The picture above wasn't an unusual site for the Merlin Music Systems - Joule Electra - JPS Labs - Walker Audio room at HiFi99 in Chicago. During the consumer days of the show (May 14th through the 16th), audiophiles hung around outside and crowded into our (I was there assisting Merlin) room to hear an absolutely fabulous set-up of Walker Audio's Proscenium Golden Signature Turntable ($17.5K) with Clear Audio Accurate cartridge ($4k), driving the Joule Electra LAP-100 preamp ($5.5K) and VZN-100 Marquis OTL monoblock amps ($9.8K) which powered the Merlin VSM-SE  loudspeaker system (with new Battery BAM option). The whole system was piped with JPS Labs super, Superconductor cables and power cords. Apparently I wasn't the only one that though the sound was great, because I've already seen a number of posting and reports on the net talking about the superb sound we had. The picture below shows shows how crowded it got in the room (at many times we had to hang out in the hall because there wasn't room for us and show attendees in the room) with Lloyd Walker spinning LPs (sitting on the floor far left), Marc Mickelson of Soundstage! (sitting in the left hand chair), and other attendees sitting on the floor and standing behind the chairs to give our system a listen.

To check out more pictures and show coverage check out Soundstage!'s show report at http://www.soundstagelive.com/shows/hifi1999/ (which has some interesting pictures of yours truly helping set-up our room - view at your own risk :-)  ) and StereoTimes show report at http://www.stereotimes.com/chi_0599_three.htm. I have a slew of other great pictures of our room at the show which we plan to put up on the Merlin web-site in the near future.