Regarding the 'too loud' and 'bad sound' problems at the show, here's my take. Most speaker manufacturers, it seems, wanted to bring their flagship model. These are typically large. As in 'far too large for a tiny hotel room.' In general, I found the rooms that sounded really good were using speakers that were at least reasonably suited to the room size.
Standouts for me were Selah Audio, North Creek / Advanced Ribbon Technologies, Analysis Audio, and GamuT. The first two represented high value; the second two were higher performing, but far, FAR more expensive.
Underwhelmed by the MBL / Kharma room and the Acapella / Einstein room. Both had quite good sound, but when you consider the price, I was unimpressed. And both setups were in suitably large rooms and well-treated, leaving little room for the 'show conditions are difficult' defense.
Had fun at the Nordost cable demo, where different cables were swapped out to demonstrate the improvements as you move up in their line. As I've said before, any non-believers are deaf or lying. Whether $16,000 is best spent on a 1m set of interconnects or 1,000 CDs is an entirely different issue =)
My findings only, of course.....
