Jason Victor Serinus

This front view of the Music Lovers Audio/Musical Surroundings room gives but a hint of the huge, expansive, amazingly coherent, air-filled, three-dimensional soundstage of this system. My hands-down "Best of Show," the room was dominated by dominated by Wilson Audio Alexia loudspeakers ($48,500–$50,000/pair, depending upon finish)—another pair of Alexias now resides at John Atkinson's home for review—and Spectral Audio DMA-400RS monoblock amplifiers ($28,000/pair). Peter McGrath of Wilson Audio (left) and Hugh Fountain of Music Lovers Audio (right), as well as Garth Leerer of Musical Surroundings, deserve kudos for their set-up prowess.

Far more beckoned on the lobby level, but you can only keep them down on the farm so long. Eventually, the lure of unexplored territory pulled this Cancer crab out of the questionable security of his shell onto the wilds of the Westin's second floor. There I encountered the wildest of them all, Sean Casey (above), spinning platters in the Zu Audio room.

Ensconced in the third hotel in its four-year history, the three-day California Audio Show opened on August 9, 2013 in the five-floor Westin Hotel in Millbrae, CA. Otherwise known as the Westin SFO, the hotel resides on One Old Bayshore Highway, a hefty stone's throw from San Francisco Bay, directly across the water from the airport runway where Asiana Flight 214 crashed on July 6.