Axpona 2022

I find this hobby so interesting.  Reviewers on YouTube are saying the two large Wilson rooms sounded fantastic and impressive. My wife and I could not enjoy the music in these rooms.  Not at all engaging and rather reproduced and electronic sounding to our ears. 
 

In fact most of the big dollar rooms sounded this way to us. We felt many of the smaller speakers and systems sounded best at the show. Examples include Ocean Wave Audio in the AGD room, Valorem stand mount speakers and Alta Audio Adam speakers in three different rooms sounded wonderful.  
 

I couldnt agree with you more. 

The Borresen and Atohm rooms were focused on displaying these speaker’s huge and explosive sound in a small package. Sort off showing off sonic feats of strength. Yes, impressive in how they seemed to defy the laws of physics with their small drivers. Did they engage us musically? No. All head, no heart and soul to us.

Many others loved them! No right or wrong as this just shows how subjective this hobby is.

Most of the rooms were simply too loud to enjoy forcing us out! This needs to be addressed in my opinion. When lowered by 3-6db all would be far better.  

@jaymark Both AGD and Atmasphere were there with class D amps.  Don't know about others.

Could anyone elaborate more on how the Stenheim speakers sounded?

One pair of smaller Stenheim speakers ($ 72K) sounded excellent with tubed electronics from Sweden or one of those other cold places. The very big Stenheims sounded very boxy in one of the larger rooms with, I believe, S.S. electronics. 

With the speakers used in the Atma-sphere room I couldnt gather any impression about the amps and associated electronics. The AGD room was superb, although I wouldnt call their amps Class D.