It took two tries over the course of two days to find a seat, but on Sunday afternoon, I finally squeezed into the room shared by EAR and PranaFidelity. The wait was worth it.

There was a helluva lot of burnished silver jewelry in this room, and it sparkled like a sharply polished diamond.

To these ears, the pairing of Vandersteen Quatro loudspeakers ($15,499/pair) and the company’s smaller M5-HPA monoblocks ($15,800/pair) with the Jeff Rowland Corus Stereo preamplifier + PSU ($21,900) and Conductor phonostage ($8500) is a winner.

Who would have expected to hear a theorbo reproduced in 24/192 at an audio demo?

If Scott Walker Audio had staked out a mini-empire on floor 3, Sunny Components of Covina, California, did the same on floor 6. The first room I visited, of the four from Sunil Merchant, included Egglestonworks' 87dB-efficient Nico speakers ($4250/pair), ....

Eye candy, eh? Tune Audio’s Anima 3-way fully horn-loaded loudspeakers ($58,000/pair) claim 109dB sensitive. THEY certainly were drawing in listeners, to the extent that I had to visit twice before I could get into the room then slowly inch my way closer to the sweet spot.

On an electric guitar track, the name of which I failed to get, the Legacy Audio Calibre Monitor ($5500/pair) got down, dark, and dirty in a good way while fighting one of the most wicked upper bass room resonances known to humankind.

From the metaphoric opening bell on, the Marketplace was filled with music lovers hunting for analog and digital media as well as audio products. This photo, taken at 10:30 AM on Saturday, attests to the draw. Note MA Recordings’ Todd Garfinkle on the left, hawking his superbly recorded wares, some of which are available on vinyl or for download in hi-rez.

By the time I reached the smallest of the three large rooms I dared visit on the 2nd floor, I was hip to the havoc their porous air walls were wreaking on the sound. So, when the combined output of four familiar components—YG Hailey 2.2 Speakers ($47,900/pair), Audio Research Ref 10 Line Stage ($33,000), MSB Select II DAC ($105,000 as shown), and Kubala-Sosna Realization / Sensation cabling—was over-saturating the space and spreading like crazy, I decided emergency intervention was called for. I asked, “Could you please turn it down?”

Having had components from Wilson, D’Agostino, Aqua, IsoTek, and Kubala-Sosna in my reference system, I have a good sense of their strengths.