I was at AXPONA all three days this year.
My favorite room--the Finest Fidelity Room--they spun records on a Steve Dobbins restored Garrard 301, Reed 2P tonearm ($13,500 together), $12,000 van den Hul catridge and a $25,0000 van den Hul phono pre. Accustic Arts pre and mono-amps driving Magico S3 MkII speakers. I have heard these speakers quite a few times and this was the first time they sounded really great to me. The analog rig was the star. When I had the guys in charge play me the same track digitally immediately after hearing it on the analog rig, the magic in the room quickly faded. If you missed this room playing records, then you missed a treat.
The four rooms that surprised me:
(1) The MSB room--underwhelming. An $85K DAC that did not impress. I stopped by twice to make sure I was hearing it correctly;
Astewart=agreed that the FF room with Dobbins 301 was great. Having A.J. Van den Hull sitting there in the room meditatively helped. And I could not agree more-this room made the Magico's sound good. On the other hand, the CH Precision room with Magico's was unbearable-etched, screechy, off in just about every way.
I agree too that the MSB room was disappointing. I thought the equally expensive MBL room was also disappointing.
My favorite room all said and done was the Audio Note room. But admittedly it is due to my taste/preference for natural tone/timbre. I think it is no huge surprise AN sounds good at shows-the speakers and associated gear suit the small rooms and corner placement suits the need to tame bass that cripples to some extent most of the other larger speakers placed in small rooms. Vincent Belanger was fantastic to listen to both playing cello and describing what AN strives for.
The Vivid Audio room with Jeff Rowland sounded awfully good to me. Call me a homer (I own Devore O/93's) but I really liked the room with DeVore O/93's being driven by Leben gear and I was also equally impressed by the room with DeVore O/96's being driven by Wavac.
And lastly, I loved loved loved the room with Dynaudio Confidence 20 standmounts with two subs, one behind each speaker stand.
With a lot of the big names, I heard an awful lot of what I call "hi-fi" sound. Ultra-detailed and revealing but not quite relaxing and easy-flowing. And at the other extreme, with the lower priced gear I heard a lot of for lack of a better word is "mechanical"; sound that covers the range of frequencies but again, is not natural to my ears.
