Horns’n’triodes go together like...well, horses and carriages—and those who view both horn loudspeakers and tube electronics as antiquated technology might say that the simile is particularly apt. Although I would not want to argue that the way to sonic bliss is obtainable only by pairing horn loudspeakers with triode tube amplifiers, the combination can be magical, as was the case with the Acapella Audio Arts speakers and Wavac Audio Lab electronics on demo at HE 2006.

WLM stands for Wiener Lautsprecher Manufaktur, and their product literature states that the company’s ambition is "to keep the Viennese heritage of music alive." While this might appear to give short shrift to institutions like the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera, the system featuring WLM Lyra speakers, Audio Aero SACD player and electronics sounded was exceedingly musical in its presentation.

Sporting a great music collection spread around the room, Zu Audio had two models of speakers up and running. Shown here is the company's $9k/pair Definition speaker, which Sean Casey assures me can be coated in any color the buyer can imagine including "matte, iridescent frost, high gloss, flames, stripes . . . anything." Of course the company chose the understated RED speaker for display at the show.

Saturday’s first taste of the real thing for this writer came in the form of midrange truth. The location was the third floor Santa Cruz room put together by Optimal Enchantment, a Santa Monica-based high-end retailer whose 25 plus-year history in the business perhaps grants it the right to so audacious a name. The amps were Audio Research REF 610 monoblocks, each of whose twenty glowing 6550 output tubes help account for their 600W output and $40,000/pair price tag. Speakers were an industry given, the Vandersteen 5As, the cable Audioquest, and the turntable a Basis Debut Signature ($10,900) outfitted with a Transfiguration Orpheus cartridge ($5,000) and Basis Vector Model 3 tonearm ($3750).

After listening, I spent a while speaking with Bob Clarke of Basis. Asked how close to the sound he wished to hear he had achieved after three days at the show, Bob replied, “About 80%.” Among the challenges the exhibitors needed to address were the room’s walls, which literally moved if you pushed them hard enough. Imagine trying to achieve a solid image, let alone solid bass, in such an environment. Given such drawbacks, my proverbial hat is off to Optimal Enchantment.

In the Simaudio/Dynaudio room, the sheer size and weight of the bass commanded equal respect. This was some of the finest low bass extension I have so far encountered at the show. (The bass impact of the new Wilson Watt/Puppy8s also deserves mention). Imagine my surprise when, after my audition, Simaudio’s Costa Kouliisakis told me that he had not yet succeeded in getting the room to deliver all of the deep bass extension the equipment was capable of producing.

The system, which also had a most listenable high extension, included the Simaudio Andromeda player ($11,500), P-8 preamp ($11,000), W-8 250Wpc amp ($10,500), LFA and LFS line conditioners for CD and preamp ($700 and $660 respectively), Dynaudio Evidence Temptation speakers ($40,000/pair)—the name suggests that attendance at a 12-step group for love addiction is mandatory—and approximately $8000 worth of Cardas Golden Cross cabling.

The Immedia room proved an isle of sanity amidst the clamor. As I entered, the folks were playing Analogue Productions’ HQ-180 pressing of Chet. Heard through Joachim Gerhard’s somewhat diminutive, 90 lb Sonics Allegria speakers ($15,000/pair, shown above with Immedia’s Allen Perkins), the trumpet sounded far bigger and lifelike than speakers this size “should” make it sound. Equally impressive were the amazing depth, height, and width of the soundstage. No small part of the credit is due Perkins’ Spiral Groove SGI turntable ($20,000), Immedia RPM tonearm ($2995), Lyra Skala cartridge ($2500, a replacement for Lyra’s Helicon), the Lyra Connoisseur 4-2LSE preamp ($25,000), and Ayre V5XE 150 Wpc amp ($4500).

I would be remiss were I not to mention the same system’s beautifully extended treble, estimable smoothness and neutrality, and sense of inherent “rightness.” For LP playback, this room scored a 10 in my book. If I hadn’t needed to shift gears and hustle down to the lobby before Dr. John’s show began, I would have gladly dropped all agendas and lingered for a long, long while. Allen Perkins should not be surprised if, sometime over the summer, this Oakland-based critic appears at the doors of his North Berkeley offices, hoping to soak up more of such luscious sound.

Sonneteer/Bardaudio also makes a wireless receiver that houses a 25Wpc stereo amplifier. The Bardthree amp/receiver comes in several varieties, priced $1,225-1,350, and can be used to stream full-bandwidth tunes to another room, or to a set of rear channels in a hard-to-wire spot.

Sonneteer/Bardaudio's Haider Bahrani holds the $425 Bardone TX wireless audio transmitter. This device can broadcast an uncompressed CD stream wirelessly up to 50 meters (164 feet).

Dr. John brought down the house Saturday night at HE 2006, where the crowd brought him back for an encore.

. . . Go To Jail. An appropriate license plate parked out front of the Sheraton at HE2006.

Elina Lamm spinning discs in the very smooth Lamm Industries suite. It gets my vote for Most Comforting Music at the Show.

Louis Armstrong, take me away.

I could barely make my way into the Totem room. The crowd stretched out into the hall. When I finally found some space, I made sure to have some fun.

"May I see the photo?" Totem's Nico Bruzzese asked.

"Sure," I said, bringing my little digital camera around for him to see.

The look on his face. I laughed.

"I know where you live," Nico threatened, "I've got your shipping address!"

