Thanks so much Mike for the excellent reviews. I thought the attendance was a little stronger than last year, but I only went Fri, so may have just been that day. Last year though seemed dead, and this year pretty busy.
Anyway, some of the missing this year (unless I missed them) was Burmester (where's Robb?), and Dartzeel/ Playback Designs (Jonathan?). Seemed like except the Focal, nobody brought the "big guns"- as was said the MBLs missing, smaller Lansche this year, smaller Wilsons this year (no XLF), etc. And how much of a tease was it that they had the NAIM Statement there static!! Plug that bad boy in, man! I would have loved to wheel that into one of the rooms with the big daddy Focals...
I agree with the consensus- not as many standouts, although I did also like the YG Hailey room with analog and the Audionet equipment and the Soulution/ Focal room was quite nice as well.
vjayh - I sure hope the attendance numbers show growth over last year. I love going to this event.
There were a lot of rooms I could have discussed. That PS Audio/Infinity IRS Beta Room was definitely a blast from the past. Let's not overlook the new hybrid PS Audio amps (tube/SS). The whole room sounded great. Very holographic. Also seeing Arnie Nudell around was fun too.
The YG/Audionet/Kronos was very smooth sounding. Like you, I thought this room sounded good. No bass issues (I could say something here, but I won't).
Also, one of the rooms I love visiting is the Volti Audio room. Mark and I went back late on Saturday night with some Joe Bonamassa CD's and we definitely achieved concert levels!
. The Volti Vittorias are speakers I would love to own one day....but I don't have a room big enough to do them justice.
I also had a blast in the Chad Kassem Acoustic Sounds room which featured the very rare Pass VFET amps and Sony speakers. There was an older gentleman who made blues records in the 50's and he was sitting beside me as Chad played his albums. That was cool. This was a room for the music lover. I found this room hard to leave. DJ Chad was alright by me.
I would be amiss if I didn't mention the Spatial room. It sounded good, but when I went in there, Clayton was either talking with someone and the music was down or the room was busy and I couldn't get a good seat.
The Vapor/Allnic room also sounded good. The consensus in our group was that the combo lacked ultimate dynamics, but sure sounded sweet.
I also enjoyed the Nola/ARC REF75 (with KT150's room). I really like this combo. Very musical.
The strangest thing was that Tiger thing. It's like a listening room within a room. I can't even explain it. I tried it. Weird. You can see photos of it in my daily photo slideshows.
The static display of the NAIM amps was lame.
Seeing the big EmmLabs amps was something to behold.
Those new (unnamed, not priced yet) Legacy speakers that were in the far corner were quite good as well. They were huge though.
Another great value was those Revel F208's I heard. Killer good sound for the money.
Lots of fun for sure....
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