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As they had in 2012, Manhattan dealer Innovative Audio both participated in the Chester Group's NY Audio Show and held an open house at their 58th Street location after the show closed Friday and Saturday.

Stereo Exchange’s annual Spring High-End Audio Show was held Friday, April 12, through Sunday, April 14, at 627 Broadway in Manhattan’s bustling SoHo neighborhood. I visited on Sunday afternoon, just as the weekend festivities were winding down, but nevertheless in time for some outstanding demonstrations.

The Lyric Show 2013 was held at Lyric Hi-Fi & Video (1221 Lexington Avenue) in Manhattan, on Friday and Saturday, April 12 and 13. An informal VIP presentation, held on Thursday, April 11, was open to members of the press. Last year, Ariel Bitran and I covered the event; this year, I was on my own.

This year’s event, much like the last, was well-attended. Most guests made their ways casually from one demonstration to the next. Some lingered in between rooms, chatting and enjoying glasses of red or white wine while picking happily at small plates of fine food. Others seemed glued to comfortable seats in one of the several listening rooms. Manufacturer representatives, many of whom were also enjoying refreshments, held tight to iPads and kept close to gorgeous turntables, ready to take music requests. The entire place buzzed with energy and enthusiasm.

My friend Jason Victor Serinus asked, reasonably, how I and other Stereophile reporters might rank this most recent outing by the Chester Group against other shows. I said I thought that NYAS 2013 was very well organized and, when all was said and done, gratifyingly well attended. People did their jobs and luck mostly held: Con Ed workers created noise and logistical mayhem as they peeled away the pavement, yet hundreds of audiophiles flocked to the show nonetheless. The men were tearing up the street.

The first room I visited at the NY Audio Show was one of the best-sounding. The third of three rooms displaying brands sold by Manhattan retailer Sound by Singer—click here and here for our reports on the other two—it featured the world premier of Danish Manufacturer Raidho's D2 loudspeaker ($43,500/pair in black, $48,000/pair in gold walnut). The D2 combines the ribbon tweeter used in Raidho's well-regarded D1 minimonitor with two 4.5" woofers that use a diamond-coated cones.

I am a big fan of the hi-rez audio files made available by Lessloss, so one of the first rooms I visited at the NY Audio Show was theirs. The system featured a pair of Kaiser Kawero Vivace floorstanding speakers from Germany, which combine a custom-made Mundorf AMT tweeter with ScanSpeak Illuminator midrange unit and rear-facing woofers. With the source Lessloss's new Laminar Streamer, which plays audio files from SD cards, and Pass Labs amplifiers, the sound in this room was delicate and full-bodied, though perhaps too sweet overall.

Robert Baird mentioned the seminar program presented at the New York Audio Show by The Sound Organisation. I applaud the Chester Group for featuring educational sessions like these at the Show. At the session I attended, renowned recording engineer Jim Anderson (above), past president of the Audio Engineering Society and Chair of the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts, compared the original and revised versions of Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue, as well as playing tracks from her new album Smash, which he mixed at Skywalker Sound. The system featured a pair of active MB2S-A monitors from English company PMC, with their distinctive dome midrange units, fed audio from a PrismSound Orpheus DAC and a MacBook Pro.