those of you who could attend, can you post reviews/impressions of the Pi gear on display, 7pis and others .....or any interesting gear?

thanks in advance,

gilles

Then I'm gonna get back to normal. (Don't believe that. It's a lie.)

Anyway, you asked for impressions. So I'll give you mine, 'cause I'm not bashful.

The Stage seven π's were the best sound in the show. By far. The CAR system was pretty good too, but it just couldn't catch those sevens.

[Wide ornery grin]

Seriously, the rooms were very comfortable, and the sound wasn't too bad. Naturally, with rooms on every side, above and below too, there is a little bit to be desired but it wasn't too bad. The tower two π speakers sounded very good in our room. The Stage seven π speakers had a bed between them and were not optimally placed, but they sounded good too. Pretty much everything at MAF sounded pretty good really. I would have been very, very happy to have owned any of the systems on display. Every one of them was the kind of system you would own for years, decades even, and not want for anything else.

I particularly liked Martinelli's cabinets. I'm biased, I know, because of our friendship. But really, his woodworking is outstanding. Best in the show, in my opinion. And it's hard for me to qualify that with the phrase "in my opinion." His work is really good.

You should have seen the presentation that Martinelli and Epstein did. I wish so badly that someone had videotaped it. It was very informative, and it had some real "sitcom moments." The show "Tool Time" had nothing on those boys.

David Cope's Triode and Company room sounded great, and we were treated with lots of good geat there. I even took home a turntable of his. The Edgarhorn room was sounding great too. I wanted to ask him to pop in some Tool for me, but I think maybe that would have been a bit much. And of course I spent a great deal of time in the Martinelli Sound room, which was always full of good cheer and great sounding music.

I wanted to make it to the Welborne room - Ran into Ron in the halls a couple of times and we mentioned to each other that we wanted to stop by each others' rooms, but both of us got busy and didn't. That bummed me out, 'cause I really wanted to check out his stuff. The Norh room sounded good too, and I'm impressed with the quality they are able to offer for the price. Their odd shaped speakers are really cool too. Little mini-monitors in gourds. Duemm bought a bunch of their stuff, and I think he was pretty smart to do it.

The Classic Audio Reproductions room was really cool, because their speakers are neat and the amps they were running were really great too. And there were several other cool rooms there, lots of them with gear that costs as much as a house - Two or three houses in most countries of the world. So you just really couldn't go wrong with any of the products that were represented there, and I missed a lot of great names in these mentions. You just had to see the stuff to believe it.