Axpona 2022

@jayctoy I just came from the avant-garde room. Not my favorite room. I agree. The room is way too small. This was near field listening with a behemoth of a system. If this were in a bigger room like the Wilson Alexa V or better yet the Estelon room it would be great. The music was too loud. The soundstage was just unrealistically too big in the room they have it in on the 16th floor. They really should book a big room next year. So I am pretty much done with AXPONA now and I can say that IMO of the rooms I have been in for any significant time, the Wilson Alexa V/Audio Research room was my favorite. 

I have not and will not be going to all the rooms. But the most impressive small rooms to me, in more order,were the AGD GaN room, the Playback Designs/Tannoy room, The Border Patrol DAC room, the GTT audio room with that Kronos turntable. 
 

The best big rooms so far were the Synergistic Reaearch/Magico demo room (amazing and like magic!), the Audio Experience/Estelon/Krell room, and the Quintessence big Wilson room. 
 

the Quintessence Sonus Fabet room was good. The big Boulder amp in that room certainly demonstrates excellence in dynamics and transients. Soundstage was good. But not  as good as their Wilson room in terms of detail and imaging.

The Klipsch Jubilee room was horrible unless you want your listening room to be an arena and lose your hearing. Just no concern for demonstrating any details, soundstage or imaging. Just blasting you out of the room with death metal. What are they thinking? 
 

I was disappointed that the SVS room is dedicated to home theater as I was interested to see how it would do with music and a demo in that regard with their app, which is a feature that REL doesn’t have. 
 

Special mention to Magnepan. I met Wendell and Galina again and he demos the LRS+. Again very impressive as the original LRS was 3 years ago. A big bargain by itself IF you have proper power, subwoofers and can pull them away from the wall. Using aftermarket stands and the Mike Powell silver fuse and jumper upgrade is a plus too. 

Also, met Kevin Deal from Upscale. Nice talk with him about the Russian tube situation  He told me that there is no embargo on Russian made tubes being sent over to the US and reiterated that that those factories are US company owned. So he doesn’t see (so far?) a situation when the supply of tubes made in Russia by the US based company will end .

Met Bill Parrish at GTT Audio. A pleasure to meet and talk to him!

I did go to the Atma-Sphere room. It was good. Not at the top of my list. But I may revisit that room today/Sunday. 

Today I will wrap up and go to the Avant-garde room and back to some of the big rooms again. 
 

@audition__audio @roxy54 of course these immense Jubilees can play loud. Just look at them. But can they soundstage, image and have detail. You can’t tell any of that from what and how they are demoing them. Personally, I wish they had a smaller room with a pair of Forte IVs in them. 
 

@jayctoy Yes. I agree they are playing the Sonus Faber/Boulder combo too loud. I went in the Wilson Alexa V/Audio Research room and spent a good deal of time there. That is my favorite room so far. That setup to me, does everything well for my taste. The Sasha DAW/Moon room is nice. But can’t compare of course to the Alexa V, which is obvious. I still have to hit the Avant-garde room. 
 

I did really like the Synergistic Research room yesterday. I made a joke to them to take this show to Vegas because what they do with their gear is almost like magic. I can definitely hear the differences. I am impressed. 

I bought the demo chrome AGD Audion Mk2 amps from Alberto at AXPONA. After a little post AXPONA delay I hooked them up to my system tonight. I immediately noticed a very obvious expansion in the width of the soundstage as compared to my other amps and integrateds. I even got up twice out of my listening position to check to make sure everything was ok with my Magico A3s and my pair of RELs! It was a wow moment. I am still evaluating all the other characteristics in my system. But so far I am even more impressed with the AGD Audion Mk2s in my system as compared to in the AGD room at AXPONA.