While folks like GTT Audio's Bill Parrish went to great lengths to extract the most from his line of lofty electronics...

Other setups such as this McIntosh room labored to get anything close to respectable sound. Looking at this photo would reveal a series of audiophile no-no's. World class electronics stacked on top of each other and on a cheap table top at that? C'mon Mac, you ought to know better than that.

The Planar/Ribbon designed transducers, like the Analysis Audio  Omega loudspeakers, historically never disappoint whenever driven with tube gear from Audio Research (or VTL). Mike Kalellis, Analysis Audio's US importer impressed me greatly this year by bringing the smaller Omega's ($22k) over the double-stacked Orions to this year's event. Kalellis' intuition paid off as this room proved very impressive in terms of low-end heft and scale: attributes not usually associated with subwoofer-less Planar/ribbons. 

The Scaena loudspeaker system ($72k) took on a new appearance and sung more beautiful than ever...

Driven by a slew of digital gear from dCS and VTL amplification, the sound was as huge as it was wide and as open as it was detailed. Yeah, there's was just a hint of bass heft that simply showed this system wasn't in a perfect room. That said, this system still outperformed nearly everything else I heard.