T.H.E. Show Newport 2014

Entering the first of four rooms sponsored by Brian Berdan's Audio Element of Pasadena felt like coming home. Not only was I among familiar friends—Wilson Audio Sasha Series 2 loudspeakers ($29,950/pair); mighty VTL Siegfried Reference monoblocks Series II ($65,000/pair), accompanied by VTL's TL-7.5 Reference line preamplifier Series III ($25,000) and TP-6.5 Signature phono stage ($12,000); dCS four-stack, state-of-the-art Vivaldi Digital Playback System ($108,996 total); Transparent Opus MM and Reference cables ($105,500 total); Grand Prix Audio Silverstone 4-shelf Isolation system ($19,175), Monaco-5 shelf Isolation system ($8400), and Formula Platforms ($6900); Audience AdeptResponse aR12TSS power conditioner ($11,545); and, a bit less familiar, Grand Prix Audio Monaco 1.5 turntable ($23,500) with new Tri-Planar SE tonearm ($7500) and luscious Lyra Etna cartridge ($6995)—but I also finally heard a quality of musical presentation that decades upon decades of attending live performance have led me to hunger for.

Ever the audio expert, and always the music lover, Philip O'Hanlon of On a Higher Note distribution managed to produce enough top end in his smaller, mood-lit room to go a long way toward compensating for the ground floor's acoustically-generated grayness. Baritone Matthias Goerne's voice sounded very warm and simply gorgeous, as did a cut from Illinois Jacquet's fabulous Birthday Party LP. Images were huge and deep, with surprisingly profound bass.

Speculation has it that a big reason for such large attendance at the Los Angeles & Orange County Audiophile Society meetings are their raffles of valuable cabling and electronics. T.H.E. Show Newport Beach followed suit, with hundreds of people gathering in the Hilton Courtyard at 2pm Sunday for the "must be present to win" opportunity to win over $25,000 worth of High-End Audio Give-Away goodies. This photo, which shows white-shirted publicist Lucette Nicoll snapping a photo of the raffle stage, only pictures part of the large crowd.

Friday morning, May 30, was Day One of T.H.E Show Newport Beach. With the opening bell struck, as it were, by a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the lobby of the Hilton that I miss due to a very slow kitchen at the adjacent Atrium hotel, I dash from hotel to hotel to discover, instead of a frayed red Mylar ribbon or a row of hot, class-A amplifiers, a line of audio hot-rodded classic and contemporary cars.