Home Entertainment Show in Los Angeles

I spent 6+ hours at the show today , some observations...

1) That hotel is like a freaking maze, snaking off in all directions rahter than the normal north, south, east, west. I got turned around more than a few times.

2) Rooms ranged from small to pretty damn large. Unfortunately, many exhibitors were trying to demonstrate speakers too large for their particular room. Although, I was surprised at the ones who rightfully selected smaller products in their line to successfully match the venue.

3) Fat cables are IN this year. The bigger, the better, it seems.

4) Lamm seems to be "place to be". I wouldn't know, the room was so damned crowded with photographers and press you couldn't get in edgewise.

5) Wilson was naother "place to be", but their wisely gave demos on 20 minute intervals without interruption. I never seemed to catch the intermissions, so no entry.

6) If you are junkie for LP's and cd's, don't bring credit cards. Plenty of great stuff to buy.

7) Elliot Midwood always has a great sounding room at shows, but this time he was off the chart with the new $40k ESP Concert Grand SI driven by the massive $35k Wavestream amps, $13k Messenger Reference preamp, Lector cd & DAC, and Brinkman LaGrange or Balance turntable/tonearm/phono.

Anyway, the ESP's have four 8" drivers, four 5", and two tweeters per speaker. I suppose it's an array, but it sounds like a like a single planar panel with real world bass power. Mindblowing stuff and by far the best sound of what I saw. Of course, at $100k+, it ought to knock the snot of me.

8) Most "rocking" room for me was Globe Audio Marketing's. These guys liked to rip the rock tunes(like Zu) and let the classical/jazz/folk fans run for their damn lives. We cleared the room several times by tossing on a fantastic vinyl version of Tool's "Aenima" or Neil Young & Crazyhorse, etc.

Their were demonstrating Audio Aero's Prestige Monobloc Amplifiers - 40 wpc SET moster amps with 813 output tubes driven by 211's and 6SN7's for driver/input. That's easily 1,200+ volts coursing through those amps. These are SET amps on steroids w/o losing the delicacy, intimacy, and "magical" midrange. Great bass drive. Audio Aero preamp.

Speakers were Austrian WLM Lyra. These were really impressive - 98dB/8ohm 7" widerange driver with supertweeter. These suckers have weight, body, and drive. They do rock better than any other single-driver/wideband than any other I've ever heard. And also sound great with all other genres. Brinkman LaGrange turntable with Breuer arm and Dynavector XV-1S

Time for dinner, I'll have more info later.

Saturday I spent the day at the VTV Expo. My impression was that traffic was very poor and certainly below Charlie's expectations. Hope he and the other exhibitors do better today. There was a bit of cross-traffic from the Sheraton.

There was a ballroom on the first floor that had the look and feel of a swap meet with tables full of NOS tubes and boxes. One popular theory was that this was pretty tangible evidence of the impact of ebay and the Internet - why go see tubes when you can let your fingers do the walking around the world online...

There were a few surprises upstairs, high profile companies who by virtue of reputation and pricing I would have expected to see at the Sheraton - starting with DeHavilland. But the one that really blew me away was Audionote which was comfortably esconced in two suites.

I knew something was up when I walked in the room and the speakers were literally touching the walls on both sides of the room. The gaggle of electronica (some of it hors d combat courtesy of a overly diligent shipping company) was boggling. And then there was the sound. The gentlemen spinning the discs (Peter?) had a fondness for old LPs and one got the slightly eerie feeling that Satchmo was indeed back in town - though why he would stay at this hotel was beyond me.

On the new end of things, the American Electronic Project was there with their new line of three Cheer Amps and a tube CD player built of course in China. We listened to the EL34 and the 300B units and for the price they were pretty nice. IMHO the key to their success was a stunning pair of speakers ($800 including lovely wood stands) Not an inch of fancy cable anywhere - let's talk zip.

Given my interest in all things computer based, for me the most interesting room was Bauls Audio, showing the 100db efficient Bastanis open baffle Prometheus speakers with the Gemini tweeters that put a prodigious sound stage with tremendous detail.

As it turned out, the reason for this was that they were running a just modded Empirical Audio I2S (as opposed to SPDIF) P3 DAC. It was my first chance to hear Steve Nugent's work up close and personal and folks, it rocks. No skips, no pops, just lots of music.

Bill Allen reported that the speakers sounded excellent with Vinnie's battery powered 6w Clari-T amps, though they were being demoed with 300B monoblocs. Bill is on a mission to figure out how to bring the best of the new technology into simple low cost systems that make music. I think its fabulous that someone is bringing together this kind of talent.

Their were demonstrating Audio Aero's Prestige Monobloc Amplifiers - 40 wpc SET moster amps with 813 output tubes driven by 211's and 6SN7's for driver/input.

These amps sounded gorgeous AND had big cojones. They truly got out of the way to let the music through on every note.

Nilthepill,
I listened to the mBL's, Acapella's and the Dynaudio's.
Again, IMHO the Lamm room was extraordinary with better integration etc. The Mbl's and the Acapella's were impressive, however, I felt that the Mbl room was too loud and the speakers were very bright. The Acapella's seemed to be in too small a room; they sounded a little boomy ( possibly due to the room) and again the room was too loud.
The Dynaudio room was poor, the speakers sounded veiled and closed in.
The combo of the Lamm amps and the metronome and the Sophia's have put the Sophia's and the Lamm's on my short list.

I was there all day Friday and Saturday.

Thought the MBLs were amazing - very tizzy on the pop recording but an amazing sense of being right there at a live event on the orch tracks.

Since I'm a Joseph Audio owner I spent a lot of time in that room - great sounding room and Jeff Joseph is a great guy to talk to. Personally I like the style of demo that has the designer/owner right there answering questions, telling you what he's playing, what's new, etc. So many rooms were just salesman standing there looking bored with no insight to offer.

The surprise of the show for me was Dr Hsu of Hsu Research/subwoofer fame. He was showing a new 2 way bookshelf with horned tweeter. Very nice midrange, stable deep vocal image. They sell for $250/pair and he was running home depot speaker cable and a cheapo sony CD player - that was kinda depressing... will be available soon.