Jeremy Bryan demonstrated why he's among the best and most meticulous/fanatical set-up guys in the business.

It wasn't fair because his was a 7.1 channel system featuring 7 MBL Radialstrahlers—in front a pair of 111 Fs L/R and in the center the 120RC, a new, larger 3-way hybrid center channel stand mount specially tuned to meet THX Certification specs and costing $11,300 ( a smaller edition, the 126RC is available for $6200).

Side surrounds were the MBL 116 F (starting at $29K/pr). Rears were MBL 120s a stand mount 3 way hybrid priced at $21,400/pr.

Augmenting that grouping were four JL Audio "Gotham" active subwoofers placed around the room, plus a Sony 4K projector and a 115" Screen Innovations Black Diamond screen (the photo doesn't begin to do this set-up justice). Oh, and there was also a UnitedHome Audio Phase 11 reel to reel tape deck and some very high quality tapes. Plus the MBL electronics and Wireworld and MBL cabling.

You needed a ticket for the demo and it was well worth the wait. The program consisted of a few two channel tape tunes followed by absolutely stupendous sounding and looking concert music videos all sourced from Blu-ray and up-sampled to 4K by the Sony projector.

First up on video was a scene from "Roy Orbison Black and White Nights" and I was floored. I own that video. I've never heard it so life-like and seamlessly presented. It's difficult enough getting a subwoofer blend at home. Bryan managed it perfectly in a fairly large hotel room and from the reaction it seemed that every seat in the house was a good one.

I'm not a Rush fan or a drum solo fan but even the finale, Neil Peart's incredibly long "big band" drum extravaganza held my full attention.

It was truly an amazing presentation. I sat in a front row seat and couldn't hear the sound coming from any of the speakers directly in front of me.

No wonder the crowd exiting before I entered for the next show left excited and grinning from ear to ear!

COMMENTS
CEsplgr's picture

Well,I will have to agree that was the best audio show. Looks like everybody is prepared with show. - Bonaventure Senior Living

LasterD88's picture

Any speaker or system that wins an award in New York is a must have for me. I'm taking my car down to the auto shop at https://www.tiptopautobody.ca/ next weekend and I'm going to ask about getting a system like this installed. I hope to be grinning ear to ear like all those lucky New Yorkers soon enough!

X