CES 2004 Best of Show

Trelja: Traffic at the St. Tropez was brisk (my first time at T.H.E. Show so can't compare to previous years). Heard complaints from San Remo vendor about low turnout. San Remo had 5 or 6 rooms (that I saw) compared to 40 - 60 at St. Tropez.

For my "Best of" list, see my posts:
"Informal T.H.E. Show Report - Day I" and
"Informal T.H.E. Show Report - Day III".

Hmmm, lets see, best of the Show, well, Blue Circle was getting decent sound out of a brand new pair of ML Ascents by the end of Saturday (a little "tight" on day 1.. )
The Lamm room was sounding good, as was the Wadia room on Saturday (warm up time !)
Penn Audio (Finland) had some great sounding small speakers as well.
Focus Audio had a beauty of a new speaker ($23,500 US) it had promise, but needed a bit bigger room.
Although, I too have to admit that the best "sound" of the show was the big splash in the pool ! hehehehee...

Theil, as always, was one of my favorites. they never fail to have an excellent H/T demonstration, as well as 2 ch music. This was the first time I ever heard the Totem acoustic Forrest. maybe it was just the music or the fact that I'd been walking all day and final sat down for a listen. But I was very impressed. I think the thing that stood out the most to me was a speaker by Morel acoustics. It's call Renaissance chorus. It measures 8 7/8" D X 8 7/8" W X 8 5/8"H. It looks like a small box sitting on the floor. The sound that comes out of those things is incredible. Also the Cardas cable rooms. Very friendly people. I also got to listen to George himself (I think it was him,the room was packed, but they did call him george), but whoever it was sure had a passion for cables. There were many other great rooms, most of them I've never heard of since I'm only at the mid-fi level of this hobby, but there were also some rooms that sounded terrible or not what I'd expect from high end audio. Maybe its like biggpappakrell said, some of the rooms needed warm up time.

I too was taken by the Blue Circle/Martin Logan Ascent setup. The Innersound room was fantastic, but the sweet spot for the speakers was incredibly small (1 person wide only). The Alon/ Antique Sound Labs Hurricane/ CJ 17 demo was also great. Finally, the Sim Moon/ Dynaudio demo was extremely powerful and clean.

Mantra speakers and their associated equipment was clearly the best sound. The ESPs in Wavac with the really big 833s was awesome but too expensive. The TADs were great if you just want to be impressed and not listen to music.