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"Ampsandsound is a startup with big promise!"—a text message like this from Herb Reichert and I knew what I had to do.

How to conduct a successful MQA demo when the person requesting same already has made up their mind? That question, or some variation thereof, must have run through the mind of Meridian's SW regional sales manager, Courtney Careccia, when the sole attendee (besides me) in her room on a slow Sunday asked for a non-MQA/MQA comparison on her all-Meridian system. After no more than 45 seconds—it could have been less, but certainly not more—the man asked to switch to the MQA version, listened for a much shorter time, stood up, declared the whole thing was a sham, and marched out the door. It was almost as if the comparison had never happened.

Following my keynote speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday morning, my beat at the Los Angeles Audio Show was the Sheraton Gateway's 1st and 5th floors. Even with just the two floors, this was a daunting prospect—considering that this was the show's debut, it had a larger number of exhibitors than any of us had anticipated. So without further ado, here's the first of my three reports.

First stop on the show's final day, a return to the High End Zone/Perfect8 Technologies room on the 2nd floor. I couldn't cover this exhibit on opening day because the visually striking Perfect8 Technologies Point Mk.III loudspeakers ($125,000/pair), a point-source dipole design with Symmetrical Radiation house in propriety "super silent glass," got trashed—badly trashed—in transit, and their replacements did not arrive in time.

The Decca Mark V is the latest version of that English firm's unique "tip-sensing" stereo-matrix-ing pickups. The "matrixing" apellation refers to the fact that the Decca pickups do not use 45°–45° sensing coils, but use instead a combination of vertical and lateral-sensing coils. There is a single coil for lateral sensing, with its pole pieces brought down next to the tip. This is the tip-sensing feature, whose major attribute is that the stylus motions don't have to be conveyed along the length of an armature before reaching the transducing pole pieces. Thus there is virtually no possibility of the stylus vibrations being modified through flexing of the armature prior to their transduction into audio signals.

One of my greatest personal discoveries at the LA Audio Show this past weekend was that I absolutely love Harbeth speakers. I adored every system I heard them in. In the Gene Rubin Audio/Fidelis Distribution room, there was a beautiful pair of Harbeth Monitor 30.1 two-way speakers ($5495/pair), driven by an LFD NCSE Mk.II Plus integrated amplifier ($6795), with the source being an Acoustic Signature Challenger Mk.III turntable ($4995) with an Acoustic Signature TA 2000 9" tonearm ($2395) and a DynaVector 20X2 cartridge ($995), through an LFD LE/SE phonostage ($1790).

Having visited the Aurum Cantus loudspeaker factory in China in 2009, and experienced every stereotype of shoddy Chinese manufacturing practices destroyed by what, to these eyes, were meticulous production practices, keen concerns for worker health and safety, and comprehensive testing, I am always delighted when Roger DuNaier of Audiophile Direct brings Aurum Cantus speakers to shows. Here, the Aurum Cantus V30M 2 stand-mount with aluminum-ribbon tweeter ($2600/pair) joined the Wells Audio Majestic 150Wpc integrated amplifier with phonostage ($14,000), Sound Science Music Vault Diamond music server ($4995), Benchmark DAC2 DX DAC ($1995), and assorted Dana Cable products to produce "the kind of sound that makes you happy."