New York Audio Show 2019 Report
NYAS 2019 Show Report By Enjoy the Music.com

Brett Enjoys NYC High-End Audio Event
NYAS 2019 Report By Brett Rudolph 

  Ohm Electronics is a speaker company born in Brooklyn New York as I was proudly told upon entering their room. They had their new Walsh 2000 speakers ($2000/each) on display. The remaining system which consisted of Carver, BlueSound and Nelion tucked somewhere within the room, out of view and unfortunately that meant not finding out specifics. However, the stars were the speakers in this room.

Unlike all the other rooms at the show, this room was about the speaker and speakers alone. Once inside it was almost impossible to imagine you were still in the same hotel. Admittedly they did a nice job with all the plants, but it wasn't the plants that had my ears me in delight. These speakers filled the room with a very real presence that enveloped and drew you into the music. It was perhaps the only room on this floor that was truly able to compensate for all the faults around it without any pomp or circumstance. I would've come back to this room if there had been time and a heck of a lot less people.

Adirondack Audio / Hifi Loft's room was chock full of seriously beautiful equipment. The system playback components were a Luxman D-380 CD Player ($5495), a Luxman Tube PreAmplifier / PhonoStage CL-38uC ($4200), a Luxman Turntable PD-171A ($6995), and a Luxman Tube Amplifier ($5995). This was powering a pair of Triangle Magellan Speakers ($12000) and connected by Nordost cables.

The sound in the room was good. However, unlike some of the others mentioned this room did succumb to the hotel atmosphere nightmare. The details were lost along with a certain character that could almost be heard. The longer I listened, the more I knew I was missing huge parts of the presentation, but unfortunately, the acoustics did not allow me the opportunity to figure out exactly what.

Floor Seven
The seventh floor was unfortunately a mass of people and the rooms were mainly full. We did manage to get into several of them and experience some great systems. Luckily, we also managed to get some great pictures along the way for you.

Vanaloo had both of their speakers on show in their room, the Transparent Zero ($359) and the Transparent One Encore ($599). They are both fairly small speakers, the Zero is more of a desktop speaker, but can be configured multiple ways, if desired. In fact, the company sells accessories to make it act like a bookshelf speaker and it certainly performed like it during the demonstration.

Overall both speakers did admirably given the challenges at the show. The Transparent One Encore was definitely the clear winner. The bass technology that the company utilizes absolutely made a huge difference. In fact, it was a definite favorite of mine at the show. You can read more about it in the review we did earlier this year.

Alexis Audio had a beautiful room. We got to take some great pictures and listen quickly to music. Unfortunately, the room was VERY crowded that there was no way to get information on the equipment that was being shown. However, what stood out to me was its ability to capture the soundstage accurately and with scary ease. It was hard to be sure that the detail was entirely present because the amount of ambient noise in the rooms was so high, but it was enough to make the experience one that needed to be called out.

Andover Audio built a unique solution which they showed at they showed at the New York Audio Show. The Model One Record Player ($2500) is an integrated digital preamplifier / speaker / turntable combination. It has a small screen in the front which gives you the important information, but basically it is an all-in-one turntable with an extra input. What makes this even better is you are able to customize it by adding a subwoofer, or shelving to hold one or two rows of albums. The subwoofer is $800 and each rack will cost you an additional $300. If you get two racks then the subwoofer is a separate piece, but don't worry, it still fits in and the entire package is $3800.

Also at the show the company introduced their new Spinbase product. It is based on the same idea as their Model One Record Player. The main difference is that it does not include the turntable. Instead, it is supposed to represent a speaker you can use when you don't want to hook a turntable up to a full playback system. Currently it is being offered on Kickstarter.

Conclusion
It is always fun to take a trip into Manhattan for the day, but it is better when you have a great reason. The New York Audio Show 2019 is certainly worth a trip in if you get a chance. We had a great time seeing some of the new equipment and hearing some great music. It might not be as large as some of the audio shows out there, but what it does have, it does well. Definitely worth the trip if you get the chance.

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