Axpona

I am referring to the room where Magico paired with Audio Research. Not sure of the Magico model, but they were huge! No matter the type of music played they simply sounded sterile and boring.

The larger MBL room was specatular and I would think all agree. At least that was the sense at the show.

What Magico speaker were there??ARC no big deal.

ARC/Magico both tend towards high resolution/detail so might not be my preferred pairing unless one wants very high-res with a tube amp and all that goes with that. Some might, others not so much.

Many larger, more expensive setups I see at shows shoot to raise the bar in all areas including detail/resolution. That's not always my cup of tea but I can appreciate it when done well.

Magico had Q7 and the new M series. My assessment of them is right in line with the others. They check all of the audiophile boxes and are incredibly over built. They were also completely not involving. The sum was definitely way less than the parts. For 200k and 125k respectively, I expected a much more involving presentation.

The Acoustic Zen were excellent as they have been when ever I have heard them. For under 6k, the Odyssey Kismet and Audiokinesis Zephrin were both very, very good. I liked the Jantzen speakers were very good also. The HHR Exotics were very good as well.

My second favorite of the show were the Mosaic Audio Illuminations. I am a fan of Dale Pitchers speakers, having owned a couple and still having a pair in my possession. They take all of the things that his other speakers do so well and take it up another notch. They also had Scaena extenders there filling in the very lowest frequencies. Outstanding speakers that have every detail thought out to the nth degree.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the Muraudio room. They have 360 degree, vertically curved electostatic panels atop a trio of woofers in a solid cabinet. Sunday afternoon I had about a half hour in that room essentially with the manufacturer and myself. I could walk anywhere around that room and the stage did not fall apart. To my ears, they had the best traits of electrostats and omnipolars all rolled into one. Great tone, scale, resolution, extension at both extremes, and completely believable 3d imaging. If I had the coin, my search might well start and stop there.

I agree with Ohlala that the Bricasti room was impressive. For me the system I would taken home was in the Mofi.com room, Quad/BAT, though the MBL room was a close second.

My daughter ended up sitting next to a TAS rep in the Magico room (4th floor I think) and after the demo she said his notes were something to the effect of "dynamic but lacking emotion". I just thought it was an odd track for a demo, three piece jazz but all very closely mic'd so the while the instrumentation was lively the mix was somewhat unnatural.

The Esoteric room was awful, in my humble opinion. To the point that I wondered if the left La Sphere speaker had a blown tweeter or something. It shrieked at me most unpleasantly. And I like a forward high end.

The Sadurni horns were cool, but I didn't get an extremely satisfying answer from the rep about why they chose to pair them with Merrill mono blocks. Something to the effect of "while these are 108Db efficient and could run on flea watts we chose to run them with these 400W Veritas...". IDK, seemed odd.

In the Scaena room there was a Crown amp peeking out from under the curtain in the back of the room. The rep confirmed that it was running the subs. So put it out in the open! Don't be ashamed of your Crown amp!

Kudos to the guys in the Benchmark room for just being super cool and fun to talk to.