Home Entertainment Show in Los Angeles

I spent 6+ hours at the show today , some observations...

1) That hotel is like a freaking maze, snaking off in all directions rahter than the normal north, south, east, west. I got turned around more than a few times.

2) Rooms ranged from small to pretty damn large. Unfortunately, many exhibitors were trying to demonstrate speakers too large for their particular room. Although, I was surprised at the ones who rightfully selected smaller products in their line to successfully match the venue.

3) Fat cables are IN this year. The bigger, the better, it seems.

4) Lamm seems to be "place to be". I wouldn't know, the room was so damned crowded with photographers and press you couldn't get in edgewise.

5) Wilson was naother "place to be", but their wisely gave demos on 20 minute intervals without interruption. I never seemed to catch the intermissions, so no entry.

6) If you are junkie for LP's and cd's, don't bring credit cards. Plenty of great stuff to buy.

7) Elliot Midwood always has a great sounding room at shows, but this time he was off the chart with the new $40k ESP Concert Grand SI driven by the massive $35k Wavestream amps, $13k Messenger Reference preamp, Lector cd & DAC, and Brinkman LaGrange or Balance turntable/tonearm/phono.

Anyway, the ESP's have four 8" drivers, four 5", and two tweeters per speaker. I suppose it's an array, but it sounds like a like a single planar panel with real world bass power. Mindblowing stuff and by far the best sound of what I saw. Of course, at $100k+, it ought to knock the snot of me.

8) Most "rocking" room for me was Globe Audio Marketing's. These guys liked to rip the rock tunes(like Zu) and let the classical/jazz/folk fans run for their damn lives. We cleared the room several times by tossing on a fantastic vinyl version of Tool's "Aenima" or Neil Young & Crazyhorse, etc.

Their were demonstrating Audio Aero's Prestige Monobloc Amplifiers - 40 wpc SET moster amps with 813 output tubes driven by 211's and 6SN7's for driver/input. That's easily 1,200+ volts coursing through those amps. These are SET amps on steroids w/o losing the delicacy, intimacy, and "magical" midrange. Great bass drive. Audio Aero preamp.

Speakers were Austrian WLM Lyra. These were really impressive - 98dB/8ohm 7" widerange driver with supertweeter. These suckers have weight, body, and drive. They do rock better than any other single-driver/wideband than any other I've ever heard. And also sound great with all other genres. Brinkman LaGrange turntable with Breuer arm and Dynavector XV-1S

Time for dinner, I'll have more info later.

Agaffer,

That table was from Sound Engineering out of Nashville Tennessee, and I must have returned to that room 6-7 times. That quality of precision machining and design was breathtaking. $7,900 is a lot of money, but if ClearAudio, SME, or any of the other big names were selling it, the price would have been $20-30k easily.

It is an entirely new version of their SE-1 with a new plinth design and in black ebony wood with brushed stainless metal instead of Cocobolo and gold. The wood platter is made up of a constrained layers of differing thinkness plies(?). Bob Benn, the owner of Sound Engineering, told me that the ply combination was actually designed by the experts at Gibson Guitars, which happens to be just down the street from his shop.

The tonearm was the $6k Swiss made DaVinci Audio Labs (pic1, pic2). The designer/builder is actually a fine Swiss watch and clock maker by trade. And it shows in the workmanship.

In fact, it is the arm that Brinkman sold with their top tables until they decided to copy it on their own. Theirs does not even come close even though the appearances are nearly identical.