TunesFest 2024 - The Gear

by Andy Simonds

TunesFest is a small group of friends and family that gather once a year to try and out-do one another playing the best audiophile tracks they can find. Now 23-years running. Read a bit more about it in this blog post. 

In the previous post I talked about the music. This one is about the Gear. And oh my, the gear a highlight of the night.

It started with a late-breaking schedule changed that switched the event this year to my house. I have a very adequate system with B&W 804 D3s being driven by a Hegel H360 and a Lumin T2 DAC/Streamer. But the rules of TunesFest stipulate (loosely) that for someone to host, they should have a nice upgrade to their system since the last time they hosted. In this case I had no such upgrade. I  hosted down in California in 2021, but since then no cash had been allocated to my stereo hobby. My goal was to upgrade something and I set my sights on a turntable.

In 23 years of TunesFest events, we have never driven the front-end with vinyl. I saw an opportunity. I started by chatting with Connon at Tune Hif-Fi of Seattle. Not too far from my house, it was good to have a deep chat about turntables. He re-acquainted me with the Rega and I zoomed on the Rega P8 who's design I always liked. Great stuff. This is at the top of my current list for turntable options.

But I was getting cold feet. I didn't want to make an impulse purchase and there might not be enough time to make this happen with TunesFest looming a mere two weeks away. My grumpy colleagues would likely complain that they would not have time to find precious tracks on vinyl. 6-months might be the right amount of notification required to bring vinyl into the next TunesFest.

A couple days later I wandered into Definitive Audio of Seattle. It had been 7 or 8 years since I had visited them and I was curious what their product portfolio looked like. We talked turntables, but by that time I was convinced that was a longer-term question. I soon found myself sitting in front of a set of Wilson Sabrina loudspeakers. I've heard Wilson many times before. I haven't been a big fan of the industrial design (those huge ones at the top of their line are quite bizarre looking) - but the sound has always been incredible. Involving, musical, sharp clear and warm. 

But what I was sitting in front of on that day not only looked good, and also sounded fantastic. The Wilson Sabrinas were sparking some kind of missing experience my ears had longed for. That spawned an idea. Myself, and at least 3 other members of our TunesFest group, were talking about new speakers. This would be a great way for a dealer to get in front of a bunch of potential customers, and for us to have a breathtaking set of new gear for Tunesfest 2024. A perfect Win-Win!

Definitive was all-in on the idea. And they did not disappoint. 2 weeks later Hans from Definitive and I were lifting a pair of Wilson Sabrinas onto a hand truck and wheeling them into my living room. But Hans was not going to leave it at that. He didn't want us to have a partial experience. He rejected my Hegel H360, my interconnects, my speaker cables and power cord.  What he set us up with was the following:

  • Wilson SabrinaX loundspeakers
  • D'Agostino Progression Integrated Amplifier 
  • Transparent Cable Ultra Speaker Cables
  • Transparent Cable Ultra Interconnects

  • Shunyata - Alpha v2 NR Power Cable

Roughly a $50k+ stereo setup. The only piece of gear of my own left in the system was my Lumin T2 DAC/Streamer. It did not disappoint, so my ego could be somewhat intact after all my other gear was kicked aside.

Photos:

 

Hans spent close to 2 hours positioning the speakers and my listening position. The first time I've seen this process up close and I now have a new-found appreciation for getting speakers professionally installed in a listening room. I read a lot about this and I've spent a lot of time fine-tuning speaker positions in my listening rooms. This was at another level. Jumping ahead. TunesFest is over and my system is back in place. My B&Ws are sitting in the exact position Hans put the Sabrinas, and it is like I have a new pair of speakers. The new speaker positions were about 6 inches further from the wall and a spaced a bit further apart then where I had them before. Don't underestimate the sonic impact of the smallest adjustment of speaker position in your room.

At this point, I realize I need to write another blog post that simply reviews this setup and what we experienced that night at TunesFest. It was breathtaking. All the audiophile adjectives come into play. Holographic sound, amazing positioning of instruments, wide soundstage, incredible clarity at the top end, firm impactful bass at the bottom end.

One of my criticisms of B&Ws (and I have had B&W for 20+ years) is that for all the clear, crisp delivery of high frequency from their tweeter-on-top design, I often find that the high frequencies are too noisy on a lot of music and don't blend that well with the mid-range. Still a great speaker for sure, but nothing like that was present with this new setup. It wasn't a fair fight. $20k speakers driven by a $20k amp and all the high-end cable in-between, was going to deliver. And it did. It wasn't even close. 

My sad B&Ws shoved into my office for TunesFest.

 

I've traveled to numerous trade shows and dealerships to listen to equipment. From the LA Audio show, Axpona and the new PAC Audio fest here in Seattle. But there is nothing that compares to hearing something in your own room. Almost all dealers will volunteer to let you borrow equipment to get a good listening session in before making a purchase. Take them up on that offer.

I generally think of myself as a Speaker-first oriented listener. Amps are next in importance and then down the line. But now I question that. The handshake between speaker and amplifier on this setup was surprising. I swapped out the D'Agostino for my Hegel, and the change in clarity and soundstage on the Sabrinas was noticeable. Not after listening to several songs and switching back and forth, but 30 seconds into the first song. It was stark and clear. That D'Agostino deserved half the credit for what we experienced that night.

So at the end of our TunesFest night (7 hours of listening), we concluded that the  powerful Wilson and D'Agostino presentation was easily at the top of any prior TunesFest experienced before. Wilson and D'Agostino are now at the top of our list for aspiring upgrades to our systems.What we listened to that night was actually at the bottom end of both those companies product lines, but that is an unfair way to characterize what these products are. We were squarely in a no-compromise level of audio performance that these companies deliver at every level of their product line. I can honestly say that bang-for-the buck, this system was a clear deal.

Thanks to Hans and Definitive Audio for the setup. And we had a great night of competitive audiophile listening. A win-win for sure!

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