I attended both Friday and Saturday. My focus was on speakers below $20k. Reading the observations here makes me wonder if my aged ears have declined more than I thought.
While I found most speaker systems on display to provide good hi-fi sound, few provided the sense of real in-room performance that I’ve been blessed to hear for the past 25+ years with my seemingly end-game speakers. My long discontinued Platinum One Reference stand mounts remain unchallenged at their $9,500 price in today’s dollars for producing precise imaging, realistic soundstage, and most important to me accurate reproduction of percussion instruments, including piano.
Perhaps most revealing was the VAC room. The beautiful and "very real" live voice of Anne Bisson created a sharp contrast with the high-end ($$$) reproduction of instruments and backing vocals. The distance between the real and unreal was palpable.
FWIW, I came away impressed by two nearly-equal best of show rooms, one delightfully surprising best value room, and one quite disappointing premier. Best of show (first place): 30th Anniversary Grand Avant Garde ($18k/pair). Runner up: Rosso Fiorentino Volterra ($17.5k/pair). Best Value: Q Acoustics 5050 ($2k/pair). Most disappointing: McIntosh’s ML1 MKII ($12k/pair) -- perhaps due to inadequate burn-in prior to the premier.
