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In my opinion, one of the coolest-looking systems of the show was pieced together by New York City’s Audioarts: Rethm Maarga loudspeakers ($8750/pair), Fi amplification, and a Lector CDP-6 CD player. The sound was just as good as the appearance: immediate and realistic, with a rich, detailed midrange.

A highlight of the 2011 RMAF was the first public demonstrations of James Guthrie's 40th-anniversary surround mix of Pink Floyd's classic Wish You Were Here, hosted by Acoustic Sounds' Chad Kassem (shown in my photo) and James Guthrie. With a system comprising five ATC professional active monitors fed by a Playback Designs SACD player, Showgoers were treated to a complete playback of the album from the SACD, to be released next month.

From the opening sound effects that tracked from the rear to the front, to the final fade on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part 9", listeners were immersed in the re-creation of one of the finest rock albums of all time. I felt Guthrie's surround mix was true to the band's original two-channel intentions while expanding the soundfield to take full advantage of the multichannel medium. "Magnificent!" I scrawled in my notebook. The Studio Six SPL meter on my iPhone indicated that the sound pressure reached 106dB—the experience was like being at the highest fidelity rock concert ever!

Here's the SACD in its multichannel glory, newly arrived at RMAF!

A quarter century ago, it was de rigeur for show exhibitors to use a Linn Sondek LP12 as the source. The only Linn I have found at RMAF so far was in one of the Audio Alternative rooms, which was using the fully loaded LP12/Ekos SE/Radikal/Urika/Keel LP player/phono stage with a Lyra Kleos cartridge ($23,905). But with Wilson Sasha W/P speakers ($28,900/pair) hooked up to a Rega Osiris integrated amplifier ($8995) with AudioQuest cables, the sound of Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man" from the new APO 45rpm pressing of her classic Dusty in Memphis album was vividly real-sounding.

"Dimensional Purity" is the promoted benefit of Richard Vandersteen's approach to speaker design, and in one of the two rooms I went into at RMAF organized by Fort Collins retailer The Audio Alternative, the Vandersteen Tréos ($5990/pair) were living up to that promise. Driven by an Audio Research Vsi60 integrated amplifier ($4495) with the source the Bryston BDP-1 digital player and BDA-1 DAC, all hooked up with AudioQuest cable, Mark Isham's Blue Sun reproduced with excellent bass extension and clarity and a laidback but detailed midrange.

I first encountered DEQX when Kalman Rubinson and I reviewed the NHT Xd speaker system a few years back, which featured its digital signal processing to implement its crossover and response optimization. The Australian company was putting on an impressive dem of its HDP-3 standalone processor at RMAF, showing the sound of a pair of Gallo Reference speakers driven by Parasound Halo amplification could be first optimized in both time and frequency domains, then its interaction with the room. DEQX's Larry Owens, shown in the photo, enthused about an unanticipated benefit of the speaker correction was the reduction in loudspeaker intermodulation distortion.

This was posted on the wall of his RMAF room by one manufacturer who still makes his products in the US. The message seems clear enough, even if it over-simplifies what is actually a complex situation—see my September 2011 "As We See It" on this subject.