I agree with Keithr. The Vandersteen/Joule room was very impressive. In fact, many rooms mentioned in this thread I agree with.
Purist seemed like it had some room issues in the bass, but otherwise was excellent. Wilson and VTL stuff may not always sound the best, but it's hard to argue they aren't SOTA and sound magnificent in most cases.
I also liked the StarSound room, but have to disagree about characterizing the price as "ONLY" $5k. It's definitely an appealing speaker, but a bit pricey in my book. They were also using $8k amps and a DCS stack that was probably $20k+, so I'm not sure that room qualified for "budget" status. Nevertheless, a great room which betterd many more expensive rooms, so maybe that's "budget" to some.
In fact, most rooms sounded pretty good, but almost none were "real world" systems. If you add the cables and room treatments, not too many rooms were less than $20k, with many being $40k+. That's alot of money for just 2 channels for most people.
The most intriguing and memorable thing I noted were the Murata supertweeters. I was surprised and impressed with what they did in an A/B demo. Again, they are pricey, but that seems to be the theme nowadays.
Purist seemed like it had some room issues in the bass, but otherwise was excellent. Wilson and VTL stuff may not always sound the best, but it's hard to argue they aren't SOTA and sound magnificent in most cases.
I also liked the StarSound room, but have to disagree about characterizing the price as "ONLY" $5k. It's definitely an appealing speaker, but a bit pricey in my book. They were also using $8k amps and a DCS stack that was probably $20k+, so I'm not sure that room qualified for "budget" status. Nevertheless, a great room which betterd many more expensive rooms, so maybe that's "budget" to some.
In fact, most rooms sounded pretty good, but almost none were "real world" systems. If you add the cables and room treatments, not too many rooms were less than $20k, with many being $40k+. That's alot of money for just 2 channels for most people.
The most intriguing and memorable thing I noted were the Murata supertweeters. I was surprised and impressed with what they did in an A/B demo. Again, they are pricey, but that seems to be the theme nowadays.