Axpona 2022 what impressed you?

I also enjoyed the Legacy Aeris on the first floor playing Nils lofgren 'Keith don't go'.

Friends don't let friends play 'Keith don't go'. ;-)

(Other than that, I'm jealous of those of you who attended).

What impressed me for reasonable priced systems were the ATC rooms cheaper 2-way powered speakers, the Alta Adam speaker and the New top of the line PSB speaker in the NAD room.

I thought the Elac room sounded pretty good for a hotel room - they brought Elac Concerto S507 - 7 driver small tower speakers. They hit all the notes, and sounded amazing down low with four 6.5" side firing drivers. And the Krell/Estalon combo was amazing. The engineer claimed it could 1600 watts into 2 ohms all Class A. Not sure if I believed that, but it sure did sound good!

I was shocked to see the 801D4 in a tiny hotel room. There was a line and I didn't bother waiting (no way were they going to sound good). Also disappointing I would say the Dynaudio room. Just didn't sound full like the other rooms were. Being next door to a phenomenal Focal setup probably didn't help them either.

Best part of the show, though, was doing something normal after two years of lockdowns.

-Geoff

Agree on the Von Schweikert new Ulta 7's. Although rather diminutive in size compared to the other big boys, their price was not at $180,000 but they sounded fantastic. I stayed there for a long time. And who can fault the Estalon  flagship at $160,000. Magic. I also was very impressed by the Legacy Aries at a mere $10,500 a pair. Stayed there a long time also. These were all in big convention size rooms and a lot of attention was paid to controlling acoustics. There were many  fine sounding speakers in the smaller hotel rooms - too many to remember. Interesting that VAC electronics was predominant. The Cabresse room, featuring small baseball sized speakers putting out a lot of good sound was an engineering marvel. But as a Focal Fan - having traded up from my trusty Electra 237's to the Sopra 2's, I was appalled by their exhibit room - in one of the big rooms. They had a huge counter at the entrance where they were selling stuff with loads of people creating a din of noise. They also had a home entertainment section in the back which played loud distracting heavy bass music. But the worst part was their demo of one of the Utopia models - heavy bass dominant music played extremely loud by some kid to overcome the noise. They sounded awful and were unlistenable and I had to leave the room. They were also demo-ing Kanta 2's in a corner where you could hardly hear them, like at a cheap mid-fi store.  Since I had the money to spend for the Sopra's and already ordered them (maxing out my credit cards), if I hadn't purchased them already  I would never have done do based on the terrible demo of the much more expensive Utopias.  There were plenty others to chose from at that price or less.  A failed business model for an exhibit of well-regarded speakers. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed Axpona.

Having been to many  shows and setting up systems when I was a dealer ,to be fair to all ,they should all have to bring a spl meter and all rooms should be max under 88db.which is fairly loud  For several reasons. In smaller rooms too many hard reflections ,and hard sounds because of this, also to not impede on other systems in other rooms , also it’s a known fact that 90 db + spl  level creates hearing loss over accumulated time.

vendors should be at the end of hallway so all the disturbing chatting won’t disturb musical demo’s.  That’s just from my experiences .  For Everyone pays monies to present their products , and people go to listen . Common courtesy goes a long way !!