Typical of the booth exhibits at AXPONA was Audeze's, allowing hands-on listening.
A wall of Clearaudio…
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A half-hour after the show opened (held today, tomorrow, and Sunday at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel, 1551 Thoreau Drive North, Schaumburg, IL), this was the scene in front of the seminar center, where a presentation on Room EQ Wizard was about to start. With well over 160 exhibit and listening rooms and another 80 booths, and what must be every dealer in Illinois participating, this is the biggest consumer audio show to be held in the US in quite a while.
If AXPONA seemed to get off to a slow start on the 4th floor of the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center, it was only because, the second the clock struck 10am, huge numbers of people made a mad dash for the first level Marketplace. It was only after they had sated themselves with all the rare LPs and other paraphernalia they could find that they ventured forth into the great unknown.
It wasn't just the many equipment premieres that were unknowns; the spaces themselves were unfamiliar entities. As audiophiles traversed a good 165 active exhibits scattered across nine…
I usually wear all black, but to celebrate the exciting, circus-like vibe of AXPONA 2018, I'm wearing light colors—a decision made in part because AXPONA's own team members, including Liz Miller, their wonderful and talented Event Director, are all wearing black. I see them everywhere, encouraging visitors to "step right up for a really big show" under the spectacular high ceilings and dramatic architectural vistas of Chicago's Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center.
There are 165 listening rooms and 125 separate exhibits spread across nine floors, and the hallways aren't…
Most of my audio show experiences have been mixed, with strings of fine-sounding rooms punctuated by others that have sounded mediocre or worse. On the worst of days, the pattern has been reversed, with room after room sounding so dismal that I occasionally began to wonder if I was suffering from a temporary case of sonic indigestion. But on the Renaissance Schaumberg's 4th floor, despite room layouts that seemed to have been designed by the Son of the Set-up Demon himself, room after room delivered fine sound.
This was certainly the case in the Fidelis Music Systems room, where Stenheim…
"What are you doing here?" MartinLogan founder Gayle Sanders has been long gone from the audio industry but there he was in the corridor of the Schaumburg Renaissance hotel's 7th floor. "I love the industry and I wanted to come back and play," Gayle laughed as he introduced me to his Eikon Image1 digital active loudspeaker ($24,500/system).
The elegant-looking, floorstanding Image1 combines a waveguide-loaded AMT tweeter with a 5" midrange unit and two 8" woofers (one on the front, one on the back) with a class-D amplifier module for each driver, and all crossover and optimization…
Most readers don't know this, but I am measurer. I own oscilloscopes and distortion analyzers and have been measuring amps and speakers for nigh on 30 years. But when I hear some audiophiles say that all cables—and especially AC power cords—sound the same, it makes me reach for the Tequila and pistols. Folks, ya gotta relax, breath air, and listen—the effects are not subtle. And that's what I did in the MoFi Distribution room, where Jonathan Derda (the nicest guy in audio) was demonstrating two power conditioners from IsoTek, the $795 Sirius and the $1995 Aquarius, and one IsoTek AC cord,…
With very few exceptions, the 4th floor of the Renaissance Schaumberg was filled with fine to extraordinary sounding rooms. The sound was so good that Jana Dagdagan and I returned to the floor on Day Two to shoot video in three of the rooms. You'll see what fun we had (in very cramped quarters) when the video appears down the road.
Once I heard the sound from the Verity Audio/High Fidelity Services system, I knew from the lovely midrange and well-balanced presentation that the room was a prime candidate for video. In particular, René Laflamme's recording of Dubois' Les Sept Paroles du…
Who doesn't like and admire Elac's chief loudspeaker designer (formally of KEF, TAD, and Pioneer) Andrew Jones? I surely do: but not only for his abilities to create high-value, low-cost, audiophile-quality speakers: I admire him for how he makes me feel when he stands in front of a packed audio-show room and tells stories plays songs
and smiles that wicked British smile he uses to suck us all in.
The Andrew Jones Experience was the best song-and-dance/dog-and-pony/beautiful-music moment at Axpona 2018. He was demonstrating Elac's $299.98/pair Debut 2.0 DB62-BK (who thinks of these names…
"The core audiophiles, they are aging," the collective subconscious of exhibitors on the 15th floor seemed to say. "Since they're attempting to bask in the glow of their golden years, they don't want to hear anything in their sonic sanctuaries that might expose them to the harsh realities of the present day. Hence, we shall warm up the sound, add a few tablespoons of sugar, and ensure that everything sounds as safe, warm, and cuddly as those TV commercials for assisted living communities."
Thus, after spending my entire Saturday shooting video and watching John Atkinson deliver his…
I started my second day at the Chicago show in the Dynaudio room, where the Danish loudspeaker company's Special 40 stand-mounts ($3000/pair) were being driven by an Octave 80SE integrated amplifier ($10,500) with its Super Black Box external power supply ($3000). Source was an Aurender server and the speakers were set up across the small room's diagonal. An arrangement of "What a Wonderful World" for voice and guitar was playing when I entered the room, followed by that audiophile staple, José Carreras's performance of the Ramirez Misa Criola. In both cases, the stereo image was superb, with…