Despite the challenging acoustics of air-walled conference rooms, retailer Audio Video Interiors produced extremely satisfying sound. True to McIntosh Laboratory's sonic signature, the company's C-1100 preamp ($14,000), relatively new 600Wpc MC-611 monoblocks ($15,000/pair), and MPC-1500 line filter ($5500) produced a beautiful, strong midrange and mellow top.

Disorder was the order of the day as everyone and their father ogled and chatted about the VAC Statement 450i iQ integrated amplifier ($150,000). During my relatively brief visit to this free-for-all space, in which demonstrations alternated between two systems, there were up to six people standing in front of the one I tried to hear. At one point, someone blocked the speaker on one side while a company rep chatted it up with someone on the other.

AXPONA's Master Class lectures offer a series of seminars on sometimes controversial subjects. To wrap up Friday afternoon's talks, Channel D's Rob Robinson explained why for phono preamplifiers, current-mode amplification, with its zero-ohm input impedance, gets the best signal/noise ratio from moving-coil cartridges, compared with conventional voltage-mode circuits, and even improves tracking performance.

The late Arnie Nudell, co-founder of Infinity, was very much a mentor to PS Audio's Paul McGowan, and Paul and his team have been working a loudspeaker design that would honor Nudell. AXPONA saw the first public demo of the new speaker, the AN3, which is expected to be available toward the end of the year at a price somewhere in the region of $11,500–$14,500/pair. The AN3 features a servo-corrected 12" aluminum-cone woofer, driven by a 700W amplifier mounted on one of the sides, with a folded ribbon tweeter, a rectangular planar midrange unit sourced from Bohlender-Graebener, and an 8" cone "mid-bass coupler," the last a consistent feature of Nudell's designs for Infinity and Genesis.

The room presented by importer Vana LTD of Lake Grove, New York, featured (in addition to some record cleaning fluid and Okki Nokki record-cleaning machines) analog components by the European Audio Team (EAT) and loudspeakers by Audio Physik.

I am not a bot. I measure my own DIY audio gear. But as an audio-show reporter, I'm only interested in those biologically significant sounds that connect my mind as directly as possible to the music being played. I want to see and feel some inkling of a real orchestra floating between the speakers. I found that connection right away in the room sponsored by retailer-distributor Refined Audio.

Happily, extremely listenable and well-balanced sound from a 24/176.4 file of Brubeck's "Take Five," and a 16-bit file of a track that I think was titled "Camptino," from the Erik Truffaz Quartet featuring the wonder Rokia Traoré, was the hallmark of a large, air-walled space sponsored by multiple companies. Here, chatting was minimal, perhaps simply because the sound was so good. I really enjoyed how mellow the sax sounded, and how drums were rendered with truthfulness without becoming clattery.

Illinois dealer F1 chose the sonically challenged, glass-encased Nirvana Lounge, on the second floor of the Renaissance Schaumberg's Convention Center, to stage its $428,871 crate-décor system complete with an important premiere: the Dan D'Agostino Momentum HD preamplifier.

One of my first stops this morning—the first morning of AXPONA 2019—was the Shunyata room in the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel. Shunyata, as you're probably aware, has long been one of the more scientific-minded of the companies focused on quality power for home audio systems.

The show was scheduled to open at 10am today (April 12), but at 9:55am there was already a line of people at the registration desk. AXPONA looks on track to replace CES as the premier audio show in North America.