AXPONA 2017

[Leonard Caillouet]

AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) web site

AXPONA 2017 is April 21 - 23, 2017 The Westin O'Hare | Rosemont, IL

avnirvana.com will have a full complement of staff there reporting on new products and happenings.

 

[Jack]

This is a show I go to every year but may miss this one due to heavy work load. We shall see as I would love to meet y'all

 

[Sonnie Parker]

It would be nice to meet you Jack ... we might even setup some blind listening tests... (JUST KIDDING of course)...

 

[Jack]

It would be nice to meet you Jack ... we might even setup some blind listening tests... (JUST KIDDING of course)...

You know, I would actually be open to some blind tests to see if I could ace them. I mean, I know I could ace them

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I am sure you could ace it... but would it be 100% identification, or 100% failure to identify.

 

[Jack]

I am sure you could ace it... but would it be 100% identification, or 100% failure to identify.

I did not think of the second option so I will have to go with 100% other

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

Sonnie and I drove up and arrived Thursday night. We had hoped to make the industry mixer but traffic through Chicago took more than an hour more than expected.

This thread will be my personal story of the show, trying to focus on the experience, not just the products. I will try to work in as much product as I can see, but I will focus mostly on speakers, less on electronics, sources, connectivity, and power. Of course, each speaker's presentation is the result of the whole system, but my assumption is that most should be far less likely to be a factor as the rest of the system is usually much nicer at these shows than most of us would have available. The loudspeaker still remains the biggest variable, aside from the room and placement. And I am just more interested in speakers...

 

[Jack]

Sonnie and I drove up and arrived last night. Soon to be off to the Westing for the show. If anyone has specific requests for a pass at something let me know.

You two have a great time and enjoy the show. Have lunch or dinner at Lou Malnattis Pizza and you will be quite happy...it gives you energy.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Sorry to be missing out on the fun this year... I need a full report from the Seaton Sound room. That's ALWAYS my favorite place to visit!

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

These are some of my impressions and a bit of the story of the show. Remember, these are just quick impressions, but they will hopefully give you who can't be here an idea of what we find.

The 12th Floor

We started on the top floor with the intent of working our way down for the first pass. Several rooms that sounded good with cool stuff didn't make the cut for this quickie, but there were a few notables. Pass had their electronics on display, both in rooms driving speakers and in the Boardroom on static display. As always, superb sound and flawless build and layout that one has to marvel at.

The surprise (though it should not be) was Hsu. The CCB-8-S ($369ea), combined with the VTF1-MK3 ($399) was nothing short of impressive. The room was modest, overall, with an Onkyo receiver, generic speaker wire that looked like 16 or 18 gauge, and basic foam treating strategic locations on the wall. No hype, just sound. The speakers were carefully placed and sounded like the point source that they are intended to be, using the coaxial drivers, with very smooth off axis response.


Next door to Hsu was the other end of the spectrum, the Carver room. Impressive design, with the requisite boldness of presentation, also very impressive. It was impressive to see the Amazing 350 driving the Amazing Line Source. Here there was more attention paid to the Carver mystique than the presentation of the sound. The speakers were rather carelessly placed in a cramped room and while it all sounded very good, it begged for attention to detail that surely would extract much more from the fine, albeit overstated, system.

We joked at the juxtaposition of the two rooms, far at the end of the hall on the top floor, right next to each other. The humility of Hsu vs the braggadocio of Carver was amusing. Not unexpectedly, my thought is that we need to get the Hsu system to Sonnie's for the first AV NIRVANA speaker roundup to get some listening time in to learn more about what it can and can't do. While impressive, the Carver appeal is quite different, and not my cup of tea.

The other notable standout was the sound of the Sonus Faber Il Cremonese. It was one of those presentations that was striking from anywhere in the room with great balance and detail, then grabbing the prime listening position, they did exactly what one would expect. No surprises, but no obvious flaws. Well set up room revealing an obviously fine speaker.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

The 6th Floor

The horns from Destination Audio were something everyone should experience. Like so many other systems I was wishing I could hear it in a larger, more well treated and designed room. But When you walk into the room and hear music, and immediately connect to it, we have learned to respect those impressions from a distance or off axis. There was something uniquely musical about them. Overbuilt, absurdly priced ($95,000), oversized? Absolutely on all points, but you have to respect the attention to detail and love that Sam put into these. Just too bad they were couped up in that little room. For all of the respect for the laws of physics that they demonstrate, that aspect is hard to overcome.

I did a scheduled demo of the Smyth Research Realiser A16. This is a unique product that basically re-creates a complex sound field from any environment in headphones. The demo is with an actual speaker system consisting of a full Atmos application of Yamaha active monitors, quite impressive itself, that is then analyzed using in-ear microphones. The A16 then recreates that sound field in headphones of your choice. The result was astoundingly realistic. The applications for mixing recordings or for end user reproduction are just about whatever you can imagine. It is ironic that they were using Yamaha monitors. This reminds me of the beginnings of the consumer DSP era when Yamaha tried to reproduce various listening environments in a processor (the DSP1, back in the 1980s). Things have come so far, and this idea is so much more versatile and precise. Let's say I loved Sonnie's theater, and wanted to be able to reproduce that sound in my home. I could do just that with my headphones using the A16.

