The morning walk from the Flamingo to the Venetian is along the Las Vegas ‘Strip’. It is between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The skies are always flawlessly blue.

Not many people out

Caesar’s Palace is on the other side of the street .

Not many people drinking yet (a good sign).

They make the sidewalk take a little [100 yard] loop back away from the road and through a lot of vendors and other places they hope we will spend money at.

As we exit the loop, there are a cluster of the ubiquitous palm trees on the Strip. That is the Mirage’s sign over on the left behind the trees.

McDonalds, Las Vegas Strip-style. Apparently the busiest place at around 10am on the strip (not a good sign).

And here we are at the moving walkway that takes us to the Venetian proper. That is Treasure Island over there on the left.

Exiting the Venetian at the end of the first day of the show.

Too bad the blog is in reverse order like this.

Just imagine looking through all 40 rooms or so to this point and then entering this fantasy world of light and color and partying people [although we do have to transition to the outside by traversing the casino – another world not much related to reality].

Not sure whether to port the show up to this point to the Gallery / Database now, as planned, or continue on and fish the show report here on the blog. The blog is somewhat easier for humans and search engines to find.

I also feel burnout looming… looming… and I want to make sure to get at least one full version before that happens.

As I read other reports [OK, just Stereophile’s and JV’s (boy, what a mixed up report this is this year – from Marc Michelsonish (who must be on crack and listening to things from his villa on Pluto) room reviews to somewhat distressed angst over the Magico room – haven’t read the review but did read the comments – long story…)] I feel the temptation to post some kind of summary.

Summary: nothing was fantastic but a lot was very much worth listening to and investigating – and hardly any of them were the same as those that were interesting last year.

Hmmmm, for some reason that did not satisfy the itch. 🙂

OK, the interesting [in a good way] rooms this year were YG Acoustics/Tenor, YG Acoustics/Krell, Magico/Luxman(!), Venture(!)/Venture, Ktema/Air Tight(!), Von Schweikert(!)/Audio Power Labs, Kondo/Kondo, and… to a minor degree the big Magico/mystery amps room [only because despite the extreme problems with the sound here this was the only Magico system ever, from the Magico Mini onward, that sounded RELAXED and not stifled and constipated and under-powered. Big and open Magico has until now been an oxymoron] and to a lesser extent, the big Sonus Faber/? system [usually you pay more, a lot more, and get LESS colored, but there is no rule it has to be that way, now is there?]

I do really want to post summaries at the end of the report, and not in the middle, otherwise they will just get lost.

Usher had one of the larger rooms this year, as we make our way to the end of the 300 wing on floor 29.

These speakers are quite large. I may be able to fit inside one, and I am quite confident that Neli could fit inside one of these monsters.

Sorry I didn’t snapshot the electronics. This was the last room I covered on the first day, and I was running much later than expected [so I subsequently just changed my expectations to more accurately fit the observed amount of time it was taking me to do one of these wings]. The electronics no doubt were Usher’s own.

The sound here – a bigger and fuller version of Usher’s already big and full ‘house sound’. Usher always provides quite high price/performance sound: big, open, decent harmonics and a little loosy goosy. They are firmly in the ‘Enjoyable’ camp.

The Usher Be-20 Diamond loudspeakers

The Usher Be-20 Diamond loudspeaker

The Usher Be-20 Diamond loudspeaker side view

The Usher Be-20 Diamond loudspeaker plate at the bottom of the speaker. Do not see many speakers that can be filled with lead shot…

On static display, at least while I was here, the Usher Dancer Mini Two Diamond loudspeakers

The Usher Reference 1.5 amplifier

Usher loudspeakers and drivers on static display.