Wes Bender Studio NYC, Hansen, Red Point Audio, Wavestream amps… Wes really knows how to make the Hansen speakers sound powerful and enjoyable.

Magico brought monitor speakers this year (the new Q1). Bass was not as tight this show compared to how I remember Magico Mini’s sounding.

Alon Wolf turning up the volume in the Magico room.

Blue Light Audio brought the tiny Evolution Acoustics speakers to this show this year. We do not listen to many [any?] $2500 speakers so hard to eval how these compare to the competition. We did not get to the larger Evolution Acoustics room.

Cool looking Wave Kinetics turntable in the Blue Light Audio room.

Vitus Audio brought their new, lower priced integrated amp and CD player to the show this year. They also had noisy-neighbor issues and it was hard to hear what the equipment really sounded like in this room.

The Kimber IsoMike room was relatively downscale this year as well, like the rest of the show.

The pianist here had a lovely voice that we all heard coming out of a not so lovely sound system.

The d’Agostino folks, bad show neighbors though they may be, had a nice looking preamp on static display.

Avalon came out with yet another pair of small speakers, sounding excellent [dynamic and rich and detailed] as always. Worked really well in this room.

Tri came out with a new, very nice-looking and sounding [in the Acoustic Zen room] 150watt 845-based amp.

ESS Labs brought a lot of speakers that are using the Heil drivers. There were some bass integration issues I thought on the medium sized speakers I heard here.

Al works for Audiogon and takes photos for Audiogon’s show reports [Albert Porter also takes photos for Audiogon, sometimes, though not at this show this year]. He covers every room (like I do at shows besides this one) and we usually run into each other several times in the hallways and exhibit rooms – commiserating about the difficulties of covering every single room. He likes Heavy Metal music which, of course, is almost never played at these shows [We had Dream Theater but forgot to play it while he was in our room (but we did play it later in the show :-))].

Anyway, Al is one of the unsung heroes behind our hobby.

Room 570 was interesting… Kevin thought this single-driver (Voxativ) speaker was slightly more full-range than the Teresonic speakers, a similar single-driver (Lowther) speaker [up to now the only full-featured single-driver speaker that looks and sounds like a real [decent] speaker and can play many kinds of music.]

I am not sure I agree or disagree about the additional bass – but the sound in this room was remarkably smooth.

No, I am not sire what I mean by ‘smooth’ either. Kind of a know-it-when-you-hear-it I guess. It is really unlikely that it was a DRASTICALLY reduced treble and certainly not notes that were lasting too long [which I am really sensitive too]. That amp is a ‘prototype’ what looks to be 300B tube amp.

It was likely just rounded note attacks and decays but the notes were still starting and ending on time. This sound is really nice at a show [with many systems with note envelopes looking like beds of nails].

Anyway, another nice new speaker to keep an eye on.