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A small crowd murmurs and looks on as two sturdy men in navy company polos and slacks gingerly lift, rock, and place a pair of nineteen thousand dollar futuristic gleaming pearl white speakers into optimal audio positioning while their CEO, Paul McGowan, is off to the side chatting with a prospective buyer. Although the weather... Read More »

What a wonderful weekend at AXPONA 2023! The weather was quite lovely for this time of the year in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs—sunny and in the 70s and 80s. There was a certain sense of excitement and energy in the air, even beyond last year's 2022 event as 2021 was cancelled to due to... Read More »

During my show experience at FLAX, I basically live-posted capsules on Facebook from notable rooms I visited each day, saving my full coverage for after the weekend was over. Little did I know when I posted from the Focal Naim America room that I was opening a tempest in a teapot! At the point I... Read More »

Mobile Fidelity featuring Andrew Jones A couple of weeks prior to FLAX, I got an email press release from Mobile Fidelity alerting me that speaker designer extraordinaire Andrew Jones would be present in Tampa, giving talks about his new MoFi SourcePoint 10 loudspeaker. "Great!" I thought, "I'll definitely need to check that out!" Yeah, me... Read More »

Classic Audio Loudspeakers with Atma-Sphere in the Cypress ballroom John Wolff's Classic Audio Loudspeakers has been exhibiting in the cavernous Cypress ballroom for several years running now, and it's definitely a must-hear at every FLAX show. The amplifiers and preamps were from Atma-Sphere, and cables were provided by Purist Audio Designs. John always brings his... Read More »

2023 marked my third consecutive trip to the Florida Audio Expo (or FLAX as it seems to have been shortened to), and the experience was hands down the best yet! In terms of vendors, the show was completely sold out, which is great, but also a mixed blessing of sorts. There was so much more... Read More »

The TAD Reference One Experience lets US audiophiles hear TAD's lineup together for the first time. TAD Labs (TAD stands for Technical Audio Devices) is a Japanese high-end audio company that's working to establish higher product visibility in the US audiophile market through the efforts of PAD HiFi (Pro Audio Design), their exclusive US distributor.... Read More »

Audiofest! Things are opening and people are going out to events finally, and one of those events is the Capital Audiofest. If you're not familiar with the event, it's a show in Rockville Maryland where individual dealers and a few manufacturers book rooms in a hotel in order to demonstrate their products. The rooms are... Read More »

People queuing up for registration Trade Show Hall This year's AES show was a bit unusual. The number of exhibitors was down to perhaps a quarter of what it normally is, and the number of papers was similarly reduced. This was made worse by a number of vendors and presenters who had been scheduled to... Read More »

Take a look back at this CES show report from 2015, by Robert S Youman, originally published April 19, 2015. 2015 CES - A Yellow Brick Road Of Integrated Amplifiers If you have been following my reviews over the last few years, I have taken a considerable interest in integrated amplifiers. This includes those from... Read More »

Continuing on with our coverage of the Pacific Audio Fest. Songer Audio, Whammerdyne. Images below. Simply stunning products. Clearly "not another black box with a knob" thing. Plus, for another single-driver room, it sounded rather good. Beautiful. Ansuz, Aavik, Børresen, a second room. Images below. Peter Hansen with Alan Kafton doing his best to not... Read More »

Continuing our coverage of the Pacific Audio Fest. Please keep in mind that at any show you are not listening to a speaker, amp, or whatever... but a system in a hotel room playing whatever music that is playing at the time. Whether something you like or don't, something well recorded or not. So yeah.... Read More »

Continuing on with our coverage of the Pacific Audio Fest. ModWright, Seattle Hi-Fi, SME, Revel, Cardas Audio. Images below. Pictured below is Dan's new Analog Bridge. It adds a tube quality to any solid-state device. As always, we had a great time catching up with Kristin Vittitoe and Dan Wright. Daedalus Audio, LampizatOr, WyWires, VAC.... Read More »

The inaugural Pacific Audio Fest, July 29 - 30, 2022, in Seattle, Washington was a lot of fun. For many attendees it was the first time out among audio friends since 2019. A good time was had by all, and there seemed to be a fair amount of foot traffic. Dave and I managed to... Read More »

The Munich Show is ongoing at the time of this writing. While many of us in the USA are still maintaining our distance during this ongoing pandemic (and with those rising airline prices!), those in Europe have this splended event happening just down the road. Our good friend, Dirk Sommer, Editor of our affiliated publication,... Read More »

SCHAUMBURG, IL - Wildly popular among high fidelity audio enthusiasts, due to COVID related cancellations, the annual three day Audio Expo North America—or AXPONA—last showed here in 2019. And now on Day One, it's Friday noon and people have come out in droves. Frankly, I cannot find a parking space at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel... Read More »

AXPONA 2022 was a welcoming next step as we move forward as a high end audio community. Attendance was good, and it will only get better as things settle down and we all get more comfortable. It was wonderful to see old friends and to establish new friendships. After all, this isn't just about evaluating... Read More »

I know that I've already talked about The Audio Company room at FAE 2022 that hosted the Von Schweikert Audio loudspeakers in my first installment of show coverage, and on day one, I proclaimed the new Ultra 7 to be my best of show. But that proclamation was probably a tad hasty; I'll explain in just... Read More »

On Day 3 (Sunday) of FAE, I got a text from Sue Toscano with a special request: could I possibly get to the Alex Sound Tech room before the show was over? "Alex Sound Tech" didn't really ring a bell for me, but Sue said they'd been specifically asking for someone from Positive Feedback to... Read More »