"Really nice alive sound." Simple words, they. But truth be told, they only apply to a limited number of systems at an audio show and far beyond, in the supposed "real" world.

"Why do you need all of those microphones?"

I've been asked this question more than once, by musicians you may have heard of. I'm not going to name names, but if you press me I might. Let's see where this goes.

It's a reasonable question, sometimes. Still.

Another speaker surprise from Matterhorn Audio Group of Boston. The midrange exceled through FinkTeam Borg floorstanding loudspeakers (starting at $36,490/pair), shown next to the Kim standmount (starting at $12,990/pair). The sound of Dominique Fils-Aimé singing "Birds" was as fetching as Chris Botti's "What a Wonderful World" was lovely.

I first encountered consistently handsome Rosso Fiorentino speakers at a show years ago, and immediately encouraged a now-retired distributor to pick up the Italian brand. I'm so happy to discover that AudioThesis is now bringing them into the US.

A direct-sales company new to me, MK Audio of Charlotte, North Carolina, journeyed cross-country to present their Arion Audio Apollo 9 loudspeaker system ($35,900/pair) with full DSP and advanced room correction. The Apollo 9 is also available in Dual-Pack Woofer Package ($5900) that includes two additional woofers with two amps. With AMT drivers built in-house, the speaker is an open-baffle design with a claimed whopping 105dB sensitivity.

A speaker brand new to me, Kroma Atelier from Spain, caught many an eye and ear with the US premiere of their small black Mimi Xtreme standmount loudspeaker ($12,600/pair in white, $13,860 in black, left in photo) with Mimi stands ($3600/pair). Introduced by Tim Lukas's Matterhorn Audio Group of Boston, whose other brands include FinkTeam and Creek, the speaker is claimed to work with amps that output as little as 15Wpc. With a 6.5" midrange with proprietary cone, and a special AMT neodymium-ribbon tweeter designed by Mundorf to Kroma Atelier's specifications, the speaker boasts a 4 ohm nominal impedance, an 88dB sensitivity, and a frequency response of 30Hz–25kHz. The design of its woofer's surround (below) is intentional—it is possibly one the new Purifi drive-units.

Uh oh. It had to happen someone. But did trashed-in-shipment karma really need to strike New Hampshire's Gunny Surya, whose excellent Sonner Audio Legato Duo loudspeaker ($9500/pair) had to make do, not with the intended SW1X Audio Design DAC III SPX ($7500), but rather with an iFi DAC2 ($400)?

As if to dispel concerns spurred by former Krell VP Walter Schofield's surprise departure from the company, Krell's very own Director of Product Development, David (Dave) Goodman (above), journeyed to WA state to present another pre-listen to Krell's not-yet-released KSA i400 stereo amplifier ($35,000). Given that Dave designed this amp, this was quite the opportunity for savvy showgoers.

Those of you old enough to have heard it when it was new will recall when you first experienced the music of Jimi Hendrix. I was 13, in 1967, when I came home after school with a friend bearing an LP of the just-released US Reprise Records pressing of Are You Experienced. My dad had a floorstanding, monophonic record player.

There was one and only one raison d'être for this room: showcasing the Innuos Statement Music Server/Ripper with Next Gen LPSU and 1TB internal SSD ($21,700). If it wasn't an unqualified success—two other pieces of equipment, borrowed for the show, were not broken in and produced flat and uninvolving sound on Day 1—it mattered not to moi, because the same Statement sounded fantastic during a 7-hour post-show visit to my Port Townsend music room by Innuos software designer Nuno Vitorino.