2026 Florida International Audio Expo Feb 20-22

Other thoughts. 

Heard to Popori Electrostats on the first floor..very nice. There was a smaller pair on the 3rd or 4th floor, but the host was jammin hard-ish rock(on two visits)..not for me, so not really sure how they sound. 

Heard the Magnepan 2.7i.  Nice sounding panels, sound clean, but sound quite thin to me and I listened to them twice. It may have been the setup/room.  I hadn't heard them previously, but was interested in them as I run a pair of LFT-8b's at home...and the LFTs, in my mind..ear..MUCH better.  I'll be upgrading my 8b's to 8c's in the next month. 

I just came back from the show. It didn’t take me long to go through each room. Quite interestingly, a few big-brand products like Innuos and Aurender were just one of the components in the room setups.  Anyway, I visited three rooms that I think are worth mentioning here.

Best Sounding:
Living Voice R80 fed by Innuos Zenith Mk3, BP Zola DAC, and BP S20EXD power amp. The sound was silky smooth, with rich and controlled bass, an airy top end, and a sweet midrange. Natural and very musical. ($82k)

Innovative Active:
Innovo Luxe T1 ($20k) fed by Aurender N150 and McIntosh preamp. It doesn’t go that deep (35Hz, -3dB), but it can be placed against the wall to gain more weight. The tonal balance is excellent — polite yet engaging. Warm sounding but still detailed.

Solid Floorstander System:
Soundfield Obelisk T7 with Orchard streamer and Orchard Starkrimson DMC 2.5. Full range with well-extended bass, transparent presentation, clear midrange, and good dynamics. ($18k)

Frankly speaking, even in a big room with acoustic treatment, none of the systems at the show impressed me in terms of soundstage performance.  It is fairly difficult to do it right in hotel.

@nogaps agree on the Aretai with Grimm MU2 DAC and Benchmark gear. Nice minimalist setup but great sound. 
 

@lanx0003 agree on the Living Voice , Border Patrol room. So silky smooth and easy to listen to. Would love to try out the Zola DAC. 
 

another favorite was the Audio Note room. Field Coil speakers AND field coil cartridge on the TT. 

here’s some pics I took as well. 
https://spaces.skylum.com/web-page/372ddd0d6b122dbb

I would never imagine that a tube dac on top of tube amp will render that silky smooth but not overly warm sound. Especially Zola Dac has not only rectifier tube but also tube output stage, unlike its predecessor SE or SE-I that has only rectifier. As an alternative, you might want to look at much affordable Glass FX Dac which is a true tube Dac and could handle higher resolution music. 

CORRECTION: My apologies!  I thought the Benchmark monoblocks above with the Aretai speakers were Class D. My error. Sorry.  The Benchmarks were wonderful in the room with the Aretai's.

Per John Siau of Benchmark.

One correction: The AHB2 is not a class-D amplifier. Our AHB2 is actually a class-AB amplifier with linear class-H tracking rails and a unique feed-forward error correction system. It delivers 380 W into 8 Ohms with a 135 dB SNR. THD+N is held below the 0 dB SPL threshold of hearing at all output levels even when driving high-efficiency speakers. It is designed to deliver the music to the speakers without adding the slightest electronic "fingerprint" to the music.