T.H.E. Show 2021

I mentioned this room in the opening blog from T.H.E. Show 2021, but only to point out the unusual nature of its PowerSlave Marble Mk.II power distributor ($18,500), the Stacore Roller Anti-Vibration Platform with cryo-max mass loading+bearing isolation ($4180), and the huge Stage III Poseidon AC power ($22,000) and Cerberus speaker cables ($36,200/pair). While they weren't the most expensive components in the room, their prices certainly topped that of the flagship Aurender W20SE music server/streamer ($22,000).

When Wayne Carter told me that his company, San Diego-based Wayne Carter Audio, designed audio systems for rock stars and also distributed Margules Audio tube products, I knew I had to pair one room with the other. The potential contrast between Carter's "vintage mastering system from 30 years ago"—assembled partly for fun and partly as a tool to help customers understand what was and is possible—and Margules's diminutive gear was too delicious to resist.

By a long shot, most people who visited the marketplace immediately headed to the LP bins and rummaged away. In fact, if my photo had come out, I could show you how busy the room was at 10:15AM on Friday, a time reserved for press, when a combination of vinyl-hungry exhibitors, attendees who managed to get in early, and press people from online publications that are dedicated to serving their owners first were pouring through bins, looking for buried treasure.

Hopefully, some of those folks made it over to Todd Garfinkle's M•A Recordings booth and discovered some his fabled audiophile recordings (above).

It's been a few shows since I've encountered one of Jeff Candy's granite Pietra loudspeakers, whose distribution is mostly confined to Southern California due to the high cost of shipping a speaker that weighs in excess of 350lb. Which doesn't mean that you can't get one shipped to upstate New York if that's where you live.

Nothing has changed with Spatial Audio's M3 loudspeaker ($4950/pair) since the last time I heard it. The design is the same, as is the speakers' ability to totally disappear at very close range.

It's been a long time coming, but it is finally happening. As I write these words, T.H.E. Show (aka The Home Entertainment Show), the successor to the late Richard Beers' original T.H.E. Show that began as an alternative high-end showplace to CES, is about to begin in the Long Beach Hilton. (That's Long Beach, California, for the uninitiated.) Dealers and exhibitors have set up in 20 or so rooms and numerous marketplace booths, said their prayers, enjoyed dinner in the hotel or in downtown Long Beach, and begun to burrow in for the night. As they do, components cook, cables settle, and the acoustic gods and karmic gatekeepers prepare to hold their traditional midnight meeting of the minds to decide each exhibitor's fate.