I just got back from Denver late last night, so I am late to the party.
There were several excellent sounding rooms but my son and I felt that there were many more poor sounding rooms and poor music choices.
Our top rooms-
Boulder room with the Vienna Acoustics speakers (only $16K pr) and 6 REL subs-The sound was dynamic, totally non-fatiguing, detailed but not overly so. It had just a hint of warmth. Textures were great.
McIntosh room sounded great on day 2 of the show with their XRT2.1 speakers
YG and VTL
Dali Epcon 8 and Ayre- This system was very musical and did everything right.
Wharfedale with their new Evo 4.4 speaker which is due to be released. It was paired with Primare electronics. It is a $2500 floor stander that was fabulous sounding. It easily compares well with speakers selling in the $4K-$5K range. We walked into the room and the bass was deep, tight and musical. We looked for subwoofers because we could not believe how good the bass sounded. It was nice to see a budget company have such good sound.
The Magico Classe room sounded very good.
Elac sounded great. They had their Carina bookshelves for $1300 which sounded fabulous. They also had a new Debut series speaker, an upgrade to the B6.2 called the 6.2BR I believe. It cost $500 and it is a big upgrade in sound compared to the 6.2's which are still available and sound very good in their own right. They had it paired with their small $799 integrated amp, dac and streamer. The detail was excellent and both speakers sounded great. If I wanted to get an extreme budget system, this would be it. We also got to meet and speak with Andrew Jones. He was very personable.
The Salk speaker room sounded good not great. He had a $9K speaker paired with all Schiit gear. He used 2 Vidar amps as monoblocks. The preamp was the Frey S and the DAC was the new Bifrost True Multibit with their new Unison usb section. The sound was surprisingly good but those speakers needed top end gear to sound their best.
Another room that sounded good was the Fyne Audio room and their 702 speakers ($9Kpr). They are just being released in the US and they are looking for dealers. These are the guys that broke away from Tannoy. Great guys to talk to with their Scottish accents and sense of humor. The speaks use similar tech to Tannoy but do things that they could not do at Tannoy. The speakers had no hours on them on day 1 and they sounded just ok. They stated the speakers need 300 hours of breakin. So we came back for a listen on day 2 since the speakers had been running constantly for over 24 hours. What a difference a day makes. The sound stage was huge and the sweet spot was very wide. Off axis listening sounded like you were sitting in the center. They were musical, textured and layered with deep tight bass. No fatigue at all. Interestingly they had them hooked up to a Rega integrated amp and an oppo player. I would have loved to hear them with much better gear and fully broken in. These could be my next pair of speakers. The fit and finish was top notch.
The Alsyvox full ribbon speaker from Italy was another very good sounding room.
Sanders electrostats sounded good not great but they were in a small room which was not ideal for them.
The Bryston room with their Model T speakers sounded very good. The speakers had a slightly darker sound but they were very musical and there was no fatigue.
The big disappointment was the Vinni Rossi room. He had his new integrated paired with speakers by possibly OLM, a company I have never heard of. I do not believe they were OHM. The sound was bright and thin.
The Nola room was also disappointing. The speakers would sound sharp and peaky on certain notes.
One last thing. I have decided that I do not like Moon gear. Every room that used it sounded just ok to me. Maybe it was the set up but there was something about the sound that did not appeal to me.
Whoops! I forgot to mention Klipsch. Both of their rooms sounded very good. The Cornwalls especially.
