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T.H.E. Show featured a full program of live music all weekend. As they have done at many recent shows, Cardas Audio sponsored concerts by electric bassist Dean Peer, accompanied by percussionist Bret Mann, poolside at the Atrium Hotel. Dean fed his bass through a variety of effects pedals to produce a wide variety of sounds, but the music came from his hands. In vain did I peer (ha!) at those hands to see how he was producing those chords of harmonics and the underlying rhythmic pulse while floating melodies on top. The man is a monster!

I missed the Saturday night concert from six-time Grammy nominee Nnenna Freelon, but I did catch her afternoon soundcheck, where she rocked several songs with a quartet led by Reference Recordings keyboardist Mike Garson. It was a joy to hear the interplay between Freelon and Garson, the singer in total command of the music.

I have to hand it to Stereophile’s Michael Fremer (right), who also edits AnalogPlanet.com. The man has large attachments! I find cartridge set-up intimidating and I don’t even attempt it until I am in the “zone.” But Mikey does it in public with a video camera amplifying his every motion. At one point in one of his two packed 90-minute seminars at T.H.E. Show, he even picked up the VPI turntable he was working, provided by David Weinhart (left), founder/owner of Ambrosia Audio & Video and owner of Los Angeles retailer Weinhart Design, Inc., to rotate it with the stylus still resting in the groove so the video camera could get a better view! As I said, large attachments.

Roger Sanders brought more than a bit of the Colorado forest with him; he and exhibitor Stephen Mollner also delivered some of the most beautiful, airy, smooth, and totally musical sound I encountered at T.H.E. Show. Mollner was a bit apologetic that they were using the same Tascam SR1 flash recorder that I had frowned upon when I blogged their room at a previous show, but clearly they were doing something very, very right. Perhaps it was changes to two settings in the DCX2496 digital crossover, and/or boosting bass output by 1dB. There were only nine demo tracks to choose from, but the Hungarian Rhapsody sounded great. Thanks Roger and Stephen; I needed your breath of fresh air.

It was more than a bit chaotic in the Silverline room, and not just visually—it seems every 30 seconds, one of the exhibitors tried to get my attention—but I did manage to focus on the music for a little while. On a recording of bossa nova marvel Rosa Passos with bassist Ron Carter, the small Silverline Minuet Supreme Plus ($699–$750/pair) did quite well with bass—the speaker extends down to 55Hz—and did a lovely job with Passos’ voice. There was some spread on her voice, probably because the speakers were so far apart, that detracted from the beautiful depth of the presentation.

The first time I tried to get into the Channel D room, the sound of the company’s Pure Music ($129) and Pure Vinyl ($279) software, along with their associated electronics, had drawn such a crowd that I gave up. Returning early enough on Saturday to beat the throngs of admirers, I was finally able to enjoy Stereophile’s 2010 Computer Audio Product of the Year.

The Legacy Audio Aeris Premium ($18,850/pair, outboard), with dual 500W ICEpower amps for the bass section and 24-bit DSP, certainly offers a lot for the money, but in Monarch Ballroom III, the speaker also sounded boomy and rather flat. The latter condition, I soon discovered, was easily remedied. When I played Reference Recordings’ CD of two ballet scores by Délibes, the image was pulling so far to the left that it was hard to believe that no one else had noticed the imbalance. Sleuthing revealed that someone or some dark force had messed with the balance control. Once it was returned to center position, the soundstage from the Pioneer Elite CD player and Coda 15.5 amplifier ($10,000) grew in size, and the sound, while hardly transparent, far more inviting and filled with air. As for the boominess, hopefully more attention to set-up and associated electronics would do the trick.