Newport Beach show any one going?

I went Saturday only. The check in process was much more streamlined, and liked having everything under one roof. The salon's were very spacious, which made it a bit hard to have the rooms sound their best. The rooms on the upper floors were so small, it has hard to fit in ,and evaluate the gear and the sound.
Scott Walker's room with the Magico S-5's and the Soulution gear I thought sounded wonderful, but not sure about all the expensive tweaks. I liked the Trax gear, but thought the speakers left a bit short. The big Focals were great. Could not believe the rig of awesome equipment Esoteric brought to power the weird looking Cabrase round speakers..still not decided if I liked it. The Raidho room with their tiny entry level speakers just amazed, if you could fit into the room. The Rockport roomed showed well to me as well. I also liked the MBL room. I did not particularly like the Ayon room. The large Evolution speakers powered by DartZeel was wonderful. Did not have adequate time to explore the whole experience unfortunately. Congrats to Richard and his team...love being able to meet folks like Peter McGrath of Wilson, and find him very approachable, as well as the owners of Stein Music..Its great to assemble our hobby and the industry big wigs together here in So Cal...was my 4th year of 5 it was held...Keep it going, please

My spouse and I attended three days and had a grand time. The venue is modern with wonderful food :-) Many very good-sounding rooms with more than a few featuring reel-to-reel tape machines and media. :-)

Congrats to Richard Beers and Bob Levi!

I went Friday and Saturday had a great time and will be going next year

I flew down on Saturday just for the day. The Irvine Hotel was also having a show of exotic cars (Lamborgini, Ferrari)and the hotel had both in many rooms together. I particularly liked the headphone room (although Oppo was a no-show?). I was surprised at how good the Hifiman headphones sound. Especially the new HE1000. The $3000 price tag will force me to give them serious consideration when they arrive next month. No, I have no connection with any headphone maker. In fact, they had Stax phones on display (similar to mine) just for comparison and it confirmed, for me, why I have never looked to replace them.

If you like this hobby, I recommend going next year. It's $15 well spent and you'll be thoroughly entertained for the time that you're there. Unfortunately, I had to catch a late plane and felt that I would like to have stayed longer.

Check out the Whammerdyne in room 5228.

http://www.whammerdyne.com/

I will be there Friday and Saturday helping the Alma Audio team in their Avantgarde room.
Check my system page as the AvantGarde Duo Mezzos will be playing with AudioPax 50 W monoblocks.

This combo sounded stunning in my living room and if its that good at the show it will be well worth a listen.

Silvio from Audiopax is coming up from Brazil for the show.

AudioPax has a huge cult following in Brazil and Alma Audio is bringing the line back to the US as the distributor.

Alma Audio is also the only AvantGarde dealer on the west coast stocking the Duo line for demo. There is a NCal dealer who has Zeros, but if you want to hear Duo Mezzos, Duo Omegas or Zeros in SoCal, please PM me.

Mark