Best sounding room at CES 2003

I just came back from the show.
The best sounding room at the show was the Lamm room!

VTL provided the most impressive sounding room per my limited time at the show. I did not have enough time to visit all the rooms. But I got to visit a fair amount of rooms.
VTL was using Linn CD12, VTL new Reference Monoblocks, Wilson Watt Puppy 7. I did not get a chance to check out their cables.
Their sound was clean, pure, extremely articulated, emotional and has very beautiful lifelike imaging. Working in their favor is a big open 2 room suite that offers more opportunity for the sound to blossom naturally. I'm sure there are other products that could compete nicely had they had this space.
I have no relation to VTL or any dealer.

KONDO ROOM WAS THE BEST SOUNDING ROOM PERIOD.

Also,Gryphon was impressived for SS with their new speaker.

It had to be Theil's room. It's the only one that had the "WOW" factor IMHO.

Some of the rooms I enjoyed included Wilson Audio, Quad, Van den Hul, Stanalog Audio, Blue Circle, Music Hall, Mission, Thiel, and the subwoofer demonstration by Dr. Hsu of Hsu Research.

My top two favorites: Cain&Cain and Josh Stippich's rooms in THE show, San Remo 928-929, and the Harbeth speakers in 804.

runners up:

Avantgarde trios with basshorns
Soundlab M1 room (at THE, not Crump and Curl's room)
47 Lab room

-Ed

I loved the Lamm SET amplifier => Wilson Watt Puppy System 7 speakers. The Watt Puppies didn't sound nearly as good on any other amp: VTL, Lamm A/B - but they sure sounded sweet, refined, and kept total composure throughout the dynamic spectrum on the Lamm SET's.

I loved the Avalon Eidolon and Eidolon diamonds, both with the Ayre and Accuphase electronics. And the Quad speakers were as sweet as always - just dissappeared! Both the new 988's and the "Quad Classics" now owned by Braun.

Nagra's room sounded pretty good, and if you're an old taper like myself, you gotto love Nagra! There were also some cool innovative (or restored old) technologies at THE Show.

Why is it that the speakers I like cost so much $$$$$!!!

AND - vinyl was always the best when a comparision had to be made!

Has someone visited Burmester room? I am not sure how serious it was, but it was on the exhibitor list. Just out of curiosity as no one so far mentions it.

I visited Burmester room early on Saturday morning before they officially opened. They allow me in to play some music on the Rondo line while they neurotically and quietly cleaned and shined their equipment. Their suite was very big (2-rooms). They had 4 different systems set-up. The equipments look top-notch. At their price, they should better. The sound of the Rondo line was very sweet and beautiful but for me is lacking that intangible emotional core. The Rondo CD player alone was $15K and this was their entry level! Unlike the staff from some other rude and rigid Swiss German neighbors who shall remain nameless, Burmester staff was at least friendly and courteous. I managed to take a lot of pictures of the Burmester. Total time spent in the room was about 20 minutes. Nuff said!

MMMMM.... Lamms....

If I only made more money.....

KF

My favorites:
1) Herron/Joseph Audio
2) Manley/Coincident

Wow, everyone has different opinions. I thought the Kondo room was among the worst sounding. In my opinion the Quad Classic stacked Quad 57s, the german speakers in the Zanden room, and one step down the Audiopax speakers and amps and the little Cain and Cain speakers were the best sounding rooms.

I agree with the Lamm rooms being very nice, as well as the stacked quads, Kondo room (playing CDs - don't know why vinyl sounded worse in this room, at least when we were there) but we thought the best sounding room was setup by one of our own bretheren, jtinn, using mikel's Tenors and a pair of Kharma midi-grands using an Audio Aero Capitole mk II as source. I can only imagine what it would have sounded with the Kharma exquisites and a state-of-the-art analog front end.

There is a system synergy here (between the Tenors and Kharmas) that is very, very special - much better than that of the Tenors with the Talons, Rockport Antares, HE 2002's pipedreams, or last year's CES's Tannoy Churchills and bi-amped Rockport Hyperions. And, needless to say, a synergy that is better than 99% of the amp/speaker combos out there.

BTW, we are not dealers for any of these fine products (except the audio aero), but after hearing this room, we are sure as heck are thinking hard about it...

-Mike (aka justacoder... or justacoder aka mike? - gotto figure this out sometime :-)