by Kevin OBrien on October 25, 2013

RMAF 2013 - YFS SHOW REPORT

Denver is a great place to be this time of year. The fall colors and the cool, crisp air remind me that the snow will be flying just around the corner.  For now though, the weather is great, the foliage is amazing, and it's audio time in the Mile High City.

We're taking the time out to give the folks who could not make the journey to Denver a peek into what went on in the YFS Room at the 10th annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. We were truly grateful for having Meitner DesignConstellation Audio, and Von Schweikert Audio support us at this year's show. Thank you Shahin, Peter, and Albert for an amazing opportunity to show the world your truly outstanding gear.

An equipment list below gives our readers a glimpse into the scene inside room 542. As always, there's a little left to be desired as far as the room layout goes but most exhibitors pretty much had the same room to work with. We were looking into renting a ballroom but that's not going to happen ANY time soon due to pricing.

 

 

The YFS Room was lucky enough to be graced by some of the hardest working reviewers in the industry including Jonathan Valin of The Absolute Sound, Stephen Mejias from Stereophile, and Mal & Kirsten Kenney from Part-Time Audiophile. I'm sure we're forgetting a few others, namely from Enjoy The Music and Stereomojo, and a few other reviewers from some other audiophile magazines we can't remember at this point.

We don't want to forget to give a shout-out to Chris Connaker at Computer Audiophile. He stopped by our room on Thursday to chat and talk computer audio as per usual and discuss the latest Pearl Jam happenings. Thank you guys for taking the time out to come listen, snap photos, and give us feedback. We truly appreciate it. We would also like to thank all the showgoers who showed up to chat and listen to our latest designs. It's always fun to catch up and describe our latest iterations of computer audio madness. In fact, this year we debuted our brand new YFS Mac Mini which we are truly excited about. Thank you folks.

We would really like to thank Jonathan Valin for taking the time to stop by our room. We don't play analog sources such as vinyl or tape at any of the audio shows we exhibit at. Unfortunately, those are his favorite sources, but he still managed to give a listen to our system and compliment us on our sound. In fact, it turns out he liked our tonal balance and presentation along with our smooth sound...

YFS has some announcements it would like to make regarding some new developments that took place this year at the show. We became Authorized Endeavor Audio dealers! Check out their brand new E-3 floor standing loudspeaker pictured above. Holy crap did these things sound good for the money. In fact, they sounded great regardless of cost. Nice work Endeavor Audio! We also ran into Mat Weisfeld from VPI who hopefully will welcome us back into the VPI family. (We were recent dealers up until a year or so ago). It was great talking with you at the show Mat. And yes, we do actually listen to vinyl.

EMM Labs will be coming out with a firmware update for their DAC2X some time in the near future which should give the Meitner MA-1 as well as the DAC2X a nice boost in performance. EMM Labs will also be debuting a new Reference DAC some time next year which utilizes a two-chassis design. One chassis houses the power supply and the other chassis is for the D to A conversion circuitry. Pricing will come in at ~ $30,000.

Overall, we had a great time at the 2013 RMAF and we hope next year is even better as far as attendance goes. If there were any complaints, that would be it. It seemed like less folks were at the show this year in comparison to last year's show. We were assuming the Broncos game and the beer fest were partly to blame but I have a feeling the recent flooding in Colorado was really the reason attendance was down. Hopefully folks will rebuild and be back for 2014.

Until next year...

-YFS Design Team