2023 AXPONA Show Report

I’ll be attending the show as both a dealer/exhibitor and as a consumer. It’ll be my third time going, so here are some tips to make the most of it.

1. Friday morning, and late afternoons on Saturday and Sunday tend to be the quietest. Saturday morning is the most packed.

2. Don’t try to accomplish everything in one day, if possible. Allow yourself time settle into the rooms you visit. By that, it means that crowds come and go. If you stay in a room long enough, you WILL be able to sit in the prime spot AND not have a ton of people in the room making noise.

3. I tend to study the exhibitor list in advance and make two lists - must hear and nice to hear. With this I prioritize in this way and tend to hit all floors twice. If I don’t get through the full second round, at least I don’t miss anything that was in my priority list. It’s also common to find yourself returning to the rooms you like the best more than once.

4. If you disagree with how something is set up in a room, once it’s quiet, you can ask the host to try to reposition or change the configuration. They will likely be amenable.

5. Whether you start or end with the big rooms on the first two floors, when you decide to explore the upper floors, take the elevator to the top and walk your way down the steps.

6. It’s been my observation that this is not a show purely designed for consumers. Many of the rooms are hosted by manufacturers or distributors, and their primary clientele are dealers. Of course, then there are rooms run by dealers whose primary clientele are customers, or other distributors they may want to carry lines for. As such, these reasons get in the way of how some consumers feel the show is less than approachable.

7. The experience is meant for people to experience the gear they typically cannot on most days. As some mentioned, similar to a car show. It should be aspirational, and oftentimes even if one cannot afford much or any of the equipment, it still serves as a good baseline for comparison. If you approach it this way, you will have a more fruitful time.

8. The food prices in the hotel are somewhat ridiculous and the quality is questionable. Plan to pick up a portable lunch if you want to eat onsite. It’s also not difficult to get away from the venue, and Schaumburg has a lot of great restaurant options.

9. Remember, audiophiles are few and far between across the country. While I know a number, most people are coming alone and don’t know others. This is a great place to get to know one another in a past time we all love. Don’t be afraid to show courtesy to each other and introduce yourself, express yourself. or share your opinion. I’ve found by doing this, most people easily open up and your total experience can be much more memorable.

I’ll be happy to chat with anyone in attendance if you bump into me and decide to say hello.

Enjoy the show!

Juan

blisshifi.com

@bubba12 Sure, would love to meet. I’ll be working at the DH Labs booth a bit, but also splitting time between the T+A room and AV Luxury International when I’m not exploring on my own. Feel free to PM and I can share my cell if you want to coordinate. 

I’m a bit late to the party but I recently posted some photos and commentary of what I thought were the most notable rooms and wanted to share:

https://blisshifi.com/axpona-2023-gear-report/

Would love to hear others’ thoughts on my findings as I do feel I share a number of opinions expressed on this thread.

Overall, though, I felt that the sound across the board was more challenging than last year. Lots of rooms were inadequately set up, gear not broken in, and the rooms themselves posed a lot of mode and phasing challenges.

@bubba12 i did listen to the Dyn / Octave room and thought it was pretty good. Nothing really stuck out at me but nothing about it was bad, either. It was definitely pleasing, but nothing too exciting.

With the FR 30, it didn’t sound bad overall, it wasn’t bad, but I just thought other rooms presented better both from having better flow AND separation/delineation. I could see how many could like what I heard in that room the same way people love MBL, but I just have never jived with them despite how many times I’ve heard them. Also, I have to reiterate how cheap the finish seemed to me. Felt like it would fit right in with all the cheap plasticky stuff from IKEA. I actually love the aesthetic design of the speaker, and I personally love elite speakers as well, but the finish of the FR30 just looked much cheaper in person than what I’ve seen in the pictures. 

@rsf507 Fair point. You're right, a bit of digging and seems those Ktema speakers have been around for 12 years, one of FS' last creations. Thank you for correcting me. I think it's the first time I've come across them. Agree they were wonderful, and there's no doubt the Air Tight electronics contributed to it.

