I only made it for a few hours on Saturday, but here's the highlights from my perspective:
Omega:
Louis is a very nice, very down to earth guy. He had a pretty good room (17 ft x 30 ft x 10 ft high, no treatments), but not in the best location. Honestly he had some of the best sounding and least expensive stuff there. Part of the day the adjoining room hosted a different function so we had to keep the spl's reasonable. The Super 3's sounded really good. I thought a sub would put them into another league.
Madisound:
They had many different drivers on static display (mostly Fostex) and had 3 different pairs of DIY horns. I heard many who thought the middle set (FF165K, 6.5 inch full range, $62 each w/ T90A supertweeter, $190 each) sounded especially good. Reportedly these speakers will soon be offered in knocked down cabinet kits and the supertweeter is somewhat optional.
Norh:
Sorry, but life is short and the sound was one of the worst in the show.
Edgar Horns:
Had the Titans set up in one room and the slimlines in the next adjoining room. The Titans blew the slimlines away and should for 4 times the money. IMO, the best pure horns of the show. Unfortunately the laws of physics says it takes lots of space and 4 separate units to reproduce the full audible frequency range. Too much complication for me.
Welborne Labs:
The Oris 150 was there with AER drivers. Sounded good, but Bert's long time issue of trying to match it to a fast enough bass driver was evident.
Pi Speakers:
Don't know where Wayne was Saturday morning. When he finally opened up his room we heard the 2 Pi Towers (way too good for $110 kits w/o cabinets) and the Stage 7 Corner Horns. The horns were not afforded the clear space they really needed. Wayne Parham (another great, ordiinary guy) admitted that the bass was boomy and muddy. But I wonder why he would display it sounding that poorly.
Allison:
Remember their speakers from 1974? Same speakers, with a slightly modified tweeters, and 2 cheaper models. Warning - prices have gone up since the 70's!
Venus:
Terry Cain's Abbys sounded very nice. These speakers need a second look.
Chicago Audio Club:
Loud again this year (poorly located across the lobby from the main desk). Stopped by to find the booming coming from a 2-way open baffle design. They also had Jordan 92S's mounted on open baffles, but didn't get a chance to hear them.
VMPS:
Sorry, don't remember who brought them, but the 626R's had the new ribbon tweeters and sounded good.
In general I was surprised at how big some things were (Oris 150 horns for example) and how small other things were (RAM 301, TS-3's, Super 3's, Pi Stage 7 Corner horns). There was 21 rooms in all, but I'll leave the rest of the reporting to others.
jeff