Let me describe the demo. First using in-ear mics, they ran sweeps from the Atmos system using three orientations of the head, facing the left speaker, the center speaker, then the right. There is a sensor that detects head position so that the effect follows your head orientation. Then they calibrated the headphones using the A16. The demo material is an Atmos demo, music, and movies. In this case the movie was Mad Max: Fury Road. When you take the headphones off and the sensor loses contact the speakers would come one and when you put the headphones on the speakers go off. If the system is working correctly, the headphones should sound just like the speakers. And they DO! Surprisingly so. Great technology.

So the Smyth demo was out of the box, for sure, and was the most interesting thing by far. What is striking about this show in general, however, is just how much really good gear is out there. And it is here! Just on this floor I listened to some great electronics from Naim, Esoteric, VAC, and others, some phenomenal turntables and related equipment, and speakers from Dynaudio, Magnepan, Scansonic, CAnton, ProAc, Marten, Sonner, Magico, and the aforementioned Destination horns. That is a lot of listening, and of course the rooms are often busy and poorly arranged, but most of it sounded quite good. The Sonner and Marten speakers were the highlights in my opinion. They were the ones that I wanted more of, and held something special in terms of definition and musicality for me. A couple of the others were a little disappointing, considering what I had heard from their products before and/or heard about them. The ProAc and Magicos were the most surprising in this regard, as I had expected to be wowed but was not. There are so many variables at a show like this that I won't judge them too harshly, and maybe we can give them another chance at another time.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

So the first day was getting bearings, then trying to see and hear as much as possible on the 12th and 6th floors. That went pretty well but it wore me out. It is now a little after 5 and I basically put in a hard day's work listening to audio systems. I hope you feel sympathy for all this hard work! It deserved a drink and now I am sitting at the bar in the Westin having a Scotch and reporting the day. Tonight it will be the torture of a Brazilian Steakhouse, which Sonnie is forcing upon us. We will acquiesce and try to pretend that we enjoy it.

As I said before, I will mostly focus on speakers. But there is so much more here. The array of tube electronics is really nice to see, as is the impressive turntables that are being used. The Kronos seems to be a reference for many, as it shows up in many rooms. Other well know products like VPI are seen quite a bit as well. Most of the best rooms are providing demos from vinyl as well as digital sources and many have tape, which seems to be making a resurgence as well.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

The 5th Floor



The second day of the show Sonnie and I started on the 5th floor. There were some unique products here, and some aesthetically beautiful systems. I can’t say that I was enamored with the sound of most, but some obviously suffered from room placement and treatments and conditions, with lots of people moving through the show.


Acoustic Zen presented the Crescedo Mark II with Wyred 4 Sound amplification. The sound was big, nicely balanced, with depth in the soundstage, but the speakers seem to need a little tweaking with respect to the room. I definitely heard a lot to like and got the impression that there was much more to extract from these.


The Aurum Cantus room had a nice detailed sound. Their stand mounted speakers were impressive in build and finish, and quite transparent, other than a bit recessed area in the midrange or upper midrange, particularly when listening in the center seat. The speakers sounded quite nice off axis, indicating a great deal of detail, but the overall balance was not to my liking, considering my preference for definition in the mids. Certainly a nice speaker to listen to and a lot of people would surely like them a lot.


The prize for the nicest looking speaker at the show might go to the Burwell & Sons Homage speakers. Fine wood construction in horns always impressed me, and these are certainly worthy of a look. Not my taste in sound, and I wonder if the room and associated tube electronics and Ortofon cartridge may have been a factor. The rest of the system was also beautiful. The VPI turntable was stunning as were the Rogers amplifiers.


Another unique product was the system from Kubotek. The Haniwa system consists of a digital amplifier and a full range 4” driver in a tiny cabinet. A surprisingly full sound for a small package, but the cost seems to be a lack of definition, probably due to trying to do too much in such a small box. The excursion on the driver was large, and there is surely some cabinet resonance going on that likely contributed to the surprisingly incoherent sound for a full range driver.


The Mark Audio/Sota speakers were interesting. This was a display of three speakers that were obviously not tweaked into the room very much at all. They were playing the floor standing Cesti T, and caught my attention when I entered the room as a nicely detailed and coherent sound. The sound stage was a bit of a disappointment, being wide, a little deep, but no height, likely due to the fact that the speakers are so short. They admittedly built them this way for aesthetics rather than optimal aural image, which is disappointing. With a little help on the height and careful room placement, however, these definitely rate some more listening. No relation to Sota, the turntable company, here.


