Was there from opening till closing (10-6). As we had 3+ hours to drive home we decided to skip the Saturday festivities/libations.
Overall, a decent show with a notable lack of 'big name' electronics (McIntosh, MBL, Focal, Wilson, WireWorld, etc. - not a single piece from them or several more).
What was consistent thru-out was poor lighting in almost every room. A few rooms had good windows and a few others with additional lighting provided by the vendors, but most were between dim and very dark. The pic's I've added reflect this fact (along with my poor cell-phone camera skills).
To our ears (Mark, not an AAf member) the Qln-Nagra room was clearly the best sounding, which was a surprise considering the Qln was their monitor speaker. Their imaging and sound-stage was amazing. Another note was just how well all the high-end monitor speakers we listened to performed (Oln, YG Peak, Piega, etc.), especially how deep they went. Same with the open baffle speakers we heard. Most vendors did a decent job setting up their rooms/equipment with at least some effort in placing baffles on the walls/floors/corners.
While there were probably a couple of dozen rooms with vinyl, most all rooms also used digital for convenience. The vendor could simply ask what someone would like to hear and then pull it up in Roon (other other software) on their tablet or phone. Several rooms did an excellent job with digital. The Oln-Nagra, Devore-Linear Tube Audio, Raidho-Rowland and Canton-Esoteric being of note.
My 2nd best sound of the show was a tie between the Bache Audio and Raidho-Rowland rooms. Bache Audio's phono-preamp, preamp & 300b based 15wpc SET amp driving their own speakers was very well done, as was the Raidho with a 1500wpc Rowland Class D integrated amp. Two totally different approaches to good sound.
Another good room was the Lansche-United Home Audio-Thrax room with a huge pair of Lansche speakers, four (4) Thrax 50wpc 300b SET amps and the United Home Audio RtR tape machine. If you are into RtR machines, then the United Home Audio is for you. In talking with Greg, the owner, about sourcing quality tape today, I learned that BASF recently sold their tape technology to a French company and the production has not only been moved to France, but totally updated. Greg mentioned that he works closely with the new supplier.
The Voxativ room was quite impressive with their speakers and 805-tubed integrated amp.
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