I was there yesterday. This was my first audio show so I don't think I got out of what I could have. Here were some highlights for me:
- The Raal ribbon headphones. I was blown away by these. The sound was so open like listening to room speakers. It's actually got me thinking about trying to develop my own DIY version. The designer was there and he was very friendly and informative.
- The Pro-Ject Pre Box S2. This is a little DAC/Amp combo. I was told it costs $350. They showed off one without the case and I was immediately impressed by the layout and high quality components. The power supply and DAC section were well isolated. Talking with the rep there it really sounded that the designers were focused on a clean sound. When I asked the rep about distortion figures he said that they were measuring near the limit of their test equipment. Sounded promising and I hope Amir gets his hands on one. Although it has a headphone jack, it's designed as more of a pre-amp so the output power is limited, unfortunately.
- I tried the Focal Clear, Elear, and Utopia. They all sounded great to me and were some of the clearest headphones I listened to. One guy near me at the same booth was really rocking out so I could tell he thought highly of them too.
- I got a kick talking with the Synergistic Audio rep. I'm not bold enough to try to confront people on blatant BS, but I had fun listening to the sales pitch while trying to keep from snickering. They had two identical setups for A/B testing, one with stock cables and the other with Synergistic Audio magic. This included a platform to create a "unified electomagnetic platform for all of your equipment", a signal conditioner for your headphones, special power cables for the DAC and Amp for power conditioning, and a grounding block for all of the unused input/output jacks. Not surprisingly I didn't notice any difference.
- I heard the Schiit stack and Lyr for the first time. Maybe because my expectations have been set by this forum, but I was extremely underwhelmed.