2023 AXPONA Show Report

I’m going for the first time (to any audio show) and will be there bright and early Friday morning. I expect I will be overwhelmed at some point so I will try to map out the big rooms I’ve always been interested first, then hit the more practical ones. Not really caring about affordability as I just want to hear the different setups and speaker designs. Are there rooms rooms loud enough to require earplugs? Not sure if that would be rude but I have some filtered ones I bring to live shows. I also want to go to a couple of the lectures that seem like they could be interesting. I have family nearby I will be visiting as well so the somewhat limited mall area doesn’t bother me much.

I was kind of hoping a room or two would play some big orchestral music with some dynamics but anyway, one room played a choral piece and that was refreshing and sounded quite good. This was the room with Vitus speakers I think. I could have listened to a lot more of that style but they switched to one of those standard tracks so that was it there.

I went all day Friday and Saturday morning. I covered all the rooms I had planned more than 40, then went into many more after that. I was surprised by two monitor speakers, the little Falcon and the Paradigm/Anthem room. Both of those packed a good punch for the size and cost. I also liked the Volti Razz LE it seemed very smooth but still had enough detail. The MBL room was too loud maybe but was still very lively. They were playing some more upbeat jazzy stuff I think.Headphone room was really fun but I didn’t get to spend a lot of time there.

Made it to two seminars and I enjoyed the one Friday on reissuing recordings. Michael Fremer mentioned some young talented jazz pianist he is working on releasing so that sounded interesting. I’ll have to look that up.

So for a first time show, I enjoyed it but definitely could feel the listener fatigue setting in earlier than I thought it would. Taking breaks is a really good idea. Looking at comments around, it looks like I still managed to miss some interesting rooms but maybe next year. I might go down to the Florida show and visit some friends and bring someone along.