Axpona 2024 - April 12-14th - Chicago IL

Anyone planning on going to axpona this year? Last week I decided to attend, so I'll be there all three days.

I know everyone says that rooms are usually subpar, but having so much stuff in one place makes it so tempting, hopefully I can at least get an idea of things that are worth pursuing further later on.

 

Are the setups still for rich old farts? Axpona Year 1 and Year 3 was in Jacksonville and I felt super poor walking in those rooms with terrible sounding setups since hotel rooms are just crap for audio. The only rooms I liked at the time were Southsmith and the local Jacksonville dealer doing the big KEF Blades speakers that were set up right.

 

I was bummed EgglestonWorks wasn't on the list, as I have heard good things about their speakers. I reached out, they said they wouldn't be there as they're too busy with international shows around that time. They did however get me in contact with a dealer in Chicago that Ill be going and doing a demo of their Viginti speaker either Friday or Saturday after the show.

 

I’m planning to attend with a friend. I figure I may as well go since I don’t think I will always be living just 3 hours from Chicago.

 

I will unfortunately be out of town this year or I would have made the pilgrimage. there is always something worth checking out, even if it is just the vinyl in the marketplace..dB

 

I'll be there all 3 days!

 

I'll be there demoing for Austin AudioWorks. Will have the updated headphone amp and a couple of turntables and phono stages. We're in the middle of the Ear Gear room if anyone wants to stop by.

 

I'll be there Friday/Saturday. I'm planning on spending almost all my time on floors #3-whatever is right below the top floor. The last two years I've left regretting having spent too much time in the big ballrooms and on the top floor, as the best experiences had always been in the smaller rooms with less well-known gear. My first stop is going to be the DeVore Fidelity room, as he's bringing a setup for 78's and some interesting carts.

 

I have discount codes for Axpona available, as in free tickets. If you plan to attend and haven't purchased tickets yet contact me here via DM.

Limited availability, Friends / Pyrates have dibs.

 

This will be my first time in Chicago/Axpona!

I'll be at the show walking around carrying some eta headphones (Ada and some PrototyPes)

Excited to see you all soon

 

@tommytakis , I plan to have my ADA available for listening at the Austin AudioWorks booth in the EarGear area. If an SBAF member identifies themself they could borrow it for quick listen with other gear in the room, barring me being too busy or in a foul mood.

Guess which of those is more likely

 

Thanks to @ogodei I will be there Saturday. Looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

Oh and bring earplugs if you are going to check out rooms with ORFAS horn setups. I almost went deaf last time I went several years ago...

 

Anyone interested in meeting up at a particular time or location? I’m planning to go to a show in Chicago on Saturday night if anyone is interested. Earplugs are a strict requirement there. https://www.houseofblues.com/chicago/EventDetail?tmeventid=vvG18Z9zb4pxoc

 

Update on my end, Austin AudioWorks wont be attending the show. Owner got covid and wont be bringing the gear in. Bummer for me.

But I still have passes available for free tickets, hit me up in DM for the code.

 

@ogodei will you still be attending? It would be cool to meet you!

 

Just got back, and admittedly made no effort to meet-up with SBAF'ers as I was with a longtime friend for the weekend and show. I saw most of it over two full days, and the high-end room that impressed me the most (by a massive margin) was Gauder Akustic w/ Soulution amplification. There were many smaller rooms that were good/enjoyable but the Philharmonic Audio room knocked me out. The level of performance on display for the fraction of the cost of a single cable in many rooms was ridiculous. The best DAC I heard was Wells Audio's 'Cipher' DAC. If anyone is still at the show and happens to see this it's worth an audition, and the owner/designer was working the room yesterday.

 

A few photos from the show

 

Too many photos to sort so I threw them into an Amazon folder. Hopefully people can see it. I only made it Saturday and Sunday because I got a flat 20 minutes into my drive to Chicago. I lost 4 hours waiting to get the tire patched and showed up after the show ended Friday night.

Amazon Photo Album

The MSB room is always the best. Nothing else ever comes close and that was the same story this year. Other notable highlights were Sonner Audio, Vivid Giya G1 Spirit room, Everything that had Soul Note electronics, Diptyque and Audia Flight, Perliston and Audia Flight, Marten and Constellation, Magico A5 room, T+A was surprisingly excellent, and the PS Audio speakers were very good. Basically if I took a picture of it it's because I thought it was good or interesting.

