In Reply to: The Best Sound at Axpona posted by Stale on April 26, 2014 at 18:14:36:
Went both Friday and Saturday from opening to about 1:30. Totally defied my expectations:
Very subdued, music was not being played that loud at all in most rooms
The sheer size and mass of the high end amps, pre's etc shocked me. Pics in mags do not do justice to the beauty of these electronics ( D'Agostino's were out of this world)
No chance to assess anything but speakers - electronics were all good but not up front imho.
Lots of digital players, but cd's and turntables were well represented. Sony's new player was everywhere, as were a lot of Marantz Reference sources.
Sound at shows is always bitched about, but I found most rooms pretty good - Saturday was better than Friday I will admit. Most of the smaller rooms were warmer sounding than I expected.
Fav's rooms included, Audio Note, Monitor, Devore Fidelity, any room with Dynaudio except the very biggest ones, Triode Japan (cool tubes!), AIX demos (who sang So Sad?), the reference Sony speakers and those small new Kef's everyone is raving about.
Money did't seem to matter too much, as there were many good sounding rooms with modest equipment. My son and I came away with the sense that you had to like the music being played to appreciate the speakers. Lots of Dire Straits, Keb Mo, Alison Krauss, and the audiophile-like stuff. They would play just about anything you asked for if they had it, however.
Played some of the cuts I heard at the show at home last night and freaked me out. I never thought my room was lively, but it is way livelier than all but the real big rooms at the show. Speaker favs will likely sound different at home if the show is where you are making a purchasing decision - which most aren't I would think.
Lots of fun.
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Follow Ups
- A newbies first show perspective - mcondo 04/27/1410:03:22 04/27/14 (1)
- "Sony's new player was everywhere" - Metralla 16:14:51 04/27/14 (0)