Walking into one of the rooms hosted by Middle River, MD audio dealer Just Audio was a bit of a surprise, and to quote Yogi Berra, "It's like déjà vu all over again."

The first things I saw were the Mission 770—reviewed by JA1 in November 2022 and Mission 700 loudspeakers. They were flanked by display boards that rocked me back to the mid-1980s, when I was deciding between the Missions and Celestion 6s. Tom Bryant of Just Audio explained that Mission didn't want to build a part-for-part recreation of the speakers, or to build 770s using new parts. The goal was to design and build a thoroughly modern speaker that that resembled the original as closely as possible but could compete with anything being built today.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I headed for the Angel City Audio room at PAF 2024—were they a dealer? A distributor? A manufacturer? After chatting with ACA's owner Hugh Nguyen (above), I can say that the answer fell somewhere between "all three" and "it depends."

At every show, I make it point to visit at least one company making their debut at the show AT PAF 2023, it was Bella Sound, based in Half Moon Bay, CA, and the offspring of Mike and Barbara Vice. Mike Vice described their path to PAF 2023 as having begun around 2010 with what was to be their first product, the Hanalei power amplifier. It had been ten years in the making and wowed everyone who heard it, but Mike decided that it "just wasn't ready". After eight more years of refining the Hanalei and developing a few other components, Mike and Barbara decided that the time was right and created Bella Sound. Add another 5 years and the COVID-19 lockdown, and here they were.

Even though I knew what to expect, I was still a bit overwhelmed when I walked into the Triangle Art room at PAF 2023. Their products aren't bashful. They practically scream engineering and display a build quality and attention that Ferrari would envy. If MOMA wants an exemplar of industrial art, they need look no further. I wanted to go over each and every one with a fine-toothed comb but—I was on a mission. My plan was to focus on the three turntable models that were being played, sort out their similarities and differences, and determine the extent to which the differences were reflected in the tables' performance.

No show coverage would be complete without a preview of Børresen's major M6 loudspeaker ($550,000/pair) world premiere. Joining forces with products from the three other companies that comprise Audio Group Denmark, Børresen's M6 dominated an exceedingly large room in the extremely attractive exhibit mounted by US Distributor/Dealer Next Level HiFi.

Spatial Audio Lab may have considered its main suite on the 13th floor of the hotel's tower, but its second exhibit in room 2210 offered plenty to love. I was taken in by the wonderful clarity, excellent depth, and openness delivered by Spatial's Q6 prototype open-baffle loudspeakers ($4995/pair and expected in August). Infected Mushroom's "Avratz" was a knockout.

The relationship between Linear Tube Audio (LTA) and Daedalus Audio loudspeakers is so close that the special pair of LTA 20Wpc Ultralinear+ power amplifier monoblocks ($6800/each) on display in room 2106 at PAF—the second of these companies' two joint rooms—boasted a custom faceplate designed specifically for their owner, Daedalus founder Lou Hinkley.

Visiting Chuck Miller's Millercarbon room at PAF gave me the opportunity to check in on Townshend Audio, a quirky British manufacturer of audio gear best known for its well-engineered and very effective isolation products. I've always respected the engineering that went into the development, and liked their "luxurious execution meets form follows function" aesthetic. I've always smiled too, at their straightforward, almost simplistic approach to marketing, one that assumes customers will use logic and common sense to make purchase decisions. The Townshend products in use included $2650/pair Seismic Podiums under the speakers, a $795 Seismic Platform under the amps, and several Seismic Pods at $150/each.

One of the highlights of my visit to PAF 2023 was the debut of Klaudio's $80,000 Magnezar Turntable. The world of super-premium turntables is curiously large and active these days, and it's not that surprising to hear of another one hitting the market. From the first glance, though, it was obvious that Klaudio's Magnezar was something extraordinary.

Entering Klaus Bunge's intentionally low-lit Odyssey room was like entering another dimension. Showgoers may have had no idea what the purpose of the room was—even I couldn't discern it from the display—but they could not possibly have been less than fascinated.