I watched last night’s rally on cspan also.
When the speech was over, did you see the crowd get up to leave? They were waving their Trump/Pence signs at the cameras. Also, Mr. Trump was surrounded by the crowd at the end.
As for the tone of the speech, and the content, I was very impressed. Candidates in the past have their standard stump speeches and they have their more serious policy speeches. The latter was what Trump gave last night.
He usually gives substantial policy points in his rallies, the rallies are "mixed," but the policy speeches per se don't have the rally rah-rah portions.
I thought the rally was fine. it wasn't one of my favorites, but I'm a bomb-thrower, and that isn't going to work for the general election. What made an impression on me was the difference in delivery of the endorsements, compared with the delivery of the rest. Juan Williams remarked on that, asserting that the endorsements were (in my own word) "phony." He was shot down as being one who will never have a good thing to say about Trump, so no sense in trying to please Williams.
Hillary's fake bounce is going to evaporate, and it's good that the press has some justifications to hang that on: change in tone, endorsements, and so on. CNN was remarking on the "change in tone," as was FoxNews. "This is a different Trump" "The intervention seems to have worked" and similar.