Best sounding room at CES 2003

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 :-)