This year's show featured many outstanding rooms. The change in venue, along with some serious attempts by the exhibitors made for significantly better sound that we've heard in past DC efforts.
Overall, traffic was quite heavy early on Saturday, but dissipated through the day. On the good side, this year's show seemed far busier than past one I attended. Though on another note, the headphone crowd on the 4th floor dwarfed the much older high-end audio folks.
Mostly, I liked a lot of what others have mentioned. Beyond those the TAD loudspeakers in the Backert Labs room impressed, Gingko Audio ClaraVu 7 surprised, nicely restored Apogee Duetta Signatures in piano black lacquer left me recalling some of the most beguiling sound of the high horsepower solid state era, and Robin Wyatt's 2 (one OTL, the other solid state) rooms of Quad ESL57 further convince me of how far the speaker craft has not progressed the past 60 years.
Overall, traffic was quite heavy early on Saturday, but dissipated through the day. On the good side, this year's show seemed far busier than past one I attended. Though on another note, the headphone crowd on the 4th floor dwarfed the much older high-end audio folks.
Mostly, I liked a lot of what others have mentioned. Beyond those the TAD loudspeakers in the Backert Labs room impressed, Gingko Audio ClaraVu 7 surprised, nicely restored Apogee Duetta Signatures in piano black lacquer left me recalling some of the most beguiling sound of the high horsepower solid state era, and Robin Wyatt's 2 (one OTL, the other solid state) rooms of Quad ESL57 further convince me of how far the speaker craft has not progressed the past 60 years.