Lately it seems that the more Rega charges for one of its turntables, the less you get—and from Rega's performance perspective that's a good thing.

While some turntable designs pile on the mass, hoping to tame resonances and better isolate the record from the outside world, Rega has long advocated ultralow-mass designs. What's up with that?

Thursday, February 20, 7:00–10:00pm: Garth Leerer and Ken Bowers from Musical Surroundings, importers of AMG turntables and Hana phono cartridges, will be at Ultra Fidelis HiFi, 7125 W. North Avenue, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, demonstrating the new AMG Viella Forte turntable.

This marks the end of our Florida Audio Expo 2020 coverage, but before I wrap things up, I'd like to mention a few more standout rooms with super systems.

The MC Audiotech Forty-10 ($35,000) is probably the most exotic speaker seen and heard at the Florida Audio Expo.

It's always a jolting, life-renewing Ka-BLAM when a new experience shatters your preconceptions of the order of things. From the moment you realize your dad isn't running right alongside you as you fly down the sidewalk on your first two-wheeler, to when you become a made man, these experiences forever alter how you view yourself and the world around you.

Salon 1 Audio made its first-ever appearance at a high-end audio show with a demo room featuring upper-tier amplification from VTL’s Series III: the TL-7.5 Reference linestage preamplifier ($30,000) and MB-185 Signature monoblock amps ($22,500/pair), and the TP-2.5i Performance phonostage ($5000) paired with a Sumiko Palo Santos MC cartridge ($4500) and a Pro-Ject Xtension 12 turntable ($4500) with a lovely high-gloss mahogany wood plinth.

Rupert Neve Designs, the legendary pro-audio maker of recording studio consoles and other equipment for concert halls and beyond, has expanded its product offerings for the home-audio market—ie, music lovers and audiophiles—with its new Fidelice series, including a full-featured DAC/controller with Neve's analog circuitry and an AKM-based DAC chip inside, a phono preamp, and a headphone amp. The three Fidelice components share a retro-modern look with matte aluminum casings with inlayed mahogany wood on top, red-accented control dials, little throw switches, LED lights, and tiny text that reminded me a bit of my first piece of gear, an oldie-but-goodie Advent 300 receiver. Their form factor is distinctive too: trapezoidal with rounded edges, with the DAC housed in a larger chassis.

Offering a "sneak preview" before the official debut at AXPONA 2020, Endow Audio introduced the latest iteration of its speaker, the piano-black T35 ($19,900), a two-way with a patent-pending Point Array and a 12-inch woofer. It may be rather otherworldly in appearance (grilles are included) but rather unique in its approach. Basically, it consists of an array of nine full-range 3" drivers configured with a single 8" loading driver to create a point source. The woofer takes over frequencies at 100Hz (and below) via an inboard passive crossover. The T35 also contains patent-pending Passive Signal Processor (PSP) technology.