Best sound at Stereophile show.


I got to rate the Dynaudio room as the best sounding Room. They used the Dynaudio C4 speakers which listed for 16,000. All I can say is, they sounded incredible. They sound very smooth with an amazing soundstage. Bass was really good.

I also liked the Gamut Room. Gamut used probably the largest Amp I'v ever seen. The Amp weighed 400 pounds. Speakers were the Pipedreams with the Gamut CD Player. The system sounded very 3 dimentional with a good bass response. I also got to thank Ole Lund Christensen. He's the designer of Gamut. He played by far the best music. He played upbeat classical, where you could judge the midrange and bass of the speakers. He also played brick in the wall by Pink Floyd. I felt to many rooms played to much Jazz and violin music, where you just couldn't judge the speakers. Also, Ole played what ever CD you gave him.

I also loved the Wilson Watt Puppies 7. What totally amazed me. Wilson played alot of the time, the Watt Puppies 7 with the massive Wilson Sub. I thought that Sub would totally boom up the bass on the Watt Puppies. But it was the exact opposite. The Wilson Sub blended in so perfectly with the Wilson Watt Puppy 7 speakers.

I also liked the Tact room. They had those new Tact speakers that must have been 7 feet tall. They sounded great.

Most amazing home theater performance had to be in the Audio Video Creations room. They used a Pioneer 50 inch Plasma TV. Krell multichannel Amps, Krell Preamp processor, Krell DVD Player, Piega speakers and Piega Sub. They played clips from Jurassic Park and Matrix. Holy Moley did this system sound unbelievable. It was so incredible sounding.

Another thing that really impressed me. In the NAD room, one of the people there downloaded a Jewel peformance from the Jay Leno show on High Definition TV. They downloaded the Jewel performance to a hard drive, then transferred it to a DVD recorder. This picture quality was amazing. It was so perfect the picture.

I also really liked this Antique Sound Headphone Amp with Senheiser headphones. It listed for 1200 dollars. You could also used this as a preamp. The Antique Headphone Amp used 2A3 Tubes. It sounded so perfect and could go very loud without breaking up. Plus it had that nice tube sound.

Also alot of the designers were really nice. I mentioned Ole. Al from Dynaudio, Mark O'brien from Rougue Audio, Dale Fontenot from Roman Audio speakers, Alan Yun from Silverline, Tash Goka from Divergent technologies and Gilbert Young from Blue Circle were really good guys.
twilo
Here is the opinion of a seasoned audiophile (20 years) who is not deaf and ownes a high resolution analogue system in a dedicated room (the room and set up being the most important components)- Best sounds in no particular order:
Lamm / Kharma
Acoustic Dreams Lumen White / Vaic
Verity Parsifal Encore / Nagra
Tenor / Pipedreams
Eggleston Savoy / CAT
Joseph Audio / Manley

Most dissapointing was the Airfoil and Viola rooms. The scariest thing was that Anthony DiSalvo of Viola (formally Cello ?) appeared to be proud of the demo.
Tekunda,
The Harvey/Martin Logan room featured a 5.1 channel setup with what I am guessing on memory to have been Odyssey mains in front plus a Theater center channel and Aeon or Scenario surrounds. I think the sub was a ML Descent. These were driven by a couple racks worth of McIntosh electronics. I'm sorry I didn't retain the model numbers.

The Tenor/Pipedreams system is amply described in Arooj's post above. (Thank you!) I would only add that the Pipedreams treble/midrange towers are relatively efficient at 94-95 db sensitivity and are compatible with a lot of tube amps. The woofers are inefficient and should typically be mated to amps rated at hundreds of watts per channel.
Interesting comments. One thing I can't understand is Marakanetz's remarks on the MBLs. I thought MBL had possibly the best sound at the show and another friend who's ears I trust felt the same. I really relaxed and simply enjoyed the music in that room -- not to mention that the amps and other MBL gear are strikingly beautiful. It may have been a bit heavy in the bass, but not really over the top. I wish I could afford the stuff! I thought the midrange and high frequency reproduction was close to ideal.

The Gamut/Pipedreams system was possibly okay, but I couldn't stay long enough to make a fair evaluation. The man controlling the system, said straight out that he was going to crank the volume whether or not anyone objected, and when he hit my personal threshold of pain and the room overloaded ridiculously I high-tailed it out of there along with a few other audiophiles who were similarly appalled at his lunacy and lack of good judgement. What an idiot!

Unfortunately I never made it into the Joseph Audio/Manley room and from what others have posted, it sounds like that was one of the best. Of what I did hear, I liked the Roman Audio Centurion speakers, which did some amazing things for the cello; the Rogue audio electronics on the Medowlark Blue Herrons was quite good; and my personal favorite, because it was actually affordable and put many more expensive systems to shame, was the $1800/pr Gershman Chameleon speakers powered by a 60 Wpc Kora integrated amp. Man, did that modest little sound great!

I was also very impressed by that crazy Calix horn system using that extra-terrestrial VYGER turntable. That system presented awesome dynamic contrasts with excellent immediacy and low distortion. It kicked!
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Lamm
Utopia DCS system. Far and away the most beautiful sound I heard all weekend.
Carl