Lowlights were all the Youtubers being in the way and disrupting the rooms. There were a few rooms that closed so Youtubers could do interviews. I get that they probably drive traffic, increase awareness, and maybe lead to some sales. But there were a few instances when they were over the top disruptive and rude. I could even see some of the vendors in the rooms getting frustrated by the antics.

 

Axpona 2024, this was my first major, speaker based, hifi show. I had only ever been to headphone focused shows in the past. But looking at moving into a house, and getting excited about the prospect of having a dedicated listening space, I was curious if there was speakers out there that I thought would be worth upgrading to from my Acoustic Zen Crescendo Mk2's. Usually I go listen to speakers, and even I find them to be good, or even better than what I have, I don't see the value, and so I keep them.

I went into Axpona expecting many of the rooms to sound subpar due to room size and poor treatment/placement at shows. But the draw of so many different speakers in one location was too much. I didn't actually find most of the rooms to be that poor. Overall I would say most of the rooms sounded pretty decent, some of them were awful, and a very few were excellent.

Bucketing rooms/speakers into those three groups is also about all I was attempting to get out of Axpona, I know that the rooms/electronics/etc will have a large impact, so I try not to put too much stock into my impressions. The other mitigating factor with my impressions is that I mostly listen to pretty heavy metal. Two things come with that, one, I am not really able to glean information about what I care about from speakers with the music that is typically played at these events. Two, I know most people don't appreciate what I want to use to demo, so I only asked if the room was mostly empty. That said I did get to listen to my main demo tracks on several of my favorite rigs at the show, and will be puting more weight on impressions of these rooms.


With all that preamble out of the way on to what I heard at Axpona.


Day 1


Perlisten Limited Edition S7t. This was one of the first standout rooms I heard friday. The Limited Edition are an improvement of the base model. New woofers with more excursion and lower inductance and the tweeter array is mounted to a solid aluminum waveguide. These did alot right, precise, good imaging, mostly dissapeared in the room. I didn't get to play Fleshgod Apocalypse on them, but I did get them to play at least part of Tool, and they did great. they are 30k usd, up from 20k for the standard S7t, I cant speak to the improvements as I've never heard the original. This was a speaker I have been excited to hear ever since Ron at New Record Day talked about them. You know never how that internet hype will go, but I can say they didnt dissapoint me. These were driven by Audia electronics, a SACD player/streamer, preamp, and monoblocks.


Rockport Atria II. This was another of my favorite rooms the first day. They were running reel to reel tape as well. Driven by a combination of Viola and Bricasti electronics. Great detail and staging. Saturday I went back and listened to Tool, these did very well. Sunday however I went back and got them to play Fleshgod Apocalypse, and it's not that they fell apart like many speakers, but they didn't perform nearly as well as I would have hoped, and worse than my favorite of the show.


SB Acoustics Gema. This is a new DIY speaker SB Acoustics was showing off next to the Madisound room. These are 1400 bucks for the drivers and crossovers. They rocked. I didnt get to listen to any of my own music on them, but even with what they were playing I could tell they were just super fun, rocking out speakers. They were selling the demo units for 2k on Sunday, if I'd have driven to Axpona I probably would have taken them home for that to use for tv speakers or in another system or something.


TAD GE-1. These TADs are a pretty solid speaker. All of TAD rooms were above average I would say. They did sort of start to not impress with Tool though, so not in consideration for me.

There were some letdowns day 1 as well. The vandersteen room was probably one of the worst I heard at the show, they had zero treatment and almost nothing was on the walls at all in the room they had setup. I was excited to hear Zellaton speakers, but going into the show I knew they were showing their new 2 way, the Emotion Evo, rather than the Plural Evo, these fell apart on even Tool, I didnt get to play Fleshgod Apocalypse. I heard the PMC Fenestria and was super letdown by the treble, very bright and splashy, also very litle bass impact. The Marten room was also unremarkable, I am not sure which speakers they were. The Avantgarde duo horns also didnt really impress that much, for similar reasons as the giant horn rig i mention below, not particularly excellent imaging/staging, they can play loud though.


EgglestonWorks Viginti
This is a speaker I have been looking forward to hearing for a while. Before the show I noticed they werent on the exhibitor list so I sent an email to them asking if there was a mixup or if they would be in someone elses room. The president replied saying they were too busy this year with internation shows and couldn't attend. He got me in touch with Tim and Schroeder Hifi in Chicago who is an EgglestonWorks dealer. We arranged for me to stop by and check them out friday after the show. This was kinda of a huge breath of fresh air after the show experience all day. Getting to sit down in a meticulously setup listening room at Tim's house was a pleasure. I think the best way to describe the Viginti is that they are greater than the sum of their parts. Outside of incredible ease of listening, dynamics and power handling, no one technical aspect of this speaker is top tier, but as a whole, they are an absolute treat to listen to. Over the course of the 2 hours I spent there though, I realized the lack of absolute clarity was bothering me as well as some confusion in the staging Ive never heard from other speakers. I will however say that Tim was an absolute pleasure to work with, I couldnt recommend him as a hifi dealer enough if youre in the Chicago area and he carries something you are interested in.


