Best of Home Entertainment 2004 NY ?

For the friend or relative who just wants to listen to music, and have somebody else get it all together for them, I heartily recommend a look ( internet direct seller ), and a listen ( money back guarantee ) at odysseyaudio.com, the most value oriented system integrator at the Show.
Klaus Bunge manufactures, tweaks, integrates, and keeps the prices low. Also, a real gentleman, who values a customer choosing his $1500 package system just as much as the slightly higher rollers who go for his more elevated systems. He sells components separately, too.
Another gentleman, a Southerner, and I guess you could call him a legend in his own time, Lloyd Walker, showed off his best turntable, with its astronomical $27,000 price tag ( worth it, too ) and in the twinkling of an eye, returned to earth, and politely sold me his new SST Contact enhancer for a Show bargain price of $55 ( regular retail is still quite reasonable ). I am finding that this may be one of those universal tweak ideas that keeps improving a system's performance, as you apply, step by step, to power cords, interconnects, speaker cables, and, even the pins on tubes.
It actually inspires you to call up an audio buddy, to quickly come listen. And, then he wants to "borrow" your remaining supply; fair enough because he always lets me hear his best CD's.
Another impressive tweak, which was being applied on some of my interconnects from home, while I was at the Show, and to which I returned home for a thrilling listen, is offered by cableburner.com. I entrusted two pairs of recently "retired" Marigo interconnects to the burn-in gadgets of George Saubon, who delivered back to me an enhanced interconnect performance which would have been priced in the stratosphere if I had elected to purchase this IC quality from other wire vendors at the Show.
Luckily, I have a number of systems, allowing for separate evaluation of different upgrade efforts. It gets very complicated when a tweak lets an item "leapfrog" in performance over its competition. Then the competition may be able to re-gain the lead, when the same tweak is applied to it. I plan to send some more wires for burn-in, and will gladly be paying for this service that I was fortunate to first try out as an introductory free offer (yes, it was a public ad right here on Audiogon :>)
Hope this review of some inexpensive ways to get great sound, by taking advantage of ideas from conscientious vendors, may be of help to someone who values a bargain.

The JT cut was the last song from "Dad Loves his Work."

Apollo,

Part of the reason for going was to have a good meal. I guess you can tell that I don't get out much. I should have picked the restuarant, but my buddy was paying so I let him choose. As far as energy bars go, I have to take my naps or I fall down and go boom. I went down to the bottom floor and found a quit corner and closed my eyes. I told you guys that I would be the one sleeping in the corner but you didn't beleive me.

Despite the naps, bus and upset stomach, I had a good time at the show.

I went to the show in hopes of losing my "babe in the woods" audiophile status. I was a little intimidated at first by the complexity of components and serious looks on the faces of those I imagined to be serious audiophiles. I brought a few cd's of my favorite music (MFSL versions of Santana Abraxas and Dark Side of the Moon). The closest thing to rock that I heard emanating from the plethora of demo rooms I strolled by was James Taylor and Steely Dan. My cd's never made it out of the bag. The second thing I realized by listening to the fine products of Totem, Walker, Joseph Audio and MBL was that my ears are just too plebian to catch the subtle nuances required to call myself an audiophile. The little totems sounded great to me. I sat in on Jeff Joseph's demo of his newest speaker. He led off with a self congratulatory rant about how great his Pearl speakers were and how magazines had conspired with other jealous manufacturers to eliminate voting for Best Sounding for fear of Joseph Audio winning every year. He played some new in wall speakers first and then his newest high end speaker powered by Manley monoblocks and the speakers sounded stunning. The prize for visual aesthetics goes to MBL. Their components looked better suited to take out a Death Star than play the new Patricia Barber album. I'd never heard of this company before. They're from Germany. The speakers looked both antique and ultra modern simultaneously. As I recall the speakers base were pyramid shaped and the top part looked like a lamp without bulbs or lampshade. The other components had a McIntosh-esque blue glow. The visual impact of these components made it hard for me to swich from eyes to ears and evaluate their sound.The demo song was a laid back jazzy female vocal version of "Spanish Harlem" and sounded extraordinary. This stuff looked pricey so I didn't even want to know how much it cost. I spoke with the salesman from Kimber who extolled the virtues of his 880$ 8 foot speaker cables but subsequently spent most of my time meeting the people from the software companies I only knew from the internet. Music Direct, Red Trumpet, Elusive Disc were all present. I bought some cd's from David Chesky himself on his recommendations. I also met the co-creator of XRCD technology, a nice Japanese fellow who explained what OBI meant. (I'd always wondered). In summation the 2004 HE Show taught me just how little I currently know and how long the road to true audiophiledom is.

Since you don't want to know, I'll tell you. MBL's full top of the line system goes for $160,000. The speakers go for $40,000.