random thoughts on THE Show

Went to the show today. Registration did a fine job, dont show up at opening, show up at 9 or 11, just sayin. Some highlights:

- Sunny Audio showing Audio Research amplification, MSB digital, Wilson speakers...Sunil is a real gentleman and knows how to set up a room. Extraordinary!
- The Vandersteen speakers (Treo's and Seven's) also running off of Audio Research were excellent.
- The Usher speakers in the Katli Audio room were terrific driven by Pass Labs and Accuphase. Fred is also another great dealer.
- Trenner & Friedl speakers are interesting but priced pretty high.
- The Tocaro speaker were crazy good with beautiful woodwork but $14k is pretty steep.
- The Venice Audio and Peter Selsenick room running Naim gear and Harbeth speakers was jsut right, as always.
- Evolution Acoustic and Dartzeel was pretty special and the Avantgarde Zero 1 speakers were stunning.
- Went in to a bunch of rooms and the volume sometimes ran me out of the room.
- Alot of rooms using Aurilic streamers.
- Not many horrible sounding rooms to my ears so the extra day of setup combined with a great deal of pretty good equipment.
- The surprise of my day involved Elac speakers and Andrew Jones. Andrew was very gracious and demoed his new 2- way small bookshelf/standmount for his new company. It was the best $1,000 speaker you will hear at the show but it will carry a MSRP $229 pair when it is released. Very nice.