Ohm 2000s at NY Audio Show

Yes, the Electrocompaniet / DSPeaker room was one of the better ones. I thought the Alta speakers / Krell room was in its own league, but it should be for the cost of the equipment. My "room I could come home to" (if I could afford it) award went to Audio Note, which just sounded like a guy sitting in a room playing guitar - right size, right timbre, just...right. But if you’re talking price to quality of sound ratio, the Ohm to me was the clear winner in the show, IMO. It did not embarrass itself against systems costing much more, and in fact bettered many.

Yup, it's definitely a matter of preference, kalali. I owned a pair of Ohms a while back but sold them when I moved from a house to an apartment (I found the Ohms to need some volume to properly express the music, which I could no longer give them). I now own Spatial open baffles which are wonderful even at low volumes, but purposefully designed to direct sound to a relatively narrow sweet spot. Very different philosophy, and as a result a very different experience. The Spatials are also great for apartment listening because they don't transfer energy to the floor nearly as much as most box designs or even omnis (I can barely hear them from the floor below me). 
The original point of the post, though, still stands: The Ohms certainly held their own among much pricier systems, with no esoteric associated gear. Other systems costing much more sounded different, but not necessarily better. 

Yes, Bondmanp, the Cambridge room seemed to be enamored with pop/rock recordings that had very little to offer in the way of tonal or dynamic variety...hard to judge a system that way. Acoustics overall just seemed to be working against vendors in most rooms, but as you point out they weren't helping themselves much by turning it up to 11. The Pure Audios were interesting, and certainly dynamic, but harsher than what I'm used to with my Spatials, which are a quarter of the price and sound much more natural (to my ears, anyway). What I did take away from that room was an amazing movie score by Henry Mancini for a John Wayne film called Hatari (which I had never heard of). There's one particular track on it that's called "The Sounds of Hatari" that should be on everyone's audition lists for evaluating systems...it throws just about every sound you can think of at you. Amazing to hear.