Home Entertainment Show in Los Angeles

Product at the show I want most: the new Spiral Groove turntable from Allen
Perkins. An industrial design that is a superb, understated blend of retro and
contemporary. At $20K, I'll never own one.

Highlights for me were the field trip to RTI/Acoustech Friday night and the
recordings Steve Hoffman played Saturday in the Lamm room from his secret
stash. Especially the Beatles stuff. If only...

Also, this was perhaps my fourth or fifth Isomike recording demo from Ray
Kimber and it was just as impressive as always. No real commercial potential,
I suppose, so Ray is doing this as a labor of love. He deserves a medal of
some kind.

I haven't been to a HE show in 2-3 years, but this one seemed small and
underattended. So many usual players were MIA. I wonder if there's a future
for this show. At least in LA.

Thoughts on the Zu room? First time i had heard them. Seemed like the couch was setup in a room node (i asked as bass seemed weak for 4 10" powered woofers) which hurt bass response of the definitions, but thought the rest was really good for the money. I didn't care for the Druid demo however. Weird.

The Lamm room garners praise, but when i was in there the music bored me to tears so perhaps that is why it wasn't memorable.

I thought the W/P 8 room with ARC, 5As with ARC, and Sophia 2s with VTL all were great systems with high price tags. The 8s don't seem worth 30k to these ears. And the Sophia 2s sound very much alike to my originals.

All-in-all---this show has dissipated over the past 4 years. SF was good and NYC was good 3-4 years ago. Since then however, the show has had poor attendance.

btw, noticed the basic entire lack of home theater comapred to the nyc shows of past..

KeithR

The 8s don't seem worth 30k to these ears.

Out of curiosity, in your opinion, which $30K (+/-)speakers have you heard that are worth the retail price?

If you have $30K idling about as spare change in your pocket and no real compunction about how you distribute these funds, then putting the whole wad into a pair of speakers is no worse than some other things that have been chosen by others in the past. On the other hand, if you have a mortgage or car payments or kids who need you to pay for schooling or any of several dozen other real world obligations, such a purchase would be difficilt to reconcile. There are just too many more pressing needs in most of our lives. Consider how much money $30,000 really is and what it can buy. I don't care what Wilson speakers are made of or what sort of hallucinogenic value structure you apply. There simply is no way on earth that the cost of a pair of Watt Puppy 8's (might be 8A's before I finish this sentence) could possibly approach that of a loaded Accord.
RElative to other manufactured goods hi end audio is scandalously expensive for what you get and Wilson appears to me to be leading the pack. The reason given for switching from the 7's to the 8's is meeting European lead free restrictions. So we are eliminating the lead and selling the same product for what,$5000 more?
So, to answer Boa2's question........ No speaker is worth that much money.

I think at 30k you need a sense of scale that only larger speakers can give you. While the monitor/sub combo has matured with the 8, and its a great speaker, at some point value has to come in. The low end, while good on the 8s isn't close to say the Maxx. I do think the 8s are smoother top to bottom than the 7s.

There are many speakers at 30k that I would look at while considering purchase of the 8s. Dynaudio, JM Lab, Peak Consult, Von Schweikert etc. just to name a few. The new 5SEs looked and sounded tasty at HE2006.

btw, i own Sophias, so am pro-Wilson. The 7s at 23k are pushing the limit in my view---30k is just over the top to me for what you get. It's a great, small speaker which is what they designed it for. I could say the same thing about several Kharmas as well.

btw, the new grill covers are 10x better than the velcro of old like I have.

KeithR