I was in a strange mood last January when I posted this on Facebook: "Do speaker designers strive for accuracy, or for a 'sound' they think potential buyers want?" I doubted that any designer with two working ears would even attempt to design speakers that merely measured well—there must be at least some subjectivity in their process. I also assumed that few designers would go on record about where they stand on the accuracy question, so I was thrilled when Elac Americas' speaker designer, Andrew Jones, responded...

Emitt Rhodes: Rainbow Ends Omnivore OVLP-163 (LP). 2016. Chris Price, prod., eng.; Pierre de Reeder, Kyle Frederickson, engs.; Nathan Flom, Emitt Rhodes, Emeen Zarookian, add'l. engs. ADA? TT: 37:01 Performance **** Sonics ****

"A few shows here, a few shows there—Emitt eventually found himself without a label, and his career came to a halt," reads the biography on EmittRhodesMusic.net. "He had had enough. He was 24."

Go on, admit it: Everyone loves a disappearing act—the plight of the unjustly snakebit, the ghostly casualties of a business that markets creativity but doesn't respect it. Hawthorne, California native Emitt Rhodes, onetime drummer for mid-'60s SoCal garage band (and later Nuggets staple) Palace Guard, and later the cofounder and leading force of L.A. psychedelic pop band Merry-Go-Round, went solo in 1969.

AudioVisionSF (1628 California Street, San Francisco) and Lavish HiFi (1044 4th Street, Santa Rosa) are holding loudspeaker set-uos today, 7:30–9:30pm (AVSF) and tomorrow, 2–7pm (Lavish) featuring Benno Meldgaard (Chief Designer, pictured above at the 2014 RMAF) and Michael Vamos of GamuT.

AXPONA Chicago 2016 was, by all accounts, a success. JD Events, who stage the show, report that they sold 5934 tickets, a 16% increase over 2015…

Slam and visceral impact were superb, highs transparent and extended, and percussion extremely impressive in the ENIGMAcoustics room…

Negotiations complete, fingers crossed, I discover myself with 18 more rooms to go on floors 12 and 4, and a short day in which to cover them…

Brian Walsh and Essential Audio of Barrington, IL put on a highly enjoyable demonstration. There was something eccentric but wonderful happening with each song. The equipment mix was eccentric and wonderful, too: What is not to like about the Kuzma Stabi S turntable ($2156 and perhaps the best bargain in contemporary hifi), the Kuzma Stogi Ref 313 CE VTA tonearm ($4640), and Kuzma CAR-30 moving-coil cartridge. The digital source components were equally impressive: Aurender N100H music player/streamer ($2699), and the Resonessence Labs Veritas DAC which was premiering at Axpona ($2850).

The AudioEngine team at AXPONA—from left to right: Brett Bargenquast, Morgan Day, Gavin Fish (also of LH Labs), and Patrick Carr—were really happy with their flagship HD6 self-powered loudspeakers ($750/pair). These handsome little babies integrate aptX Bluetooth and Toslink optical to play 24/96 files. They also stream Tidal, Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube wirelessly via smartphone, tablet, or good old fashioned computer. Optical yields the highest-resolution sound. You can even connect your TV or turntable.

If you don't like digital it just means you've never heard it through a good DAC like the pin-you-to-the-seat with inner detail and palpable presence Bricasti Design M1 SE ($10,000). Bricasti's Brian Zolner has a way with amps too. I have only heard them with Tidal speakers but his $30,000/pair M28 mono amplifiers appear to be equally extraordinary.

At an after-hours press listening session sponsored by Paragon Audio/Video of Michigan, Dave Wilson was in a major upbeat mood for the show premiere of Wilson Audio's new Alexx loudspeaker ($109,000/pair). . . The Alexx, Wilson's successor to the MAXX 3, acquitted itself admirably through the Doshi Audio 3.0 line stage, 3.0 phono stage, and 3.0 tape stage ($16,999/each), as well as their Jhor mono amplifiers ($29,995/pair); dCS Vivaldi digital system ($115,000 total); Transparent Opus cabling and power conditioning ($208,360 total) along with an extra-long version of John Marks' Esperanto Audio Small-Batch S/PDIF cable on Peter McGrath's Sound devices portable digital.