AXPONA 2025

Mike Stephens of Farmersville, Texas’s Western HiFi presented one of the show’s top five systems at AXPONA. Built from modestly priced gear, it stopped people in their tracks and kept them planted in their seats—including me.

The system’s vinyl front end featured a Well Tempered Lab Amadeus Jr. turntable ($3350) with the matching Ctrl motor controller ($450) and a Dynavector XX-2A cartridge ($2250). A Lejonklou Entity 1.2 MC phono stage ($2795) amplified the signal.

Western HiFi, which recently reintroduced Consonance by Opera Audio to the US market, also provided the amplification—all from Consonance: the 18Wpc parallel single-ended 300B Reference5.5 MKII integrated amplifier ($3980); the 28Wpc Linear845 integrated amplifier ($6890); the 35Wpc push-pull Linear200 MKII integrated amplifier, outfitted with KT100s ($3980); the 8Wpc push-pull LinearQ amplifier ($6450); and the 105Wpc solid-state AMP150 amp/streamer/DAC ($2980).

The amps drove a pair of Consonance Compact Monitor loudspeakers ($1460/pair, $2000/pair with stands), compact stand-mounts inspired by classic BBC studio monitors. Rated at 83dB sensitivity into 11 ohms, with a stated frequency response of 74Hz–19kHz, ±3dB, the speakers are notably inefficient.

Cabling included Consonance Billie interconnects ($249/1m pair) and Joplin speaker cables ($640/3m pair), along with Western HiFi power cords ($205/1.5m). A Consonance PW-3 power block ($270) and D-Linear 15 conditioner ($2790) completed the setup.

Spinning At Fillmore East by The Allman Brothers Band, the system delivered Gregg’s voice, Duane’s guitar, and the thunder of the Trucks/Johanson double-drumming with more cohesiveness and punch than I’ve heard from many larger rigs.