Tekton room at the Los Angles Audio Show.

@aolprodj : Realize you are looking for feedback on listening at a show, ... and please don't take this as being difficult because I love the Double Impacts and would be happy if there were raves about them at the LA show....but I would think it would be the worst place to get feedback about them or any speaker? 

Year after year, and show after show reports clearly go through a who's been GOOD and who's been BAD list. But I never see Santa Claus at the shows.

Perhaps I'm wrong about this and missing something entirely. Can you elaborate on what you are looking for and want to learn? 

@aolprodj :

My point, as I believe, other posters in this very thread have made absolutely clear is that feedback from a show is absolutely useless with respect to one component. Do you hear one positive report in this thread regarding the DIs from the LA show??? The only one I heard was from Eric himself, and that wasn't even first party...That was Positive Feedback self reporting on their own room.  Did you expect any different?

Yet there are any number of satisfied owners of the DIs, most of whom compared them with comparable to much higher priced products and most of whom have decades of experience in this wild hobby of ours. And there are some who decided against keeping the DIs, whose reasoning and choices are equally valid. Those are the 'show reports' I would trust. Kenny (@kdude66) was being funny, but sometimes funny is also spot on. And he was!

AT BEST, in my opinion, all one can surmise is who did a better job at setting up their room, and that is it. There are so many factors that get in the way of hearing a pair of speakers, within the system they have been set up in, to sound right for the random listener walking in for an audition.

Having said all of that, and despite it, I truly hope there were attendees at the show that will be able to provide you the pros and cons you are looking for.

Another way to put it is that you are asking for the right information, but.........if you have to go to a hotel.....  :)

@nicks25: And I respectfully agree with you.

I've been interested in two of the speakers you mention liking at the show - ELAC and Spatial Audio. In fact I nearly purchased the Spatial Audio M3 Turbo S, and I still may in the future. But you've confirmed what I've been trying to say, which is that some speakers will sound good at the shows and others will not. And this generally doesn't correlate with the speaker (in this case) being good or not. As I stated in my previous post, it is a better assessment of who got it right in terms of setup.

@grannyring : And I agree with you as well. And your points are spot on.
However, many manufacturers, and distributors and dealers who do have experience setting up gear and have a significant stake in making sure their products sound good, have very mixed results in terms of how they 'get rated' sound quality wise.

If a speaker sounds good in your system; If a speaker sounds good at your friend's home; If it sounds good in a dealer setup; And if it sounds bad in a hotel room; Does that make it a bad speaker. I'm saying it does not. And I'm also saying that its a mistake to make comparative decisions based on listening sessions at a show.

That doesn't mean you are not going to be happy with that choice. As you say the Acoustic Zen Crescendos were a terrific choice for you.

But would you have purchased them if they didn't sound good at both shows?

To me, they are a very good speaker irrespective of their performance at shows.

Nick, PM me when you get them in and they have settled-in. I'm really curious about your impressions. For me, it was between Spatial and Pure Audio Project Trio15 Voxativ.  

@nicks25: Thanks!

@steakster : Terrific write-up and read, and informative. The mags should let you freelance for them. Thank you, very much!

Kenny, given your love of piano, here is one that is much more off the beaten track (tracks 1, 4, and 8): In Search of the Miraculous, with music by Fazil Say, Alan Hovhaness, Vache Sharafyan, Siobhán Cleary, John Surman and Rabih Abou Khalil. And the Hilliard Ensemble.

Came to mind, since it is music in search of unity...which hopefully we will find in this thread. : )

@johnmarzy: Thanks for sharing your time at the Positive Feedback room. Very helpful. And well written,...took me there.

@corelli:  It's incredible how music can be such an amazing time-machine. Your post took me back 17 years to a very small restaurant in Girona, Espana, where I heard the Koln Concert for the first time. Had I been with my date, I probably would have asked her to marry me on the spot. Lucky for her, she wasn't there. :)