Best and Worst sound at the CES Show 2004

I agree with Keithr. The Vandersteen/Joule room was very impressive. In fact, many rooms mentioned in this thread I agree with.

Purist seemed like it had some room issues in the bass, but otherwise was excellent. Wilson and VTL stuff may not always sound the best, but it's hard to argue they aren't SOTA and sound magnificent in most cases.

I also liked the StarSound room, but have to disagree about characterizing the price as "ONLY" $5k. It's definitely an appealing speaker, but a bit pricey in my book. They were also using $8k amps and a DCS stack that was probably $20k+, so I'm not sure that room qualified for "budget" status. Nevertheless, a great room which betterd many more expensive rooms, so maybe that's "budget" to some.

In fact, most rooms sounded pretty good, but almost none were "real world" systems. If you add the cables and room treatments, not too many rooms were less than $20k, with many being $40k+. That's alot of money for just 2 channels for most people.

The most intriguing and memorable thing I noted were the Murata supertweeters. I was surprised and impressed with what they did in an A/B demo. Again, they are pricey, but that seems to be the theme nowadays.

Labtec, I didn't mean to make it sound like $5000 speakers are cheap, since they are obviously not, but compared to many speaker systems they are relatively inexpensive. A person can spend a lot more, and a lot less. My thought was that for a dare I say, mid priced speaker they sounded very good! Unless I misunderstood Tom, the amps were $5000 too, but I could be wrong.

I'm not disagreeing, just trying to clarify

I've been involved with all this stuff for over 30 years. I can tell you that 'it's all good' given enough time to set the systems up properly and use the appropriate tweeks to maximize performance. In the end it generally boils down to room resonances, componet isolation and properly getting the source material tricked-out. All these guys know how to design great equipment. Unfortunately much of this gear does not get demonstrated in a manner that shows full capability.

I would put the Joule/Vandersteen 5A room as being the most long term listenable of all the rooms. It had a natural, easy and well balanced tone with the best soundstaging of all the rooms. The speakers simply vanished as the music began to play. That room redefined the word, "musical."

I could own that room and never want for more. Considering the price of the 5A's, they once again make a mockery of costlier speakers, a feat Richard Vandersteen has done since he started in the business. No wonder customers love him and competetors hate him.

Actually, I never do any serious listening on the first two days of the CES/The SHOW, allowing for proper setup, tweaking, and "burn-in" of the gear. The improved fidelity after the first two days can be quite noticeable!!