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

It was a good show last weekend. The many rooms sounded very good and much better than last year. My room was pretty busy for all 3 days. Almost every one said my room sounded very nice and many people were very impressed. 

There were many female guests at the show this year. Many ladies mentioned they were seeing musical instruments flowing here and there (impressed!) from my system sounds. It was fun weekend for me. Below video says a lot. Alex/WTA

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.

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

...sounds like a great show to attend to.....as an SoCal expat, I'm sorry I had to bail on LA  5 decades ago....

...but even so, it wouldn't have been worth the wait for it....

Enjoy....*S*

@toddalin ...as an owner of 4 large Heils....I'll agree that JBLs' are 'quick enuff' to pace the Heils....👍  All that's left is to 'go 10' and crack the sheetrock...;)

Tonian Labs out of Burbank had one of the best rooms, especially considering it's $9500 speakers with a $4k Denon integrated amp .. as good or better than rooms 10x the price... By far the most transparent room in the show at any price... 

The J.Porter powered speakers from Austin were really good at $15k/pair too, Songer Audio from Oregon was also great but your getting into $40k pair speakers.

I’m going tomorrow 

I was really looking forward to hearing the Magicos, but somehow missed them.  Maybe they just weren't demoed at the time I was there.  Their Estelons sounded very nice.

Was also looking forward to hearing Focals (nope), MBLs (nope), and even some line arrays (nope).

Was interesting that many of the smaller speakers had more copious bass than many of the larger speakers, and could easily fill large rooms, but then very few were playing really loud, compressed rock music.

Thanks for the shoutout Neil.   We are happy to be able to get a pretty good setup in the hotel room and the system is sounding good.

Anyone who comes to the show please stop by and say Hello.

I haven't had time to visit much of the show yet but I'll say that Songer Audio a couple of doors down, I think room 350, has an excellent sounding system as well.

Jerry Stephenson

Room 354

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!