Tonal beauty, clarity, and transparency were just some of the hallmarks of a system that, to my ears, was musical to a "T." (Should that be "M"?) I loved the warm yet neutral sound of a recording by Ana Caram—I detected no extra "tube-like" sweetness, for example—and the system's ability to present music with a quality I can best describe as "grace": not scientific, I know, but when the spirit moves you, the least you can do is acknowledge it.

In the second Scott Walker Audio room I visited—since I visited five of them, I know it's going to start sounding like "Five power cables, four balanced interconnects, three phono cartridges, two mighty monoblocks, and a speaker shaped like a pear tree," but it really did sound like Christmas in most of these rooms—the Constellation Argo integrated amp ($29,000), Magico A3 Speakers ($12,300/pair), and MSB Discrete DAC ($12,500) vied for pride of place with an Aurender ACS10 server ($6000) and Synergistic Research PowerCell 12 UEF SE Power Conditioner ($6,495), Atmosphere cabling ($18,500), and various room acoustics products ($3,500), plus a Solid Tech Rack ($2,600).

Scott Walker Audio staked out its own mini-empire at the Hilton Long Beach, occupying six of the hotel's largest suites on the third floor. The first one I encountered revealed the inimitable Ted Denney of Synergistic Research staging a pretty ballsy demo. Ted set up two identical systems in adjacent rooms, both with a McIntosh C2600 tube preamp ($7500) and MC462 Amplifier ($9000), Elac Adante AF61 floorstanding speakers ($4995/pair), Bluesound Node 2i streamer ($500), and Solid Tech Rack ($2600). The difference was that one system took advantage of a Synergistic Research PowerCell 8 UEF SE power conditioner ($2995), new Synergistic Research entry-level Foundation interconnect and speaker cables plus UEF Blue power cords ($4000), and a host of various Synergistic Research room acoustic products ($6500), which in my experience are quite effective if nonetheless baffling to many.

Small does not mean negligible. Especially when a system includes the first West Coast showing of ATC's new CD2 CD player ($2349) and SIA2-100 integrated amp/DAC ($3749).

As one of the only companies to send out a press release prior to the opening of T.H.E. Show, ATC—along with its host, Lone Mountain Audio—earned pride of place in my "I can't possibly do them all" list of show coverage priorities.

It's Thursday afternoon at the Hilton Long Beach in Long Beach, California, and signs of T.H.E. Show, which opens on Friday, June 7, at noon, are everywhere in evidence.

Ever since the first electrical loudspeaker—a glorified headphone with a horn on it—was outmoded by the balanced-armature cone speaker, paper has been the standard diaphragm material for speakers reproducing low frequencies. The Rice-Kellogg moving-coil transducer replaced the balanced-armature driving system in 1925, but the paper cone remained. And although many improvements have since been made, were no more major changes in loudspeaker design for over 30 years!