I went to the show in hopes of losing my "babe in the woods" audiophile status. I was a little intimidated at first by the complexity of components and serious looks on the faces of those I imagined to be serious audiophiles. I brought a few cd's of my favorite music (MFSL versions of Santana Abraxas and Dark Side of the Moon). The closest thing to rock that I heard emanating from the plethora of demo rooms I strolled by was James Taylor and Steely Dan. My cd's never made it out of the bag. The second thing I realized by listening to the fine products of Totem, Walker, Joseph Audio and MBL was that my ears are just too plebian to catch the subtle nuances required to call myself an audiophile. The little totems sounded great to me. I sat in on Jeff Joseph's demo of his newest speaker. He led off with a self congratulatory rant about how great his Pearl speakers were and how magazines had conspired with other jealous manufacturers to eliminate voting for Best Sounding for fear of Joseph Audio winning every year. He played some new in wall speakers first and then his newest high end speaker powered by Manley monoblocks and the speakers sounded stunning. The prize for visual aesthetics goes to MBL. Their components looked better suited to take out a Death Star than play the new Patricia Barber album. I'd never heard of this company before. They're from Germany. The speakers looked both antique and ultra modern simultaneously. As I recall the speakers base were pyramid shaped and the top part looked like a lamp without bulbs or lampshade. The other components had a McIntosh-esque blue glow. The visual impact of these components made it hard for me to swich from eyes to ears and evaluate their sound.The demo song was a laid back jazzy female vocal version of "Spanish Harlem" and sounded extraordinary. This stuff looked pricey so I didn't even want to know how much it cost. I spoke with the salesman from Kimber who extolled the virtues of his 880$ 8 foot speaker cables but subsequently spent most of my time meeting the people from the software companies I only knew from the internet. Music Direct, Red Trumpet, Elusive Disc were all present. I bought some cd's from David Chesky himself on his recommendations. I also met the co-creator of XRCD technology, a nice Japanese fellow who explained what OBI meant. (I'd always wondered). In summation the 2004 HE Show taught me just how little I currently know and how long the road to true audiophiledom is.
