T.H.E. Show in Costa Mesa on Friday

I also attended and I was there from the minute the doors opened until they closed - so much to see and hear.  My favorite room was one of the Scott Walker rooms that had all of the Synergistic Research equipment and the beautiful Magico speakers - the soundstage in the room was remarkable (though I wish they would play some more familiar tunes so I could understand if the resulting sound was a product of the system, or some crazy recording technique).

I also loved a small room upstairs - Room 354 had a tube amplifier setup from a small boutique company named Akustika Eterna and a beautiful tube DAC from Lampizator.  The system was gorgeous and sounded great.

If I didn't have plans for today I would drive back up there and spend the whole day there again today!

I enjoyed THE Show so much on Friday, I'm going back today!

So I went back to THE Show on Sunday and my main goal was to listen to the 3 or 4 best rooms at the show.  I spent considerable time in the Scott Walker room sponsored by Synergistic Research.  The room featured Magico S3 speakers and a beautiful rack of McIntosh preamps and amps.  The sound quality and the soundstage in this room were spectacular, it was absolutely the largest sound stage at the show.

I sat in the room and watched and critically listened as the leader in the room described some of the equipment from Synergistic Research (SR).  He attempted to show the audience the effect that each of the pieces of SR equipment had on the sound quality and the soundstage in the room.   He played a portion of a song, then he replayed after removing a piece of SR equipment and he happily exclaimed to the audience - did you hear the difference?!   I sat there for an hour listening and trying to hear the difference, but I never heard any before and after difference.  Others in the audience said they did, but I wonder - if their eyes had been shut could they have identified which was the before and after?  He demonstrated a wide array of pieces of equipment ranging from speaker cable risers, Black Boxes, to exotic grounding equipment.  I never heard any differences........

But, all that said - this room was remarkable!  I suppose it was a combination of everything in the room.  The amps, speakers, speaker placement, nice room, and then the SR pieces too.