Without question, the 5th-floor room headlined by Joseph Audio Pulsar stand-mounted speakers ($7700/pair) and Doshi Audio's stereo amplifier ($19,995), line-level preamplifier ($17,995) and tape preamplifier ($17,995), connected by Cardas Clear and Clear Beyond cabling, earned its place on many an expo-goer's "Best Rooms of Show" list. Aided by an Aqua La Voce S3 DAC ($4750) and Innuos Zen Mk.3 server ($2600), the system stood out for the beauty of its midrange. I know I've mentioned the midrange a lot in these show reports, but you really needed to hear the glowing warmth of this one.

Vanatoo's two diminutive, bargain-priced self-powered speaker models were among the many excellent-sounding exhibits I encountered on the fifth floor of the Embassy Suites by Hilton Tampa Airport Westshore, during my second day at the Florida Audio Expo. Nor was I the only attendee to realize how good Vanatoo's speakers sounded: The Seattle-based company's Gary Gesellchen was DJing to a standing-room-only crowd when I arrived.

The apotheosis—some would say the nadir—of country music suffering was reached in the Western Electric Sound System room put together by Déjà Vu Audio South. There, Vu Hoang (above) took the perilous step beyond Steely Dan's "Black Cow" (as in black sheep?) to Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Please Release Me" and The Carpenter's "This Masquerade." The superb sound got me through a succession of despair-laden tracks from Western Electric Sound's The Perfect Vocals CD that were titled—I kid you not—"These Days I Barely Get By" (Daryle Singletary), the aforementioned "This Masquerade," "The Man That Got Away" (Rosemary Clooney), "The Party's Over" (Nat King Cole), "Cry Me a River" (Jack McDuff), and the final track, "Only the Lonely" (Shirley Horn).

In 2008, a pair of DeVore Fidelity's Gibbon Nine loudspeakers arrived at my home for a Follow-Up review. Within weeks, I wrote a check for them. That put me in good company: Several other reviewers who reviewed the Nines also bought their review pairs.

Ten years later, the Gibbon Nines are still my main speakers. That's the longest I've ever kept a pair of speakers in my main system, not counting the Polk Audio 7Bs I bought in 1980, when I was 16.

With this year's Consumer Electronics Show behind us, readers of our on-line show reports know the sad truth: that the largest industry-only technology show in North America attracted even fewer "high-performance" audio exhibits in 2019 than it did in 2018. The phrase "CES is dead" is now a mantra, and no one should be surprised if this year's poor showing proves to be the final nail in CES's coffin as far as high-end audio is concerned.