In addition to the gear at the store, Audio Vision SF expanded to a ballroom a block away in the Golden Gateway Holiday Inn in order to accommodate really large systems. This was a chance for audiophiles who don’t attend audio shows to hear how an ultra-high-end system sounds.
To be able to maximize our time at this event, we treated ourselves to a weekend in San Francisco at the hotel. Our room on the 24th floor with two walls of floor to ceiling windows overlooking San Francisco was an unexpected bonus!
But hey, we have to confess. While Becky and I love music and audio, on Saturday afternoons this time of year we watch our Baylor Bears and Auburn Tigers play football. When we did try to break away for the games and go downstairs to listen to the system, we had to go watch the 4th quarter when the score of the Baylor game got too close for comfort. It was a great Saturday as both teams won.
So, we want to say thank you to Drew Gagliano, our reviewer who also lives in the Bay Area, for coming over on Saturday to write about the events at the store. Drew’s post will be up soon.
Between football games, we did listen to the Gryphon system. This was Audio Vision SF’s debut of Gryphon as their newest line.
Philip O’Hanlon, the stylish Irish master of ceremonies, was a most gracious host. He did a great job of sharing the system and going into detail with us about the Beatles newly released Abbey Road 50th Anniversary album. He even took the time to do some comparisons of songs from the new album and the original British release.
As always Philip was getting wonderful music from the Gryphon system. The speakers were the Gryphon Pantheons for around $50,000.
The amp, preamp, and DAC were also from Gryphon. The initial source was the Innuos Statement music server. There were also two analog sources, a Sonorus-modified Revox PR99 was playing tapes from The Tape Project, and the turntable was a Technics SL-1000R.
Lenny Mayeaux, Vice President of Sales for Audience, was also on hand. We always enjoy visiting with Lenny, and the Audience frontRow cables (see our review of these cables here) and their forte V8 power conditioner certainly paired well with the gear in this system. The music was beautiful, and we really enjoyed listening.
