We went with a little bit of everything. The rental van's suspension will never be the same again! The drive from Rochester, NY to Livonia, MI wasn't too bad. We spent the trip trying out a variety of the Qables iPod cables on the van's input. Next time we're going to actually remember to load more music on the iPods. Nothing like forgetting that everything you have is the same stuff you've been using for speaker testing for the past three months.
The show was great, and we had really good traffic. The big hits in the room were the mini-Rockets and their big brothers. We had the distinction of having the only audiophile grade desktop speaker system, and received some really encouraging reviews.
The main systems were cranking all the time, and our flagship Persius speakers drove the bass so hard the guys in the next room thought there was a small earthquake. Nothing like super-transient response to make the neighbors take notice. Of course we had the usual road-trip problems. The Persius are bi-amped, and we have a heavily modded Dynakit ST-70 that was supposed to drive the mids / tweets. Of course it didn't survive the trip. We fell back on the McIntosh, but even really good solid state doesn't compare to the liquid of a great tube amp.
In the end it was a great experience, and we're very much looking forward to going again next year. This time we're going to bring less equipment . . . it's fun to have it all, but it really makes load-in / out a chore!
Below are a couple of shots of our room at the show. Can you believe we fit all of that in a hotel room?
