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Axpona 2018

Went again this year and found the show to be larger, higher quality sounding rooms than previous shows. I have been to many brick and mortar stores which have good sounding rooms, but at Axpona this year many rooms were better sounding than their store show rooms!

My best sounding large room was the VAC/Von Schweikert Audio/Esoteric, room. The Wilson room with the DCS stack was also very good. My best small room, and there were many, was the Gershman Accoustics room, their new speakers were sounding great with top end electronics. Also, I was impressed with NOLA room again.

 

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jimf42's avatar
jimf42
62 posts
 
Might as well throw in my .02.  Much better venue this year than last and lots of good listening. Highlights for me.  In the cost no object rooms... Sonus Faber, MBL.  Next were the  Wilson Sapphires and the other Quintessence rooms, Thrax,  Martin Logan, the Magnepan 3.7i, Whammerdyne room, Dynaudio and several others.  Bang for the buck, Vanatoo Transparent Zero, ELAC, Hsu.  The vendors area was very good too
jimf42's avatar
jimf42
62 posts
 
Oops, forgot the Magicos...those sounded excellent too.
kdude66
1,200 posts
 
Just no Luv for Tekton,Disappointing.
klh007
614 posts
 
I heard the Tekton Impact Monitors and felt it was one of the very few smaller rooms to get the speakers to disappear, matched to the room so appropriate bass w/o boom or bloat, precise vocal image, believable voices, piano clear, big dynamic swings, good deep bass extension, value extremely high, have DIs coming! You may have seen me, tall guy with left arm in a sling.
diofan56
58 posts
 
There was definitely some amazing stuff at the show!  Two of the systems that impressed me the most were the Ayon/Lumenwhite and the PranaFidelity.

As far as I'm concerned the Ayon/Lumenwhite is probably the best sounding system I've ever heard.  Too bad it's way out of my price range.

I had never heard of PranaFidelity before but I really liked what I heard.  The 'bookshelf' speaker just blew me away and it's a two-way.  I want a pair of those!

The Salk speakers with the Accutron drivers were very nice.  I could live with a pair of those quite easily.

The Fritz speakers were quite nice.  I'd like to see Fritz make a 3-way or 4-way floorstander similar to a Legacy Audio Focus SE or Signature SE.

Speaking of Legacy Audio, I'm a big fan of their speakers.  Wonderful stuff!

I don't care for horn designs so I didn't care for the Volti room.  Too bright and harsh for my ears.  There was another room that had a pair of horn design speakers (can't remember the brand/name of the speaker) but they were also bright and harsh sounding to me.
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