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The larger of the two JS Audio rooms featured Wilson Sasha W/P speakers driven by Dan D'Agostino's new Momentum monoblock amplifiers. Source was either a Sooloos system or the Sound Devices digital recorder belonging to Wilson's Peter McGrath (pictured standing on that hotel carpet), both feeding data to Meridian's 808 Mk.3 CD player/digital processor, which also controlled playback volume. My hurriedly scrawled notes say that the Sooloos feed was via Ethernet, but don't hold me to that; the Sound Devices was definitely S/PDIF. The cabling was all Nordost Odin, which may well have cost more than everything else in the system, and the source components sat on a Harmonic Recovery Systems rack, which all involved said was a major contributor to the quality of the sound in this room.

And OMG, the sound! Whether it was Peter McGrath's hi-rez recordings or commercial material like Yello's "Stay," you were mainlining the music. Peter asked if he could play some of my hi-rez recordings, and played first the Cantus performance of Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque in 24/88.2k fidelity. I was transported to the Sauder Auditorium at Goshen College in Indiana, with the acoustic wrapped around me. The system did subtlety. Peter then played the 24/88.2k master of Attention Screen's "Blizzard Limbs," from Live at Merkin Hall. Again, the acoustic wrapped round me but the drum transients were more startling than I have ever heard before. And I mastered the recording!

I have heard Wilson Sashas in a number of systems, and yes, they are "fast," in that the bass doesn't boom or blur. Yes, the Nordost Odin is extraordinarily transparent cable (at a price) and that Meridian player's D/A is top-rank. And that HRS rack is a black hole for vibrations. But driven by the Dan D'Agostino amps—wow, did the Sashas kick some awesome booty! Without ever sounding crass or lacking in subtlety.

"The Voice That Is" is the name of a Newtown Square, PA, retailer and when I walked into their room, I had no idea what equipment I was listening to, as it was—again—totally dark! (I had to set my camera's "film speed" to a noisy 1600 to get a photo at all.) But the music playing, Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Tin Pan Alley" took me back a quarter century, when all you heard at audio shows was this cut. But it never sounded this good back then!

As my eyes accommodated to the darkness, I could make two pairs of Tidal speakers, the floorstanding Piano Diaceras ($37,690/pair) behind stand-mounted Ameas ($18.990/pair). Both feature ceramic-cone woofers and a diamond-dome tweeter but it was the Diaceras that were playing, connected with Argento cable to a Tidal Impact 140Wpc stereo amplifier ($35,990) and a Tidal Preas preamp ($27,990). Source was a MacBook Pro feeding USB data to a dCS Debussy D/A (my current reference, it shall be said, though in May I loaned it to Erick Lichte, who doesn't appear to want to send it back any time soon).

As if to confirm that it was 1987, the next track played was "Le temps passé" from the Michel Jonasz CD L'Histoire de Monsieur Swing. This is what I am talking about—a huge, stable soundstage, extending way beyond the speaker positions; smooth, grain-free highs, tight, tuneful, deep lows, and a pure, coloration-free midrange—and all of this in service of the music, adding to the experience instead of substituting for it. It doesn't get much better than this!

The engineer in me just doesn't get the products from AudioNote UK. Unprepossessing, two-way speakers that cost a lot of money; non-oversampling digital products that cost a lot of money; single-ended triode amplifiers that cost even more. But the musician in me makes sure I always check out the AudioNote room at an audio Show—a fine time is guaranteed for all!

Such it was at AudioFest 2011. When I walked in, David Cope (left) was playing a CD of the Rachmaninov cello sonata on the AudioNote CD4.1X player ($10,500). Amplification was being provided by the AudioNote Jinro integrated amplifier that Art Dudley reviewed in April 2011 ($26,500). Speakers were the AudioNote Lexus Signatures, the fourth rung up the ladder on modification of what was once was the original Snell Model E ($16,250/pair; this speaker has external crossovers whereas the three less-expensive models don't). It was with a definite sense of loss that the Rachmaninov movement came to an end. Makes you think. Made me think. Something is going on but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Atkinson?

Capital AudioFest organizer Gary Gill is a fine jazz trombonist, as I found out when we both sat in with Steve Davis's band at the Atlanta Axpona in April. To remind Showgoers what the real thing sounds like, Gary's quintet performed Saturday evening in the hotel's bar. This is Gary in full song, but not shown in my photo are the, not one but two Theremin players who sat in on some songs.

Classic Audio Loudspeakers' John Wolff, along with his red shirt, the parrots that perch on his speakers, and the reproductions of Nipper he offers for sale, is a fixture at regional audio shows. When I asked him about this, he responded that he believes regional shows are the future of this industry. John was using Atma-Sphere tube electronics, including M-60 monoblocks, to drive his 4'-tall T-3.4 speaker, which uses a wood radial Tractrix midrange horn fitted with a 4" beryllium-diaphragm compression driver firing into a 2" throat, coupled with twin 15" woofers—one firing forward, the other to the floor—and a supertweeter. The midrange unit and woofers all use field-coil–energized magnets.

. . .has to be zero, to judge by how Pierre Sprey dresses his speaker wires!

The Surreal Sound Speaker ($10,000/pair) is the small, three-way floorstander finished in cherry, not the massive bass bin behind it, which belongs to the GOTO Horns speaker (see next story). Surreal Sound's Ralph Helmer is passionate about midrange, feeling it is in the midrange where the music truly lives. To that end, his speaker features a beryllium-disc midrange unit, mounted in an open baffle. A Heil Air Motion Transfomer supertweeter and three spider-less, aluminum-alloy, 10" cone drivers for the bass, all also mounted in open baffles, complete the drive-unit line-up. Mr; Helmer believes that one of the advantages of his dipole speakers is their high Wife-Acceptance Favor, in that they are smaller than expected for same amount of bass.