Day 2


Estelon Forza. These were driven by an entirely Vitus front end. Ill be upfront and say that by Sunday this was easily my best in show room, and the only speaker I think is worth me upgrading to from my Crescendo Mk2's. Saturday I heard them just with their own demo tracks, and they sounded excellent. I got them to play Chocolate Chip Trip by Tool, which is a pretty great drum solo demo track. First thing Sunday morning I talked them into letting my play some of my own, much heavier music off my phone. I can easily say this was the best I have ever heard Elegy by Fleshgod Apocalypse sound. I have never heard a speaker be able to present this level of space and dynamics from this recording. Truly standout speakers. The speed and precision of the presentation is essentially exactly what I want from a speaker, but in broad strokes, not sounding hifi, still managing to make music.

Tidal Piano and Bricasti. I stopped in this room on a whim, wanting to see the Bricasti electronics. The Tidal piano speakers, a brand I had never heard of, did impress me with their disapearing act though. I however did not get to play any of my own music on them, I would like to hear them again, maybe a higher end model some day.




ESD Acoustic Dragon. This speaker system is insane. All those boxes you see in the picture are for the speakers. Its a 6 way, all field coil horn system. The top row of boxes is the field coil power supplies, the next row is dac/pre/active crossovers, the next is power supplies for the previous row and the bottom two rows is 10 class amps for the drivers. This rig costs 4M usd, but only if you get it with the special chinese lacquer, if you get the normal version it was only 1.2M, and the guy told me he'd give me 10% off if I bought at the show, what a deal! As I said before, this thing was insane, the scale of sound is obviously immense. It could play back at obscene volumes with no sign of strain. Not really particularly excellent at anything I care about though.


Day 3


Wilson Alexx V and Sasha V. I thought both of these sounded alright. The main standout for these rooms was the guy controlling the music in the Alexx V room, easily playing the best music I heard from the entire show. Just nothing but bangers, but all still great demo tracks for what the speakers could do.


Gauder Akustik DARC 250. I spent all three days going to this room multiple times to try to get to hear my own music on these speakers, but they had nothing but trouble with their digital/streaming rig. The rep was very apologetic and nice to chat to though. With what I did hear on them I would say they were easily towards the top of what I heard at the show. Particularly sunday afternoon when I went back, they were playing records from the audience and people were giving him some sweet demo material to play. Really wish I could have heard Tool and Fleshgod Apocalpyse on these.


I heard quite a few other speakers, many of which sounded fine, some of which sounded awful. One speaker I wanted to get to hear was the new one from Clayton Shaw, but alas, the room was always packed so I could never request some metal. Magico/TAD/ATC/PAP/Magnepan didnt bring their big bois, which made me sad.


The weather in Schaumburg was glorious the entire weekend, sunny and 70-80 degrees. Made for very nice walks to the show in the morning from my hotel a mile down the street. Overall I am pleased with what I learned at Axpona this year, and would love to attend more speaker shows in the future.

 

I forgot some stuff! and I added some more pics above.

I meant to list my demo tracks.

My main demo track is Elegy by Fleshgod Apocalypse. I've been using this track for many many years. For a few reasons, it is an incredible song on an incredible album. but it is also brick walled to hell and back and is a very complicated piece. this allows me to very quickly judge a speaker or piece of electronics for attributes I care about. If I can only listen to one song, it will be this one. I didn't get to hear this track on too many rigs at Axpona considering it is very extreme metal, I didn't feel comfortable requesting it unless the room was empty or I arranged a specific time to demo the speakers like I did with the Forzas.




Invincible by Tool. This is what I would consider somewhat audiophile friendly prog metal, that is also well recorded. This is the track I got to use most often at Axpona.




aLIEz by SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]:mizuki, specifically The First Take version. This is just a great, lightly produced, female vocal track I use to judge vocals/clarity.




I didn't get to meet up with too many people from SBAF, but it was nice to hang out with @tommytakis for a few hours Sunday morning before he left to explore the city!