Similar to the RMAF 2013 show report – we will put the politically correct version for all levels of audiophile, along with well over 1000 photos, over on Ultimist – and we will put the more opinionated report here on the blog, which we will call ‘Most Interesting of Show’, for people who are focused on Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences.

This year Neli and I spent the first and third days of the show together at the Venetian. We don’t usually do this. This is like spending the day with bunch of friends and partners who play good music while we catch up on what’s new. This is not like Mike zooming through the rooms seeing who all is here and who is sounding good this year. By day two I was panicking, not yet realizing that the shows were both quite a bit smaller this year.

But it all worked out fine [though I didn’t get to Lamm until the end of the last day. Just another opportunity to try and not PANIC. Life seems full of these kind of opportunities… :-/].

As usual there are more photos of things that either look cool and/or sound good and/or I haven’t photographed / seen before. And less photos of things I’ve photographed a billion times and you can see in previous show reports.

First, fun show as always.

Everyone was mildly upbeat. No WTF’s about Audiogon this year. No unending complaints about the economy – more of a “it sucks, we just have to deal with it” attitude.

Exhibitors are now using CD players like they used to use turntables – as a way to provide a better sound for those that care about the sound. It has now moved to the ‘audio treat’ category.

A very surprising development, certainly to me and seems like it would be to others, [and this is just what I observed, I haven’t counted the rooms yet] is that there were only about half as many rooms at the Venetian this year as last year, with about the same reduction in rooms over at THE Show. There was a commensurate reduction in traffic as well, though the people who attended actually sat and listened to things instead of just wandering in and out of rooms [i.e. a higher quality of attendee].

For example, it only took me 5 hours to photograph the rooms at the Venetian and it used to take me about 20 hours [the vast majority of 3 of 4 days]. With fewer people [faster walking from room to room], and fewer rooms this show was way easier to report on than previous years.

* Are the newer shows like Newport L.A., Axpona Chicago and Dagogo San Francisco eating into the numbers? No doubt. And certainly Munich is seriously eating into the international numbers as well.

* Did the cold snap and storms on the east coast delay and cancel some people’s plans. Probably.

* Did the economy and continuing shift away from traditional component-based high-end audio kill off a few more of our brethren? Or perhaps bad times have made CES prohibitively expensive? Unfortunately there is probably some of this as well.

* Rumors were that some of the prices at the Venetian went up, even though brands like Acapella / Einstein and Kharma moved over from THE Show to the Venetian this year.

Other trends… other trends…

The sound at THE Show is now as good or better, on average, than that at the Venetian

UPDATE: exhibitors have started locking their doors and or keeping attendees out when “important” show reviewers are in the room. This had been unusual at past shows but happened to me several times at this show when I visited Kharma (twice), Perfect8 [tho they were kind enough to come get me when Fremer had left], PranaFidelity [got stuck in the room in this situation], and I never got into the Evolution Acoustics room because of one of these ‘private demos’. There were others but I forget who they were – although I took photos of their room door, tho, to remind me of why I did not get any photos of the gear in the room.

UPDATE II: As pointed out by other show reports, the Magico brand of speakers and the D’Agostino brand of electronics were in a lot of rooms. Approximately 10 or more each. And, of course, our friendly neighborhood equipment rack HRS was in 13 rooms. These were all what one would call ubiquitous. All gear with quite good fit-and-finish. Does this tell us something? Don’t know.

I know this is largely the decision of the exhibitors themselves [otherwise, pity the poor reviewer’s family. They are no doubt forbidden to talk to each other, sneeze, cough or even fart(!) in their own home when daddy or mommy is ‘listening’]. Me? I say let everybody talk and mill about – they/we/you are people too, hello – and the different degrees of concentrated focus helps hear the music / sound from different perspectives and keeps the resulting analysis more ‘real’.

* There is something of a musical chairs effect of exhibitors sharing rooms with different partners than they used to. Walker with Perfect8 and VAC. Atma-sphere with PranaFidelity. Magico with Vitus. Kondo with B&W. TechDAS on Acapella / Einstein. Some of these really work awesomely well [Atma-sphere with PranaFidelity, TechDAS on Acapella / Einstein], and others with mixed results [Kondo on B&W].

People and brands who did not make it this year:

Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note U.K. got sick at the last minute, and ANUK was nowhere to be seen at the shows this year. Audio Power Labs was also missed. Avantgarde, Hansen, Classic Audio, Voxativ, …. let’s see. I’ll add more here later…

I’ll add more here as we think through what we saw and what it all meant…