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I have no idea exactly what was in use in the McIntosh room, because both times I paid a visit, the exhibitor was too involved in demonstrating the system's "Room Correction" component to stop to chat. Regardless, the sound was very, very good—just what you'd expect from a McIntosh system that can control challenging hotel acoustics—and the demo far more convincing than my mother's apple pie.

I don't want to wax biblical here, but in Stereophile's world of show reports, the last shall be first, and the first, last. Thus we begin our coverage of the final day with the last system I auditioned at AXPONA 2014. Welcome to Goerner Communications' room on the Westin O'Hare's third floor.

Let's hear it for a relatively new dealer and father, Jason Walker of Midwest Audio in South Bend, Indiana. You know someone is an industry virgin when he confesses that he first heard of Rebecca Pidgeon, whose 20-year old "Spanish Harlem" was once a multi-room favorite at audio shows, a whole two months ago.

"Is this the same company whose A/D converter Jared Sacks of Channel Classics raves about?" I asked. When Bill Parish of GTT Audio & Video answered yes, I understood why. Grimm's LS1s three-way speaker system ($39,900/pair), which manages to fit hi-res ADC/DACs, a CC1 clock circuit, six amplifiers, DSP processor, integrated bass modules, cables and more into the two speaker cabinets pictured in the photo, is a virtually complete system that calls only for a source. In this case, the LS1s joined forces with a PC running JRiver Media Center and Kubala-Sosna power cords to produce gorgeous layering and tonality on Sacks' unedited DSD master of a Brahms Hungarian Dance.

You should have seen the sad sack look on the faces of Your Final System's Kevin O'Brien and Endeavor Audio Engineering's Leif Swanson when I told them I was trying to restrict my coverage to new product introductions. "We were handicapped by a bad cable and bad USB input when you covered us at the California Audio Show last year," Kevin complained. "Give me one reason to stay here and I'll turn around," said I. . .

With a name like Lampizator, as in Lukasz Fikus' "Audio from Poland with Love," who wouldn't be intrigued? The good news is, even paired with Vapor Audio's day-old Derecho loudspeakers ($7600/pair), which Ryan Scott builds behind his house in Hot Springs, MO, Lampizator's Level 7 DAC ($9650) and SQBX Based transport ($2650), Purity Audio's Silver Statement preamp ($35,000) with ultra power supply, and PSE300B 18W monoblocks ($26,000/pair with Sophia Electric 300B tubes), and Verastar cabling won me over with their beautiful sound.

I've reported on this pairing before in show reports, but this was, by far, the best and most transparent sound I've heard from JansZen and exaSound. The top was nice and alive, the height and openness quite lovely, and the sound very natural and musical. Doing the honors were the brand new JansZen zA1.1 single-panel loudspeakers ($4495/pair), JansZen zA2.1 loudspeakers ($9400), exaSound flagship e22 native quad-rate DSD DAC ($3499) with "the world's first and exclusive support for DSD256 on Mac" and third-generation headphone amplifier, Emotiva electronics, and a stock USB cable.