by Kevin OBrien on June 5th 2013

NEWPORT BEACH T.H.E. SHOW 2013 - YFS SHOW REPORT

The YFS / VSA crew is back from Newport Beach, CA and we must say it was a great show. We would like to thank all the visitors for stopping in and saying hello, and most importantly, for taking the time out to hear our gear. THANK YOU.

The weather was fabulous and the music was superb. We have some pics to share with our readers and a few notes we feel are worthy of mentioning. A big thanks goes out to Peter Breuninger, Robert Harley, Jason Serinus, and all the reviewers who came to visit our room. We'd also like to give a shout out to Peter at Constellation Audio. His amps are AMAZING. THANK YOU guys!

I also wanted to personally thank Paul Zimmer and Leif Swanson as well as Devon Von Schweikert for their help setting our room up and doing the heavy lifting. You guys are awesome! A lot of folks don't realize these are the guys that make these shows happen. Thank you!

First off, let's get everybody familiar with what we had on display. There's always some confusion it seems about what was in the show rack so we'll give you a list below.

We felt we got some pretty decent sound. The room is always a battle but things seemed to sound good right out of the gate which was a nice change of pace. We tweaked the system Thursday and then a little more on Friday and by Saturday things were sounding GREAT.

We had plenty of folks in and out of the room throughout the weekend but the main highlights for me were meeting Fred from Audio Prana representing Metrum Acoustics, Dusty from Channel Islands Audio, John Thompson from J.River, Steve from Empirical Audio, as well as a host of other non industry-affiliated folks.

After speaking with Steve from Empirical Audio, we cannot wait to get our hands on Steve's Off Ramp 6 SPDIF converter which should be coming out in the near future. It implements the XMOS USB input chip and should be compatible with all Linux, Mac and Windows based computer transports. We're excited!

The California atmosphere, the weather, as well as the really NICE cars outside of the Irvine Hilton were all reminders that we're some of the luckiest guys on the planet. We get to play with VSA speakers and mind blowing amps and DACs all in the name of providing outstanding sound for the most discerning audiophiles. What more could we ask for? (OK, a winning lottery ticket would be nice!)

Well, that pretty much wraps things up for us and we're excited to show some really cool NEW products from VSA at the upcoming Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver. You'll all have to wait and see what we're referring to. You won't be disappointed!!!

THANKS for reading!

 - YFS Design Team

by Kevin OBrien on March 21st, 2013

YFS-VSA AXPONA 2013 SHOW REPORT

We are all back safe and mostly sound from Axpona 2013 and we have to say it was a great trip and an awesome show! Here's a 'thank you' to the city of Chicago and to Steve for putting on a great show. We have a feeling we'll be back next year for the great food, the great sounds, and the incredible gear. We also wanted to thank Albert and Damon Von Schweikert and the entire VSA family for giving us the opportunity to share the Othello Room.

The room sounded great and we can't thank VSA enough for an overall top-notch weekend. We don't want to forget to thank Joe Lavrencik from Critical Mass Systems for supplying the killer component stands in our room. A 'thank you' goes out to Shahin at EMM Labs as well. Thank you Shahin for getting us the EMM Labs DAC2X in time to get it integrated into our rack for the show. Everything sounded great!

We wanted to give our readers a glimpse of the Axpona '13 YFS-VSA component list. We figured posting it for you to see would be the easiest way to do this. Our line-up was incredible as far as the gear was concerned and the VSA VR-100XS speaker system was absolutely glorious! We were thankful for the opportunity to show our latest iteration of the YFS HD Ref-3 server, the Limited Edition. The LE version of our Ref-3 takes an already great source component and elevates it to a new level.

We keep everything the same as the Special Edition but implement an 8-core processor, our latest YFS DC power supplies, and our latest YFS Reference dual-headed USB interconnect. The DC linear power supplies can be seen in the photo above. They are the two silver boxes below the HD Ref-3 LE.

The YFS 12V DC power supply powers the SOtM USB PCI card and the YFS 5V DC power supply powers the USB power for the EMM Labs DAC2X via our new YFS dual-headed USB cable. See our EMM Labs DAC2X review for more info. We wanted to note that we were displaying a special new Master Built USB cable as well which uses Delphi Aerospace conductors. These conductors are identical to the rest of the Master Built Signature cable line conductors, hence the price.

We received some "Best of Show" awards from various reviewers so we know we're on the right track. We'd like to thank Myles Astor, Peter Breuninger, and all The Absolute Sound staff as well as the Stereophile staff for taking their time out to listen and give us their feedback. We'd also like to thank Greg Weaver, the senior editor over at Positive-Feedback who will be reviewing our HD Ref-3 SE this summer... Greg Weaver also gave us a "Best of Show" award for the Axpona event.

THANKS Guys!

The shot above shows the YFS-VSA team. Pictured from left to right: Brad Easton, Mike O'Brien, Kevin O'Brien, Albert Von Schweikert, and Damon Von Schweikert. Here's a link to VSA's Facebook page which has more info on the show awards, etc. that were given out for our Othello Room set up. And yes, we were part of the room although YFS was not mentioned specifically in the video. 

We hope to see you all at the next audio show... Until next time.

-YFS Design Team