Home Entertainment Show in Los Angeles
The loudspeakers in the Berning/Stillpoints room were Peak Consult InCognito X. Terrific sounding room. John Atkinson liked the room a lot. He also liked the Gamut room. It's nice to have one's ears validated by a pro. :) Stereophile Show Report. |
I too just returned. It's my first audiophile show and the experience was like seeing my bookmarks come to life. Great to see and hear so much stuff I only read about. For instance handling the Oyaide and Acrolink stuff... The carbon fibre wall plug is awesome. Spread across four floors, it's a fun "little" show. (I am used to much, much bigger.) Today everyone was relaxed and low key, I suspect that things will get a bit more hectic over the weekend. What amazed me was that there was enough power in the hotel to run all this stuff! Highlights for me included: The Channel Island Audio room with the D200s running Von Schweikert 4jrs and the new 5s. Albert, Dusty and Jim Wang from Harmonic Tech were all on hand. I thought the room sounded tremendous and it was a crappy little room... The Van Gaylord (ex Legend) room was nothing short of amazing with a $55K liquid cooled tube amp (literally immersed in oil) and their Legend Speakers. Really wondrous to hear. Sonics by Joachim Gerhard debuted a new design that looked and sounded amazing. The Chord Room had some of the slickest industrial design I have seen in this market - and the Neat speakers they were running with their 480w monoblocks were fabulous - as was their music selection. Kudos to Rethm Speakers with an amazing 102db efficient set of speakers with amazing bass horn extensions that are built in India. The Berning/Stillpoints room Tvad mentioned above was very interesting because it had been extensively treated by 8th Nerve Acoustics. It had the widest soundstage I have ever heard. Finally - with a decidely more mid-market approach Aperion provided a stunning vision of HT of the future with a 7.2 system that came at you from every direction. Amazing cluck for the buck. Surprises to me as a show newbie included seeing people shopping for records, the almost complete absence of subwoofers, the barrage of cable the size of hawsers and finished like jewelry... and the absence of computer source - IMHO Nagra won that hands down. Hot new trend is painting your speakers with high end automotive colors - Watt, Zu and Usher are all racing ahead with that sure to please approach. Like a number of the posters, I went home feeling really good about what I had. And good about the people I met. Definitely a pleasant 4-5 hours though it mayy take you longer on the weekend. Meanwhile I will be checking out the VTV Expo. Not sure who hijacked who (I can guess) but its an interesting example of splitting a small audience... I'll try post on that one tomorrow. |
Just got back from the show.. As usual, a couple of good sounding rooms and a lot of very poor sounding rooms. What stuck me as interesting was the consistancy of pricing. Speakers typically between $4K and $100K with 90% costing between$10k to $50K. I was looking for the $1M to $6M pair but was disappointed. Funny thing was, when I left in my Rolls Royce it began to seem like I got a bargain on the car. IMHO the best sound was in the Lamm room. Mr Lamm was playing LP's on a great looking table from Metronome ( didn't ask price)and using the Sophia 2's, he had the most relaxing sound with better palpability and imageing than any other room I heard. Gamut room was a joke, the system sounded fair considering the terrible room that it was located in. In all fairness, they did a great job with what had to be the worst room at the show.( I heard they good a good rate though; I would hope so) Next year I hope the show comes back to LA... smog and all. |
