AXPONA 2022

There was one room at AXPONA where I was too in awe to take notes. In shock is more like it. The brothers who own JS Audio have acquired and restored the very first pair of WAMM loudspeakers that the late Dave Wilson began to manufacture in 1981. It seems that after living with the model for a few months, Dave's other half in the truest sense, his beloved wife and life partner Sheryl Lee preferred a different cabinet color for their living room and encouraged him to move this pair along. (If I've got that wrong, please forgive me.)

Of Morton Grove, IL dealer Quintessence Audio's three rooms at AXPONA, those in the ground floor Knowledge and Perfection showrooms remained. Since it's hard to imagine Perfection without Knowledge, reality cast the die to first cover a superb Knowledge set-up that mated Wilson Audio Alexx V speakers ($135,000/pair, or $151,000/pair in the show pair's special finish) with Audio Research electronics (see below), Clearaudio Master Innovation Wood turntable with TT-MI linear tonearm ($62,000) and Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement MC cartridge ($17,500), dCS's new Vivaldi Apex DAC/Clock/Upsampler system ($90,000), Transparent XL cabling with PWX power ($73,985 total), and Critical Mass Maxxum component stands ($75,000).

Having reviewed the top-of-the-line Innuos two-piece Statement music server, I was eager to hear an A/B demo of the version I reviewed with an Innuos Statement that contains its forthcoming Next-Gen power supply upgrade. Thanks to two extremely helpful and enthusiastic Innuos staff people, Director of Sales Steven Gomes and North American Director of Sales, Kevin Jackson, it was easy to hear the improvements.

When I've visited the Zesto Audio room at different hi-fi shows in recent years, I've noticed that sometimes they've shown their tubed electronics driving modern loudspeakers from Lumen White, for instance. Other times, it's been vintage classics, such as Tannoys. At AXPONA, they chose very old-school Tannoy Kensington GR loudspeakers ($18,000/pair), which of course, showed quite different sound characteristics from, say, Lumen Whites.

More debuts awaited in Fidelis Distribution's second room, where Heretic Loudspeaker Company's handcrafted-in-Montreal A612 high-sensitivity loudspeaker (price TBD—no more than $10,000/pair, I was told) and Lab 12's handcrafted-in-Athens electronics sang with AVIDHIFI's Volvere turntable ($8000, below) equipped with a TA-3 tonearm ($650) and inexpensive (by audiophile standards) Grado Opus3 cartridge ($275). Through Lab 12 and Siltech cabling, the sax on "Trippin' Out," on an LP from Vanessa Fernandez, sounded fabulous, The energy of the track came through loud and clear. It was all I could do to stop myself from getting up and dancing. Without a doubt, this system delivered the most fun I'd had during my first two days at the show.

MoFi Distribution showed some classic hi-fi gear—tube amps and classic speakers—in two of their four rooms, suites 330, which I cover here, and 346 (report to come). A few products debuted, including tubed amplification from Mastersound, an Italian company with a rather un-Italian name. MoFi Distribution's VP of Sales & Marketing Jon Derda told me that Mastersound winds their own transformers in-house. The brand is new to MoFi's roster—and new to me.

Huge, colorful, and highly engaging sound highlighted my time in the room sponsored by Mark Gurvey's Source Systems distribution of San Clemente. Deserving applause for some of the best signage at AXPONA, Gurvey used Lumin's proprietary playback app to output files stored on I-O Data Device of Japan's solid-state fidata 2TB server/renderer/ripper/tagger/CD player ($1600) to the Lumin X1 flagship streamer with external dual mono linear power supply (LPS) ($13,990). From there, the system output the streaming signal to the brand new Lumin P1 streamer/renderer/DAC/AV hub/preamplifier with internal dual-mono LPS ($10,000) that John Atkinson reviewed in our April 2022 issue.