I can't really speak to why I like those vs what I have previously heard from Sonus Faber. It's obvious that the engineering in the cabinet is quite different from the Ktema speakers. I did enjoy both rooms, but as noted, I didn't cover either of them as the ones that stood out the most. The musicality and tone of that AXISS room was really quite good, however. There were certainly a lot of "quite good" rooms. But again, everyone has personal preferences. No wrong or right in this one.

@dayglow Your comment made me realize that yes, the majority of my coverage was from the lower level floors in larger rooms. I did also visit every floor and listened in dozens of rooms. There were some notable rooms there, like the Constellation/Magico setup, AXISS room with the Air Tight monoblocks and New Franco Serblin speakers, and a few others. Bayz audio also sounded better than it did before. 

Every chance I get, I try to listen on Sonus Faber because I typically don’t like them and I try to make myself understand them. Whether it be at shows, other dealers, or other customers. I associate the way I feel about them similarly to how I feel about MBL, though I have historically found MBL to be more pleasing of the two. This year was no exception, but I can say that was the best I ever heard the Sonus Faber Aida sound. I’ve typically only heard them with the McIntosh 1.2KW amps or other similar gear. The whole Boulder and DCS stack configuration enabled the Aida to be more dynamic and open, while seeming quite natural. That said, it was still not holographic to me. It did not give me a sense of performers playing in the space, despite the system’s resolution and wonderful tone. I guess I personally place a lot of value in a system’s ability to deliver the goods holographically. 

Regarding the Wynn, Vimberg and Karan, I think any mechanical nature of the sound you perceived was likely due to the size of the room. It was enormous for the size of yhr Tonka D, especially compared to something like the massive Estelon in the floor below them. I do think different amps can absolutely shape the final delivery of speakers. I demonstrate this for my customers all the time. What I did love about the sound in the Wynn room is that it had the speed and imaging of something like the Borresen (perhaps not as pronounced), with the heft and fleshed out natural delivery of the Lansche and Thrax combination I heard in the Florida Expo. The Wynn audio was definitely quite effortless in my opinion, but not relaxed and not the most refined. Still, it moved me the most compared to any other room in the show. 

@dayglow My pleasure. If anything I’ve learned in this hobby is that as objective as measurements can be, audiophiles want to be moved by what they hear. That movement is emotional, and what they hear is purely subjective. As a dealer and guide, I need to respect that people appreciate all sorts of qualities that different gear delivers, even if I don’t value them myself. I will never steer anyone away from Sonus Faber or MBL even if I don’t care for them. I can at least speak to their strengths and weaknesses in order for customers to make the most informed decisions. I’ve probably guided half of my customers to other dealers or brands I don’t carry because they’re looking for something different.

Thankfully since my dealership business is not my primary source of income, I’m not at a place where I have to make a certain amount of sales to survive, and as a result I find myself in a place where I can truly help and guide vs try to sell what I’ve got. Hopefully because of that I’ll find enough folks who share the value the same qualities in the gear as I do and become repeat customers in the lines to make my business more sustainable. For now, I just use any proceeds from my business into funding new brands and product lines that I truly believe in for my floor. Building the business from the ground up, so to say. And I want my whole journey to succeed based on delivering fulfillment vs driving profits. I’d like to say I know I’ll be successful going this route, but only time will tell. :)

The X3 are quite good, especially for the price point. I heard them both at FLAX and AXPONA this year. That said, I absolutely hate how they look aesthetically. The tweeter baffle is ugly, as are the checkered drivers. They took the carbon pattern that they had with Scansonic and copied it, but the rest of the cabinet is clunky and unrefined. It seems to have lost all of the aesthetic finesse that all other Danish speakers seem to possess. But hey, if you’re listening in the dark, none of that matters.

I would say that the performance is good, especially for a Scansonic MB series competitor, though sonically they sound very close based on the experiences I’ve had (I am a Scansonic dealer and personally have owned a Borresen Z3 Cryo and a Borresen 02). But the X3 does have more break up and less clarity than any of the higher end product lines from Borresen and Raidho.

I would say overall, since Michael’ and Lars’ departure from Dantax, they have shaped their speakers to be more transparent and focus on a completely holographic soundstage. Raidho, on the other hand, has been advanced by Benno Melgaard to be more fluid and musical (and not to mention room friendly), all while still retaining an incredible amount of detail and clarity.