These photos were taken around noon on Wednesday, the 3rd day of the show. The first half of the single wing of the 30th floor had been visited on the first day, but on the second day we decided to visit the slums, I mean the regular conference rooms, on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors.

So this floor was a 'do or die trying' effort because the 4th and last day was being reserved for THE SHOW at the St. Tropez, which had gotten short thrift but I wanted to save it for the end and just be done with all the busses and taxiing and heavy camera lugging long walks getting to the other shows - in general things that were a waste of time because I can do those things anywhere, anytime. and the show is what is important these 4 days.

Anyway, taking the stairs down from the 30th floor I arrived at the end of the hall of what I will call Wing 1. It really has a alphabetic letter designation: A, B or C, but I have no idea which. The Venetian Tower arranges the hotel rooms into three 'wings', each of which, on this floor, contain numerous, NUMEROUS, rooms exhibiting high-end audio gear.

Some of which try to reproduce music.

Nawwwww, we are going to be nice.

Music was playing here and it was quite nice - somewhat polite and sophisticated, but with a competency that makes me finally see what other people see in these speakers. For some reason, at shows these speakers are usually dull sounding and slow and muffled. But of the 3 rooms with Quad speakers - they all sounded pretty good.

Why? Because he did not like what I said about the Magico Mini loudspeakers at the last CES.

Here is what I wrote:

"Magico speakers and Cat JL-2 amplifiers. Lots of people liked this sound but I found a heavy concentration of energy in the midrange, in a compressed, and uneven presentation, rapidly trailing off at the frequency extremes. Beautiful speakers and amps - but the sound just did not work at all for me here. There was another Magico system that had one of large Rowland amps driving it that we did not get to hear."

and

"Magico speakers, big Rowland amplifier. Considering I wrote elsewhere that I did not make it to this room - it was hardly memorable. Mostly I remember thinking "what's the fuss about these speakers? This system is just not showing them in their best light" This is a pretty large room - so that could have something to do with it, as we got burnt out on small monitor speakers in big rooms here after living with the Sonus Faber Extremas for many years.

'Course, the other Magico room was much smaller, but it had its own issues.

Silly me, I did not take a picture of the rack with the source equipment."

Alon seems like a nice, level-headed guy, but that is hardly very provocative. The first room reviewed had an *Edge Signature 1 preamp in the chain, which we sell.

Really, I am going to write what I hear, in as honest a way as the English language allows. I do not mean to eviscerate anybody. If someone thinks a review is unfair, email me, or post it on the blog if you want, and we can discuss it. Just don't threaten us or it will go up on the blog whether you like it or not.

OK, Alon did let me listen to the system in this room, which had the $150K Magico floor standers, and so here is what I heard.

I liked these better than the Magico Mini's, by which I mean that these speakers, I do not know their name, are a better value in my estimation in the $150K speaker market than are the Mini's in the $20K speaker market.

A lot of people spontaneously voiced their opinion that they did not like the sound in this room, saying that the sound was cool or the bass was disconnected from the rest of the frequency range. The fact that I thought it was better than that does not mean that I am trying to get Mr. Wolf to let me take and post photos of his rooms. At an estimated 8 days of 12 to 14 hours to get this report out - it probably saves me almost an hour NOT to take the photos, retouch them, crop, resize, and comment on them.

I presume next year I won't get to listen at all and save another hour [few rooms have $150K speakers that require this much introspection]. If all the exhibitors had this attitude I might actually get to just hang-out and enjoy a show or two :-)
 

The all Burmester system sounded better than it has in recent years, richer with more harmonic content - and a little warmer. I have no idea which of the two pairs of speakers were playing, however [in the past we have heard the big boys].

Don't remember the sound in this room - but I took a lot of photos of the Pathos gear. Very photogenic.

I am beginning to see the world as divided into two camps: those that (1) really must have rounded notes along with a room-pressurizing sound, and those that (2) must have high resolution, discrete notes with a soundstage laid out in front of them.

And then there is the rest of us independents who have to agonize over each system, judging it on its own particular merits.

Anyway, I finally understand what people see in these Gershman speaker systems.

The sound of this system, such as this poor listener was able to hear it during his short stay off-axis, is Sophisticated and Enjoyable. The midrange had a beautiful delicacy, but with real world bass and flat frequency response top to bottom.

We are talking about the system sound here - and, given what I know about these speakers, they like, and are a reasonably clear window on, high-quality electronics upstream.

This room, running off the iPod, sounded reasonably good. I didn't get to sit and check out transparency or anything, and it wasn't playing very loud, but there was good dynamic separation and a sweet tunefulness that really didn't suck.

Once they make a way to get the digital off of one of these in a reasonable fashion, and make the iPod display readable to someone besides 20 somethings, the CD will be in (even more) trouble.

OK folks, I am going to submit you to quite a few photos of the prototype of the new SXR equipment rack from HRS.

People who know us, or of HRS, know that HRS does not fool around when it comes to making equipment racks that address the deleterious effects induced by vibrations generated by loudspeakers (and sometimes even heavy footed men and women) on electronic and mechanical high-end audio equipment.

Whoa, that sentence is too long for 5:30am, and I don't want to go back and reread it to see if it makes sense, so onward...so let's just get on with the pictures, already.

The M3 has always worked really well on carpet for us, but if we can make it sound even better? And there is an improved aesthetics about getting the whole thing higher off of the floor. If you have a smooth and flat hardwood floor, it is more unclear if there will be much improvement, since the feet of your  M3 are already on a firm surface.

This thing weighs, and I am estimating based on weights of various dumbbells I lift, about 25 - 30 lbs?

End of Wing One.

Actually, the Vandy rooms were  kind of the in the middle of the 3 wings of the tower - and I almost missed them, walking by them completely the first time, only later wondering if there might be 'stuff' in these rooms.