Alexis Park... uh... Villas is about 1/2 way through a facelift as it gets invaded by 1000s of audio geeks. No snow this year, just nice days and chilly nights. Attendance seemed about average for the first day of the show.

The front entrance to the Alexis Park. When calling for a taxi, the bell-men step to the front edge of the overhang and blow a loud whistle. The resulting backlash on the ears of those hapless souls standing near the front entrance is memorable.

Buses run from here to the main conference. It seems like it would be a lengthy trip - even though the convention center is rather close - but we have never taken the bus so do not know for sure. Hi Wes!

There is now the pale-orange iron fence around all the swimming pools. Speculations abound as to why these were put up. My guess - too many people were accidentally walking into the pools, perhaps after a beer or six?

Outside the Globe Audio Marketing room (hence the barely legible Audio Aero* sign). It was a beautiful time of year in Las Vegas.

The first room we stopped at. The Swedish Statement system - The Marten Design* Coltrane Supremes, Bladelius (Bleh-dee-lee-us) electronics, Nordic Concept turntable, Jorma Design* cabling and World Power's PowerWing power conditioning. This was the only system which did not have any flaws that I could hear... but one could wish it was in a larger room!

More about the 'true-to-life' sound in this room in the final report, but suffice it to say for now that this is the kind of sound we like- like that you would experience in the studio or at the concert.

These speakers are actually prototypes - the final version will have active bass towers (built-in amplifiers), the main towers, at 93dB sensitive, can be driven with just about any amplifier to tailor the sound to the owners taste. The bass towers will also come with digital room correction capabilities.

The Coltrane Supremes are the first loudspeaker to use the diamond midrange driver (2nd driver from the top on the left speaker in the picture. The top driver is the diamond tweeter, used in the top speakers from Avalon, Kharma, Lumenwhite, and of course, Marten Design). Given the cost of the diamond midrange ($25K a pair wholesale) there will be few if any other speakers using it in the future.

On to the next room. Actually, there were more people than this at the Alexis Park - they just went and hid behind trees or something during these shots...

Marten Design* Miles III, EAR electronics, new EAR turntable, and a reel-to-reel tape deck owned by the distributor but heavily customized by Tim dePavarcini of EAR. As expected, the tape deck sounded good :-)

The sound in this room varied. It started off sounding kind of like it was the morning of the first day of the show (like all the other rooms - watch those ears the first day everybody!). I thought it sounded really pretty good by the end of the first day.

However, others who visited during successive days thought the sound had deteriorated some. It didn't help that Mr. dePavarcini likes to play historically relevant and energetic music that was recorded very badly - or at least with no expectation that it would ever be played over nice equipment like this - and play it very loud at that.

Let's see, who else do we know plays quality music like this at shows? :-)

The Marten Design Miles III in its new piano black finish.

The Marten Design Miles III in its new piano black finish.

The Marten Design Miles III in its new piano black finish.

The Marten Design Miles III in its new piano black finish.

Looks like both Sound Applications and World Power's Power Wing are used for power diustribution.

The new, and only I believe, EAR turntable.

The EAR 912 preamplifier

The EAR CD player

The new EAR turntable.

The new EAR turntable.

A final picture of the room as a whole.

Acoustic Precision had an attractive room: Venture speakers, Lamm* ML2.1 amplification, Lamm* L2 preamplifier, Metronome digital source. This was a pleasant sounding system, though it had its limits in terms of dynamics and coherency. These are Venture's $15K speakers. They also had another room with some of their larger speakers - mostly on static display, if I remember correctly. It is good to see this fine line of attractive speakers finally making inroads into the U.S.

The beautifully crafted Venture speaker.

The rear of the Venture loudspeaker.

The Metronome Kalista CD transport. This was found in a number of room, including the Lamm room.

The Metronome C2-A Signature Tube DAC

Looks like the power supplies for the Metronome gear.

McIntosh amplifiers and Dali Megaline loudspeakers. Damn those amps look awesome - reminds me of the Krell (no pun intended) power supply equipment in the Fantastic Planet movie. The sound was typical McIntosh - an enjoyable sound front with little relation to reality.

The line of McIntosh speakers.

Nola speakers, ASR electronics, Nordost* cables. The ASR mates very well with these speakers. A little more even handed than the usual CAT tube amps that Nola uses at CES, with a bit more clarity and 'jump' (even though the ASR is one of the more laid back solidstate amps out there).

Just pictures of the nice carpentry work done on the Nola Pegasus Reference loudspakers.

This room just had static displays of the Acoustic Signature line of turntables and photo stages.

Shanling electronics and Music Hall turntable, Whest phonostage. Not sure what speakers these are... Spendor?

Music Hall turntables: MMF-7 $1199, MMF-5 $620, and not sure what is on the end there.

No price has been set for these to-be-released Shanling amplifier and CD player.

New Shanling CD player and amplifier

The Creek room

The Audes room

The Angstrom room

Sound Lab* speakers, Parasound JC-1 amplifiers, CTC Blowtorch preamplifier, EMM Labs* / Meitner DAC, Tascam DSD tape source.

Never a fan of the Parasound JC-1 or the CTC Blowtorch, this room struck me as very dry and harmonic-free. Sound Lab keeps updating their speakers and this is a new speaker in their line, introduced at the show.

The Tascam DV-RA1000 DSD player.

The CTC Blowtorch, designed and built by the same folks who designed the Parasound JC-1

The EMM Labs / Meitner* DCC2 DAC

The power supply for the CTC.

The EPOS room

A display of EPOS speakers

The Creek room

The Cary Room

The Cary Room

IBI Co., LTD. I thought the sound in this room showed some speaker box resonances in these speakers.

IBI Co., LTD.