The MBL room sounded impressive, especially with large scale music. But when playing small classical ensembles, jazz trios, and solo vocals, they all sounded way bigger than life. Maybe they just need to turn the volume down a little bit?
It was encouraging to see a lot more exhibits of inexpensive gears. And there were tons of good sound coming out of inexpensive gears. My votes in this category go to Ermerald Pysics and AV123 as mentioned before.
There were a lot of music servers, computer based demos. Overall, I was impressived by many of the new offerings of CD players. They sound a lot more natural than digital front ends from the more traditional big names in High End audio.
Ray Kimber's IsoMike demo was very impressive. I missed it last year, so I made sure I checked it out this year. The Accapella horns were impressive too, except they were way too big to fit into normal size living rooms. The resurrected Apogee speakers were very nice, but it sounded too airy, not enough body.
USHER BE-718 was impressive. The BE-10 was not as impressive as the last time I heard it. But still good stuff. Sharing a room wiht Harmonix was a company called INEX Innovations. They are showing off an amplification technology based on fiber optics. Using it, you only need about 15 watts of power to run most speakers on the market. I took some time and give it a spin and they sounded really good. They were using a cheap CD player and a pair of Dali speakers. They sounded better than the higher-end Dali speakers demoing on another floor. The Dali rep came down while I was there and asked about potentially using their product for future Dali demos. The company is in the SF Bay Area, so I've asked them for a home demo.
OK, I never thought I said this. The Thiel 3.7 sounded better than the prototype at last year's Stereophile Show in LA. And I guess I am getting used to the look, as long as you don't take the grill off, I guess I could live with it. (They are ugly, but there are tons of speakers that are uglier in comparison at this show)
Overall, I prefer the line array designs. You can stand anywhere and the volume sound the same, and gives a very 3 dimensional soundstage and body to each instrument. Not all of them sounded good. I particularly like Saena, ESP loudspeaker, and the speakers that Audience used to demo their cables. Saena got the short stick of the draw, and got the small room next to MBL. When you get into the room, you had to suffer listening to the loud music coming from the MBL room. And the host was not a very good marketer.
That's another thing. A lot of lousy marketing at the show. Many interesting technologies, but not enough show-and-tell. A lot of new companies showing off their new products, but was not prepared when asked to give a short presentation about their products, or given enough emphasis to highlight the technology. In one of the rooms, a magazine reviewer asked the manufacturer to give a short presentation about his new product. The guys just went silent and could not come up with something to tell him why their products are special. I don't think that company is going to last.
Also, many manufacturers from Japan this year. I also noticed many horn speakers, or new interpretation of the horn design, and stuff based on the Lowther drivers, the white paper cones.
There were a lot more good sounding rooms than at the Stereophile show in LA last year. There were many rooms I wanted to go back to but ran out of time at the end.
FrankC
