HEADPHONES:
Anyway, here's my tour in brief.
Headphones, the great Stax 009(electrostatic) and Abyss (single sided magnetic planar) face off.
009 was at two booths, one with the tape project tapes R to R and Bottlehead head amp with Blue Hawaii amplifier, the other at Dr. Cavalli's table with the Cavalli liquid lightening solid state amp.
I really liked the Abyss. Technical stuff says the single sided drive creates even ordered harmonics, so I guess I am an even order harmonic guy. It was with the Cavalli Liquid Gold amp and was driven reasonably well with it, good pairing.
I preferred the Abyss over the Stax 009, which had a very small pixel pitch, but was a tad dry, bass was not that greaat. I did not prefer the Stax from either Stax rig over the Abyss, though the Cavalli Liquid Lightening was very nice.
Doc Cavalli said that the listeners tended to be quite polarized in favor of one over the other when they listened. The presentations were very different, with the Stax doing that detailed electrostatic thing, but with the Abyss running neck in neck in detail but providing more fullness and bass. I did not hear the treble problem that some observers claim with the Abyss, so either my ears are burned out or the amp didn't convey it if it was there.
I don't know why, the R to R setup which should have been the bee's knees was a bit tepid with the 009/Blue Hawaii. It's one one of those head scratchers where things just don't turn out the way you thought when you finally get to listen.
Both headphones were "good" so evaluation I suppose is in the context of what do you want to spend and what do you prefer?
That being said, I don't think either one unseated my current preferred rig, a 50 watt Wavac amp with a home rigged transformer adaptor using new Dyna Z565 transformers through an over 25 year old Stax 3n/5n antique headset. The 3n/5n isn't even supposed to have much bass, but with the Wavac, it has bass the other two can't even dream of. The old stax 3n/5n is fast, detailed, but also lush and bass rich in this context.
Another stand out was the Eddy Current tubed amp with PX4 tubes. It sounded best with my own Ultrasone Ed8 headphones (in picture)over some LCD headphones lying around. Considering prices, I can't say this was markedly poorer than the Abyss/009 thing, and in some ways better in the way good dynamic setups can be.
I did not especially care for the Sennheiser 800 rigs I heard, but I will concede they are soundstaging champs.