By far, for me, it was the Halcro/Wilson room that impressed me. I don't think it was the equipment so much as the multi-channel recordings of classical music that was recorded by, and presented by Peter McGrath. I have never heard a recording of a singer that sounded so much like an unmiked, live recording (tenor from La Traviata). The solo piano recordings played at exquisitely soft levels was also breathtaking.
For something closer to the real world, I liked the sound from the Gershman loudspeaker ($14k), the JM Reynaud Trentes, a Triangle speaker ($6k), the smaller, non-monitor Alons, and a speaker with a Heil AMT driver. Although the upper bass seemed a bit lightweight, I really liked the Gradient speaker (open, airy sound of a dipole) and it is also compact and nice to look at.
On the pricier side, the TAD speaker was very interesting: explosive dynamics and very natural tone, BUT, extremely hard and metallic sounding on top (not nearly as bad as at CEDIA). The Overkill Audio speaker with a Manger driver was also interesting (dynamic and coherent), but it did suffer from being very directional from the upper midrange on up.
For something closer to the real world, I liked the sound from the Gershman loudspeaker ($14k), the JM Reynaud Trentes, a Triangle speaker ($6k), the smaller, non-monitor Alons, and a speaker with a Heil AMT driver. Although the upper bass seemed a bit lightweight, I really liked the Gradient speaker (open, airy sound of a dipole) and it is also compact and nice to look at.
On the pricier side, the TAD speaker was very interesting: explosive dynamics and very natural tone, BUT, extremely hard and metallic sounding on top (not nearly as bad as at CEDIA). The Overkill Audio speaker with a Manger driver was also interesting (dynamic and coherent), but it did suffer from being very directional from the upper midrange on up.