I had a few targets to audition:
ATC SCM100SE - These were about the 5th pair of ATCs I've heard and at last I have heard the wonderful mid range that ATC is fabled for. The new tweeter is superb as well. Sadly the bass was only average.
Living Vice Vox Olympian - Rather disappointing after all the "everything else sounds broken" comments. Quite similar to the Western Electric horns from the 30's, which are astonishing for their age, but rather coloured.
Kii3 and BXT - possibly very, very good but seemed to be playing Mongolian goat thrash metal on the 2 occasions I popped in. Mr Kii was very rude when we asked (nicely) for some normal music.
The Vandersteen speakers were producing some very decent sounds.
There were a lot of cable lifters being used
.
I enjoyed the Nordost demo of their new Q-points - a bargain priced ($750 per unit) "resonance synchroniser". The Q-point is placed one under each piece of kit and apparently, using low power electromagnetic waves, infuences all the internal discordant resonances in every component inside the equipment. The result is that these resonances are all brought into harmony, which lowers the noise floor. The A-B demo did indeed seem to show a marked improvement to the sound of the 2nd excerpt, as indeed any 2nd hearing always does as a result of the way the human brain is programmed to look for changes to the "blueprint" it stored the 1st time round.
The Q-point comes with a "free" SMPS plug top PS. Of course this adds noise to the mains which adds anxiety to the mind of the audiophile and has to be upraded in due course to the Nordost superduper linear PS, which is only $2500 or so. It can power several Q-points though!
Mr Nordost did not ask if there were any questions from the audience