Joan waiting for the music in the last few grooves on the LP to be played.

I love this photo because, if you have ever done this yourself [and who hasn’t?] there is a interesting state of mind that occurs [usually]. You now just have one single task in life: listening to the music until the music’s over. A good deal of calm settles in and one [me anyway] listens to the music not so much intently as in this casual, enjoying the moment kind of way.

Serious Stereo’s 2A3-based amp

The Galibier turntable

For me, this was the best this room has sounded over the last few years. Simple, enjoyable, musical. [Never did get to hear Blows Against the Empire though, you guys. 🙂 Then again, the end of Sunrise should approach (virtually) 150db reflecting the dawn-apocalypse that is humankind’s arrival on this planet 😉 and I’ve never heard any system be able to do this… yet. We’ll have to try it with the Gaku-On’s someday]

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.