Best of Home Entertainment 2004 NY ?


Who rocked your world? And what stood out within the demo that really drew you into the music?
mphnkns
Maybe it's just my taste, but I just don't get that MBL stuff. Nevertheless, I won't deny that their sound is appealing to many.

I also will give them credit for showing up. I can't believe how many WEREN'T there compared to Frisco and NYC 2 years ago. Just off the top of my head, I count the following MIAs that had notable demos before:

Dynaudio, Wilson Audio, Avantgarde, Rockport, Piega, Nordost, Dali, Callix, Genesis, Denali, Talon, Pipedreams, plus many more smaller ones.

Heck, even Musical Fidelity wasn't there except via the Sound by Singer demo. Two years ago, they had the Monitor Audio/Musical Fidelity full boat demo room.
Here's a link to my pics of the show.

MBL Room

The MBL's are there and looked very pretty in a shiny black and gold and huge and expensive kind of way. Yeah, their sound always impresses me every time I've heard them. Now I need to find a friend who could actually afford a setup like this and see what they can do in a real room.
>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.

"Self-congratulatory rant? "
"How great my Pearls are?"
"Magazines had conspired with other jealous manufacturers?"

That wasn't quite what I said! I did start out by discussing our sucessive wins at the show (three times in row - no other manufacturer can claim that) and then explained why no votes are being counted this time out. The info about other manufacturers upset with our victory was reported directly to me from the magazine's publishers as the reason for the cancellation of the voting.

>He played some new in wall speakers first and then his >newest high end speaker powered by Manley monoblocks and >the speakers sounded stunning

Thank you! Isn't that what this hobby is all about???

Jeff Joseph
I would like to say that while I have absolutely no affiliation to Joseph Audio, I attended HE2004, and the last thing that Jeff Joseph did was launch into any self congratulatory rant.

In fact, as you may remember Jeff, he had gone through a tour of the entire system and was about to begin the demo, when I opened my big mouth and asked him about the speakers. How is that for going into a self congratulatory rant? A man whose sole audio product in the chain was his loudspeakers, and he didn't even mention them. Of course, when I asked, he went into a short description of the new RM55, and how his goal was to push the performance of the Pearls down to the $12K price point. After thanking him, he said, "NO, thank you!"

Jeff is a good person, who puts on a very good demo at the show, and beyond that, is one hell of a speaker designer.
Hey Trelja:
As I stated in my post that Jeff responded to " the RM55 was stunning.' It is my opinion that the entire scenario about the Pearls winning Best in Show was unnecessary. The magazines that conspired to eliminate a competition for fear of Joseph dominating it have become puppets for the manufacturers throwing the most revenue at them anyway. Audiophiles are smarter than that and I believe their most important vote is with their wallet anyway. What is the owner/designer of a speaker going to say about his product? That it's pretty good but Wison is better? How come if Jeff's speakers were the only product of his in the system no one spoke about the other fine components in depth? The Manley girl (oxymoronic?) was present and Theta had some components in the mix too. The objectivity lies with the listener. When Jeff fired those babies up it was more meaningful than anything he could've said. Many of the rooms just had their products playing music and let the consumer ask the questions. The fact that Jeff even responded to a post on Audiogon says a lot about his character IMHO.