The SHOW Costa Mesa - Anybody go?


I went to The SHOW in Costa Mesa, CA on Saturday.

Pretty much went through all the setups and the only 2 rooms that kind of stood out to me was TAD and Margules.

Those 2 rooms caught my attention.

Everything else was OK. I wouldn’t say any rooms sounded particularly bad but they didn’t really get my attention either.

Anybody else go?

I’d like to hopefully attend one of the bigger shows someday but I will have to plan for it since they take place in states far from me.

Being in Socal, The SHOW is the only one I can attend easily.

128x128jay73

The Gryphon sounded excellent.
The Cabasse Rialto at $4k bookshelf speakers sounded amazing including the bass extension. Many at this show and at The Pacific Audio Fest commented based on sonics they were underpriced.
The Magico S3 in the Scott Walker room sounded satisfying as I’m a fan of Magico sonics/voicing.
The Linn had a nice well rounded sound

But I really enjoyed watching the Andrew Jones interview and the evening live music artists were very enjoyable. I loved Emiko’s newly discovered voice of Julia Sawtell. Emiko just put Julia under a music contract so I’m waiting for her music releases.

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My picks on The SHOW/Costa Mesa 2023

click for YT videos.

AGD Electronics          Wavetouch Audio          Gryphon Audio        Von Gaylord

Alex/Wavetouch

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I was there Friday and saturday. It was interesting to me how much things changed from Friday to Saturday. On friday, I found two rooms that I thought were pretty good--Von Sweikert (sp) and Magico. On saturday the magico room was playing techno dance music so loud in such short snippets that it was not interesting at all.

Other rooms that had been horrible on friday got better saturday--perhaps some morning adjustments. One notable improvement was the Primaluna/Tannoy room that went from worse-in-show on Friday to just mediocre on Saturday.

The Songer speakers driven by a 300b should have been better but the 300b was operating at full volume to try to keep up with the show and SETs don't sound that good at full volume.

Many of the rooms were playing so loud that they just sounded like commercial systems--totally saturated. Of course they were competing with noise from other rooms. Very bad situation.

I went home and confirmed that none of the systems sounded better than my own. however, with $300K average equipment in each room, I’m pretty sure some of them could have sounded better given optimal conditions.

More interesting were the people I met and the decisions behind the show: who was there, who wasn’t there, and what was on display.

Jerry