I've seen complaints that the Jr's got a really slow response speed (screen, loading music, etc) and a screen that is hard to navigate on because it's so small. Can anyone comment on that please?
Jr's a disappointment for me personally because it does not have an optical out or coaxial out like many other DAPs or A&K DAPs out there. :p It may be just me though.

Sluggish response but easy to navigate. I just have some 3000 tracks on the Jr and I don't feel a problem. BTW if I don't disable all the Android shit on ZX1 the response is pretty same sluggish. I find the UI on DAPs like iBasso, Fiio, and Calyx M are shit. YMMV.

And I don't get why you want so many connectivities on a DAP. As long as it has a line out and sounds good I don't give a shit about connectivities.

The show this year was a mixed bag for me.  The main thing I came away with is it costs SERIOUS money to get great sound and I'm not sure it's possible to get truly great sound reproduction from anything other than a tape or vinyl source. 
I hate saying that because I've been committed to making digital work for quite a while, but everything I heard at the show that was sourced from digital had noticeable distortion with certain material that I'm not sure how to label.  It was most noticeable in big symphonic works, choirs, sustained high violins, all in the upper frequencies, it usually has one or more of the following qualities: glare, peakiness, congestion, hardness/grain, hash, even over-modulation.  I talked with many people about this at the show and I got as many opinions, really, everyone had a different take on it.  Luis says it's the mastering.  That at least sounds more down to earth than some of the things I was hearing, solar flares, planet alignments and such, so I'll go with that for now.... I left unsure what to do next with my system.  Putting that little tantrum aside, these are the rooms stood out to me:

Hifi One's room was only better than average to my ear (you can see most of it on their website, if you look at the reference system: rbhifi1.com) but when they used the Sonorus reel-reel deck as the source, it suddenly was the best room at the show.  Arian Jansen rebuilds a Revox tape deck (only $27K!  ), adds something he calls a proximity subwoofer and remasters tapes from multi-channel sources ($200 a pop).  The most prevalent characteristic was size - big, wide, deep and engrossing, sort of like the MBL rooms, but good.  More realistic and natural.  I won't pretend to understand it, but I'll try to give a simplistic description of what he told me he does:  He takes multi-channel sources and through his own proprietary process creates a two track 1/4 reel-reel tape that produces much of the same effect.  I doubt he can mimic 5.1 discreet channels, but it's more about recreating the ambiance of the recording space and the reality of the recorded material.  And it does that convincingly.  The soundstage is HUGE.  But more than that, everything is right there, no matter how softly or loudly, it's uncannily real.  He also has a little 8" subwoofer that isn't used to reinforce or extend bass.  He says it's used to "condition" the room.  To be honest, I couldn't quite grasp what he was talking about.  It had something to do with harmonics.  It got a bit nutty professor when he tried to explain that while there are even and odd harmonics, 2,4,8, etc... 3,5,7, etc... everyone forgets about the zero harmonic.  Can someone explain that to me?  Anyway, whatever it was, it floored me.

Purist Audio Design was my second favorite room.  They had these little floor standers that pressurized the room perfectly.  The digital source had problems to my ear, but the $50,000 turntable into these little monsters was amazing.  I think we played some Berlioz?  I can't remember, but it was a huge symphonic orchestra and I was as close to a real symphony as I've ever been without actually being there.

I really liked the Silverline Bolero speakers and agree, at 10K, they're a good deal.

Vinnie Rossi had his Lio "all-in-one" box there driving a pair of Harbeth Super HL5 (I think) speakers.  It was so good, I was sorely tempted to dump my whole system and just simplify.  If you're not familiar with him, he was Red Wine Audio and worked a lot with battery powered amps.  This one doesn't have batteries, but it has a bank of 20 or so ultra-capacitors.  It sounded fine at Canjam, but on the Harbeth's it was outstanding. 

Channel Island Audio: Duffy had some prototype bookshelf speakers that were really great looking with some kind of proprietary tweeter with a cool looking waveguide.  BIG presentation, smooth, detailed and said they'll probably be $2K, I think that's a bargain.  I couldn't find anything wrong with this room.  Best I've heard from him to date.

I heard the Meridian MQA demo and I'm still not ready to make a judgement on it.  I'm not familiar with their speaker system, so I wasn't sure what I was hearing.  I kind of liked what I heard and there was certainly something unique in the sound.  Very controlled is what mostly comes to mind.  Whether I was hearing something closer to the Master or as they say, drilling all the way back to the microphones… I'm skeptical.  I'd need to hear it on my system or one I'm familiar with.  I have high hopes for this though.  Not so much for the compression, which is great, but more for the promise of actual Master quality.

The Elac/Andrew Jones $229 bookshelf speakers really are amazing.  I thought his budget pioneer bookshelf was fine, and a great value, but this one went well beyond that one in sound quality and it's good looking too.  I think Elac is primarily an AMT speaker manufacturer and I'm pretty sure Andrew isn't interested in working with that, so it will be interesting to see if they have two separate lines, or if they throw all in with Jones.

I did take a quick listen to that VIVA Egoista amp and figured it sounded so bad because they had just turned it on and it needed to warm up.  But I have to say, it still sounded better to my ears than that Heed integrated, maybe that had to warm up too.  Or maybe I had to warm up...

I wasn't as taken as some of you guys with these speakers.  I thought they were a bit harsh.  But did you guys notice that huge ugly box in the middle was a complete system in one box.  I think all you needed was an outlet and speaker wires.

I've seen complaints that the Jr's got a really slow response speed (screen, loading music, etc) and a screen that is hard to navigate on because it's so small. Can anyone comment on that please?
Jr's a disappointment for me personally because it does not have an optical out or coaxial out like many other DAPs or A&K DAPs out there. :p It may be just me though.

I didn't have any issues with that. Maybe I use better sd cards than those people. My test card is a Sandisk 64gb Ultra. It was pretty obvious to me the AKs are using faster processors than most of the competitors (AK380 even more so). The Questyles could vastly improve here with faster processing, larger fonts/screen, more responsive controls. Then again, not sure how production ready their firmware was.

Any impressions of JDS's new Element DAC/amp?