AXPONA 2026

Halfway through day two of AXPONA 2026, I had an answer ready for whenever friends or colleagues inquired about my "best of show" nomination. It was a small, fantastic-sounding, sub-$10,000 Canadian-Danish system that I'd heard on day one and will write about shortly.

But plans change, just as mine did at 2:33pm CST on Saturday, April 11, a moment I reckon I'll remember. That's when, in a standard hotel room on the third floor with seating for eight, Andrew Jones fired up his new concentric-driver field-coil speakers, the Troubadours. Each is the size of a chunky dorm-room refrigerator. Clad in furniture-grade walnut and resting on short, angled mid-century legs, they look the business. But it was the sound that knocked me over.

It's almost thankless to write about a new Andrew Jones speaker. (He's designed for Pioneer, TAD, KEF, MoFi, and others.) Everyone figures a Jones launch will be somewhere between really good and exceptional, so it's often more fun to talk about a deserving newcomer with exciting sonics and big plans. But the Troubadours are what they are, and I'll say this plainly: they are a veritable mic drop from an engineer who's achieved a new career pinnacle.

Dynamics? Off the scale. Timbral accuracy? Exemplary. Soundstaging? On Francine Thirteen's "Queen Mary," some of the percussion sounds came at me from my left and right at almost 90 degrees, extending well beyond the walls. Hedegaard's bass-torture track "Ratchets" sounded as monstrous and exhilarating as I've ever heard it. Next, a double bass kicked off Lalo Schifrin's "Blues in the Bassment," soon to be joined by full-on orchestral stabs. This—exactly these textures, these joyful colors—is what I want to hear next time life gets me down.

If the $33,900 Troubadours, driven by an $8995 medium-wattage Lab 12 Integre4 tube amp, can sound this ridiculously good in a practically untreated hotel room, imagine what they could do in a decently treated listening space. I intend to find out soonest.