T.H.E. Show in Costa Mesa on Friday

I also attended and I was there from the minute the doors opened until they closed - so much to see and hear.  My favorite room was one of the Scott Walker rooms that had all of the Synergistic Research equipment and the beautiful Magico speakers - the soundstage in the room was remarkable (though I wish they would play some more familiar tunes so I could understand if the resulting sound was a product of the system, or some crazy recording technique).

I also loved a small room upstairs - Room 354 had a tube amplifier setup from a small boutique company named Akustika Eterna and a beautiful tube DAC from Lampizator.  The system was gorgeous and sounded great.

If I didn't have plans for today I would drive back up there and spend the whole day there again today!

Thanks for the shoutout Neil.   We are happy to be able to get a pretty good setup in the hotel room and the system is sounding good.

Anyone who comes to the show please stop by and say Hello.

I haven't had time to visit much of the show yet but I'll say that Songer Audio a couple of doors down, I think room 350, has an excellent sounding system as well.

Jerry Stephenson

Room 354

I was really looking forward to hearing the Magicos, but somehow missed them.  Maybe they just weren't demoed at the time I was there.  Their Estelons sounded very nice.

Was also looking forward to hearing Focals (nope), MBLs (nope), and even some line arrays (nope).

Was interesting that many of the smaller speakers had more copious bass than many of the larger speakers, and could easily fill large rooms, but then very few were playing really loud, compressed rock music.

I’m going tomorrow 

Tonian Labs out of Burbank had one of the best rooms, especially considering it's $9500 speakers with a $4k Denon integrated amp .. as good or better than rooms 10x the price... By far the most transparent room in the show at any price... 

The J.Porter powered speakers from Austin were really good at $15k/pair too, Songer Audio from Oregon was also great but your getting into $40k pair speakers.