I went. It was smaller than most shows.
The most memorable rooms for me:
The TAD Monitor demo was great. Bass was strong and tight but not overwhelming, loud but not fatiguing, vocals were smooth but with lots of satisfying texture. (Lots of "buts" there. I always seem to describe good audio attributes as "good thing" but not with "bad thing.") The British fellow who I think was the designer (not sure) gave the demo & played some rare Supertramp music (& some nice classical). It was so nice I almost fell asleep in the front row.
They used Tube OTL amps (looked like 50 tubes!), but he said
they were voiced with solid state.
Another nice surprise to me was something I never heard of.
They were called Davone speakers. They are small, $6000 speakers that resemble Bose 901s, but they sure don't sound bozeish. They were sweet with nice impact and again I just wanted to sit & listen for a long time. I was surprised at the low price. They look like something out of the Jetsons,
flat speakers on something that looks like a music stand,
about 3-feet off the ground. Source was an AMR CD player, using Shunyata speaker cables. I forgot the amp (maybe AMR too, I'm not sure). From a store called Sensorium in NY.
They had that rare affect of making me not thing about highs vs. mids vs. bass and just enjoy the music as a whole.
I kept thinking this was a sound I could live with long term (a rarity). I was actually surprised when he told me the price. I thought they were $10K+ things.
MBL was nice, but I thought the 101Es overloaded the room a bit, and I couldn't get a focused soundstage. Tonality was excellent for all instruments and vocals, but the sound seem to come from everywhere, a little disconcerting, but I got used to it. Omnidirectionals, for better or worse. Nevertheless, I just felt I could take the MBL sound in for hours and just relax.
