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The AXPONA experience is head-spinning in more ways than one. So many rooms, so many people to meet, so much gear to listen to. And so much regret when you realize that you can't fit it all into two or three days, unless each day were to last as long as it does it on Mercury. (Maybe one day we'll have audio shows there—sign me up!)

Another head-spinner occurred Saturday morning when I had to almost forcibly drag myself off the listening couch in the 16th-floor Avantgarde Acoustic room, where dCS front-end gear and a pair of gargantuan Trio G3 horn speakers ($180,000) had bowled me over with perhaps the most heavenly, enveloping sound of the entire show. Why did I leave? Because I had an appointment at the Devialet room on the same floor to listen to...(drum roll) a Dolby Atmos soundbar.

Upscale Distribution's Kevin Deal brought his posse to AXPONA (left–right: Randy Bingham, Kevin Deal, Craig Hoffman, Alex Brinkman). Though Deal's room was static, he also sponsored legacy French brand, Cabasse, in an adjacent room, where Cabasse representative Jean-Michel Polit demoed the thrilling flagship Pearl Pelegrina loudspeakers ($20,999/pair).

After a few hours of listening to speakers that cost well into the five and six figures, how much enthusiasm could I muster for a pair that retails for just $995? As it turns out, a lot. I'd heard the $750/pair Magnepan LRS a few years ago and marveled at how low the admission price to true high-end sonics can be. They sounded fast, surefooted, and transparent. Magnepan's new LRS+ speakers offer more of the same but at an elevated level and a slightly elevated price. Wendell Diller, a.k.a. Mr. Magnepan, calls them "higher-resolution" speakers.

Valve Amplification Company electronics also appeared in the Euphoria room, hosted by The Audio Company, where I believe Von Schweikert's Damon Von Schweikert and Leif Swanson were in attendance.

It's showtime again! With a business and showroom in Toronto, Wynn Wong's Wynn Audio is a next-generation dealer and distributor for a number of luxe European high-design high-end brands, a few of which had new product introductions at AXPONA. Wynn's preferred equipment leans toward striking and colorful rather than gaudy or blingy.

Some audio equipment makes its presence felt simply by its elegance. With its Versailles-like appeal, the colossal Burmester rig in the Schaumberg A room was magnificent to behold, virtually an audio treatise in luxury. A legacy German brand that manufactures everything from nuts and bolts to speaker cabinets and drivers, Burmester, represented at AXPONA by its US distributor Rutherford Audio, brought some of their classiest, biggest, and boldest equipment—all the listener need do was indulge the senses.

For huge sound in a huge room, you needed to look no further than the Schaumburg Renaissance Convention Center's Schaumburg F. Played at full volume, the momentous, quasi-apocalyptic opening of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, aka the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, virtually knocked me back a row. Only the deep bass, which was eaten alive by the room's spongy air walls, suffered. Which means that the deepest organ pedals on the forthcoming superbly recorded 7-CD Strauss set from conductor Andris Nelsons (heard in 24/96) had about the same weight as on the hi-rez digital transfer of Fritz Reiner's famous RCA Living Stereo recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.