New York HiFi Show: Tubes and Turntables

@asvjerry  My favorite rooms:

Rethm Bhaava driven by Linear Tube Audio ZOTL amplifier.  BEST OF SHOW.  Luscious, full, coherent, and beautiful sound.  Perhaps only let down by the Aqua CD player front end.  Considering this amplifier and loudspeaker combination comes in at just $6550, wonderful sound comes in much more affordably than we normally get told about

Trio loudspeakers driven by the Pass Labs Integrated.  Would have loved to also hear them with the 2A3 amplifier they were saving for later

Martin Logan

Cambridge Audio.  As we know from the first listing, price does not always correlate with sonic quality

Perhaps, I left a room off, but you can consider any not listed above to have sounded poor or worse

trelja, thanks....*S*  I'll agree with ML's...nice units.  I've a soft spot for esl's, since in some ways they gave rise to ribbons and AMT's.  I'm a dipole fanboy as well as 'things omni'...and mapman and I do share an appreciation for Ohms.  I'm just an extremist in terms of that 'breed' of driver, which some may realize or have noted...;)

I'd be surprised if Ohm didn't make an appearance at a NY, NY audio show, being a 'local' after all.  And, understood, omnis are an acquired  taste and respond to attention paid to 'upstream' components and their 'environment'...

Gee, where have we noticed that, elsewhere...and with what....;)

Cambridge...*G*, well, again, another 'local', not as exciting or enthralling as others, but...  Solid stuff, been around awhile, and when a show is so anemic as this one seemed to be, some additional 'flesh on the bones' was probably welcomed by the promoters...

Maybe next year, huh? *G*

I also attended the NY AV show last weekend.  Bought a 3 day ticket, booked a hotel and drove up from South Jersey.  Probably the biggest waste of time and money I can remember.  I took me about three hours to hit every room.  The sound was generally mediocre (except for the Legacy and the Martin Logan rooms) and the number of exhibitors was small.  I always hope tp purchase a little something (LPs or budget equipment) at a “show marketplace” but even that was limited to two or three exhibitors.  Even the Westchester, NY show from several year ago was better.

I don’t think I’ll be returning to the NY show as long as this group is running it.  How can you have a high-end audio show in Manhattan that is smaller and less interesting than other shows in smaller venues?

I always felt that it was cost prohibitive for me to travel to Denver or Chicago to attend the better shows, but I may have to re-think that after this.  

BTW, I like Whart’s idea of a NY Audio Day, which would be great for consumers and increase traffic into the stores.  A nice spring weekend would be great!  (NY was freezing last weekend!!!!)

@asvjerry, thank you for your insight.

Ohm did have a room at the show. They earned my WORST OF SHOW award going away

I was at the show on Sunday and was disappointed, although not surprised, by the small number of exhibitors and rooms. Evidently the high cost of staging a show in NYC is a major obstacle to attracting many manufacturers and retailers, and even many mainstays of the past several shows were absent this year.  That being said, I thought there were several good sounding rooms, including Audio Note, LTA/Rethm, Triangle Art/Egglestonworks, Pure Audio Project, Alta Audio, AVM/Harbeth, and Luxman/Triangle, which made it a worthwhile experience for me...