I attended Capital Audiofest 2022 near DC last November. There is a lot of vendor/exhibitor overlap with PAF, and many of the same headphone vendors too.
I found that CAF made the broad differences between setups obvious, as each speaker vendor had a private room and the headphones were clustered in quiet areas. However, some rooms are an acoustic challenge so be a little forgiving. But don’t forgive the terrible setups with screechy treble or that are playing too loud, or that use incompatible chains. Some vendors surely don’t hear the same as you…
Have fun.
I had a busy day at CAF on Friday, and then went back for a narrower follow up on Sunday. To my ears the setups clustered into a few broad categories, such as 1) ultra smooth, powerful, and refined, 2) excessive treble and/or volume, 3) excessive tube distortion/weird timing issues, 4) transparent open-baffle setups, and 5) misguided marketing (you’ll know it when you see it).