I think he was trying to say that he didn't want me to post this photo of him standing beside the Native American mask. I'm sorry, Nico. But please feel free to use my shipping address. I loved the tiny Dreamcatchers ($450/pair) matched up with Plinius' 9200 integrated amp ($4195) and CD 101 ($4495), set up in the fantastically decorated Totem suite.

"Where's the subwoofer?" people kept asking. The sound was so wide and full, bass so incredibly deep and right.

It's no wonder that the place was standing room only all day long.

Bluebird Music's Jay Rein, with the very cute Neat Motive loudspeaker ($1995/pair) in the foreground.

"At first, we didn't want to sell these speakers," admitted Jay Rein of the adorable Neat Motives. "I mean, who needs another nineteen hundred dollar speaker?"

Jay explained that Bluebird Music had brought in the Neat line for their larger Ultimatum MF7 loudspeakers ($15,000/pair), but when they heard the Motives, they knew they'd have to make room for them, too.

"We want to show that enjoyable music doesn’t have to cost a zillion dollars. This is about enjoying music and having fun. We're having fun now."

Paired with the Exposure 2010S amplifier and CD player ($1250 each) and tied together by Kubala-Sosna cables, Bluebird's sweet, neat little package breezes in under $5000 and offered a truly enjoyable and musical experience.

Jenna Russo, Lucette Nicoll, and Erika Pearson (L to R) keep the press room stocked with coffee and cookies so that we can keep working hard.

"Did you get my picture, yet?" Lucette asked.

I hadn't. What was I waiting for?

Frustrated by the dead internet connection in my suite, I sat before the computer screen in the press room, checking in on all the Show coverage that I couldn't post.

At least, in the press room, there were cookies.

I dropped my peanut butter cookie, grabbed my camera, and asked the ladies to smile.

Direct-marketer Aperion Audio was demonstrating its new $750/pair 533-T tower loudspeaker, built around two 5.25" mid/bass drivers and a 1" silk-dome tweeter. Aperion's cabinets employ 1" MDF and internal bracing, so they're extremely rigid. Aperion not only offers 30-day in-home auditions, but they pay return shipping if you choose not to buy—and they even offer a one year trade-up policy that refunds 100% of the cost of a speaker if you buy a better speaker from them.

Of course, none of that is interesting if the speakers aren't good and I thought the 533-Ts were very good. Paired with an $899 Outlaw 1070 receiver, the 533-Ts really sang, delivering Alison Krauss without any vocal etchiness and Steely Dan's "Babylon Sisters" with real rock authority. Who says high-end has to be high-cost?

Ping Gong, AAA Audio's energetic director, shyly told me he had brought "something special" to the show. Knowing AAA's penchant for high-value, low-cost hi-fi, I expected something modest, but impressive. What he had brought was just flat-out impressive.

The $25,000/pair M-2000 Self-Analyzing Balanced mono power amplifiers are built like (fashionably luxurious) tanks and output 600W into 8 ohms. They weigh in at 170 lbs each. "They have an S/N Ratio of greater than 110dB," Gong confessed, "so they are very quiet."

Lord, yes, when Gong played Rutter's Requiem through Dynaudio Confidence C-4s, the noise floor seemed staggeringly low, and when the organ's pedal tones started to swell under the chorus, he actually started to apologize for the sounds coming from the neighboring Earthquake room. But no, the sounds were all coming from his system—and they were physically convincing. I felt the music the way you feel it sitting stage-side at a jazz club, something very few systems reproduce at all well.

AAA? I should say so!

For me, the highlight of HE2006 so far was sitting on the podium next to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's senior intellectual property attorney Fred Von Lohmann as he analyzed the threat restrictive digital rights management (DRM) poses to innovation of precisely the sort so beloved by us audiophiles.

Von Lohmann observed that CD quality has improved over the last two decades specifically because CD was designed as an open format. Inventors could get under the hood and tinker with the delivery of the data—and they have. DVD's quality—for both sound and image has not changed substantially since the format's introduction because everything DVD does happens behind a screen designed, at least putatively, to prevent piracy. What it wound up preventing was innovation. It certainly didn't prevent piracy, as anyone who has been offered a DVD of a current hit movie must realize.

Von Lohmann wryly observed that DRM isn't about preserving content, it's about preserving platforms—and the business models that cannot guarantee that technological shifts will benefit them rather than smarter, faster, more adaptable rivals.

Von Lohmann is the good-looking guy in the middle, flanked by grey-haired John Atkinson and no-haired me.

Bob Reina stopped me in the halls and asked, "Have you heard the water-cooled triodes?" Huh? Turns out the $59,000/pair Von Gaylord Audio Uni Signature Editions monoblock power amplifiers use exterior transmission-grade tubes submerged in an oil coolant, I presume and you can really see the thermal motion of the coolant, so I'm guessing the tubes run hot.

The sound certainly was, as played through Von Gaylord's The Legend loudspeakers ($3995/pair), Female vocals were precise and detailed, with the requisite amount of body. The system sounded extremely natural and relaxed, which is no mean feat at a show.

VTL announced a major upgrade to their TL-7.5 Reference Linestage Preamplifier (current gain technology, with dramatically lower noise floor), which is now the TL-7.5 Series II. They also have an upgraded version of the MB-450 monoblocks and a new 250Wpc MB-185. Pictured: VTL’s Bea Lam with the system that featured the TL-7.5/MB-450 combo driving Wilson Sophia 2s. Lovely sound.