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Michael Lacomba of Southern Cinema, with stores in Cumming, GA and St. Augustine, FL, was having a great time demming several joyful systems that combined tried and true with fresh and new. Almost as fresh and new as Michael, who at age 26 laments, "People my age don't know this stuff exists." Not that Steve Davis and the small and dedicated Axpona crew didn't do everything possible publicity-wise to bring in a fair amount of curious collegiates, some of whom were actually heard to mutter, "I'm going to have to rethink my whole iPod thing after hearing this."

The room shared by Oracle and Phase Technology featured the eye-catching Oracle CD2500 CD player ($12,500), Oracle Delphi Mk.6 turntable with Oracle SME 5 tonearm and Thalia cartridge ($16,500 total), Oracle phono stage ($9950), and Oracle SI 1000 175Wpc integrated amp ($9950) powering the black Phase Technology PC-9.5 loudspeakers ($3500/pair). I was given very different figures in the room than are printed on the literature. Does this 4 ohms nominal impedance speaker have 91dB sensitivity, as the literature says, or 87dB, which is what the spex said? Is its frequency response 32Hz—22kHz, or 35Hz—20kHz ±2dB. And is its price what I was told? Such are the mysteries of life.

Twin•Audio•Video teamed up with Acoustic Zen to pair the large and imposing Acoustic Zen Crescendo loudspeaker ($16,000/pair) with Triode Corporation Ltd. of Japan's Tri TRV-4SE tube preamp ($1,900), the power module of the Tri TRV-845SE 20W pure class-A integrated amp ($6000), and Tri TRV-CD4SE tube CD player with 192kHz upsampling ($2200). The Crescendo is a 3-way, 125 lb transmission-line design with 6 ohms nominal impedance, 89dB sensitivity, and a frequency range of 20Hz to 30kHz. Also in the room on the floor were two ORB power traps (aka power conditioners/distributors), the Kyoto ($6000) and Kamakura ($3900), and, of course, Acoustic Zen cabling. This system did a fine job of capturing music's beauty and warmth. Which is saying a lot.

Do you wish you could stroll through a field of poppies, and drift into oblivion while listening to your favorite music? You needn't fly to the land of Oz or pastoral Afghanistan. Instead, try the almost all-in-one i-Fi Home Theater in a Chair ($4000). Though it currently lacks a TV—I for one am not complaining—this Kimber Kable-wired, motorized, Italian leather recliner comes complete with two satellite speakers, a tactile transducer (I'll explain), and hidden-in-the-back class-D amplifier and subwoofer. The baby even has a Bryston iPod DAC, built-in demo library for the true wherever-you-lead-I-will-follow(s) amongst us, and a wireless transmitter.

I heard enough "60 is the new 50" at the show to make me wonder if overweight is the new slim. But some things were clear. Small speakers are capable of throwing an astoundingly large soundstage.

I could have kicked myself. At the 2010 CES, as much as I wanted to hear and blog about the eye-catching and ultra-expensive The LARS 1 36W monoblocks ($90,000/pair), I couldn't find the room. So when the CBO/founder of Engstrom , Timo Engström (second from right in my photo), emailed to say he'd be displaying at Axpona, I assured him that if I didn't get to his room this time around, I deserved to be shot.

As much as I enjoyed many of the systems I auditioned on the first day of the show, the one that seduced me the most was assembled by Doug White's The Voice That Is of Newtown Square, PA. Powered by Vitus (pronounced VEE-toos) Audio SM-010 25W class-A monoblocks ($49,500/pair), and connected by Argento Audio FLOW power cords ($3100/2m), interconnects ($4100/m with RCAs), Master Reference interconnects ($8900/1m RCA), and Master Reference speaker cable ($24,500/2m), the dCS Puccini SACD/CD player ($17,999) with U-Clock ($4999) and Tidal Audio Piano Cera speakers ($28,400/pair in midnight black lacquer, or $36,3000 in Ebony Macassar) were producing the warmest and most beautiful midrange I had heard so far. In fact, as it turned out, it was the warmest and most seductive midrange I heard on the first two days of the show.