One of the puzzles was the Elac room. Sometimes you walk into a room knowing that you will want to spend some time there, but it turns into an immediate downer. This was the case here. I expected to hear much more than I did, but just did not get it. I want to go back and sort that out, as something was really off on the presentation, but I may not get to do so. I know that there should be something more to them. That is one of the risks of these shows, that something sets up wrong and a product gets presented in a way that does not show its capability.


The Needle Doctor was using Dali Epicon 2 speakers, and Rogue electronics, and was a very nice sonic experience. There was a lot right in this room, with a carefully tweeked system that was a fantastic counter to the disappointment mentioned above. This is an example of doing everything right. I have not been a great Dali fan in the past, but they very much impressed me here. The Clearaudio, Hana, and Rogue products were an excellent combination.


I did not get a chance to hear the Vienna Acoustics Or the Daedalus speakers, both of which I would have liked to, but time to move on to another floor before running out of time.


The best of the 5th floor, and maybe the show was the last one we hit.


Klaus Bunge of Odyssey Audio had the best presentation of a system in many ways. A beautiful setup of room visually, controlling the lighting when demonstrating the system, and beautiful equipment made for a visually lovely experience. But that isn’t the real story. Klause obviously gets how to place his speakers and how to tweak the room to get optimal soundstage presentation out of his system. The breadth, depth, and height were not only huge, but well- proportioned with a well-balanced sound. This was a real treat, and Klaus, while a bit dictatorial about who gets to listen when and where, to assure that you get a great experience, is a very gracious and friendly gentleman who is obviously having a lot of fun producing high value systems that perform phenomenally. The system we listened to was $6900 for the electronics and speakers, not including a source, but the sound was probably the most impressive at the show!

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

Saturday is a busy day, with more people coming though the show, and I found that trying to see too much may limit my ability to make it through everything that I would like, but sometimes making a pass through a room that does not immediately appeal can yield surprises. So maybe I won't hit every one of the rooms I hoped, but the experience is exceptional regardless. This is just a lot of fun, talking to various vendors, dealers, and promotional folks, as well as other industry press, you learn a lot about perspectives and how others see the same things. What I keep learning is that the mix of staff we have put together is really exceptional in terms of the quality of observation and analysis and the diversity of preferences. We all tend to lean toward the practical rather than the mystical, but we all hear different thing and can bring different perspectives to the mix. But all of us are very perceptive and have a way of connecting with people to understand what they are trying to present. This level of connecting makes for a different kind of reporting and makes it possible for us to get to review lots of wonderful products.

So I will keep working down the floors and reporting on the experience. I have lots of great pictures, but I will hold posting those until after the show, when I have time to go back and edit the story, add some missed products, and decide where the pictures add to the report. If you have any requests for pictures, I have them for most of the products and rooms mentioned and can add any that we want.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

The 4th floor

YG acoustics is one of those brands that I expect something really special from, given the price. When you get into the tens of thousands of dollars for a pair of speakers, I expect something really special. In this case, the Hailey did not accomplish quite that. Certainly it is a beautiful sounding speaker, and aesthetically unique and pleasing, but it did not deliver the something extra that I had hoped for. Nothing about the speaker was wrong. There was definition, the image was solid, the balance was nice, plenty of rich detail in all areas, but nothing jumped out as special. Maybe the lack of anything to distract from the music was an indication of doing everything right, but there was not the engagement with the music I that would make me come back. GTT, the company presenting the system, did everything very well, including using the Kronos Pro that so many systems here used for a turntable. Nothing getting lost there, for sure. Maybe I was looking for the sound of the Sonja in the Hailey, which might not be fair, but for the price, what is not fair. I want to be knocked out…

Is it the Schiit? The Salk Song 3a was something I was looking forward to. Schiit was using them in their room to show their products, which have received a lot of attention lately. This was one of those, “what am I missing” experiences. The coherence and clarity of the Salks has always been impressive to me, but it just did not hit for me this time. Maybe I am becoming jaded or tired on the second day of listening. Maybe the Schiit is not what it has been made out to be in the press. Not sure, but even the bigger Salks downstairs did not bring what I expected.

Ryan acoustics speakers, from California, were the end point for the AURALIC Polaris wireless streaming system. This was a good choice. Nice balance in the sound, overall pleasing sound. Perhaps not the most precisely defined sound, but not having heard them before, there is no way to get a reference on what was the speaker and what was the rest of the system.

The Joseph Audio room was fun. Backed up by Rowland and Cardas, their presentation of the speakers was exceptional. Another contender for most engaging sound for me. I wanted to listen more and if I have the time I will go back by to get a better impression. The soundstage presented well, with depth and height, precision and clarity we abundant.

Holm Audio presented the Rogue electronics with Nola speakers from AccentSpeaker Technology. I believe the model was the KO 2. I have read reviews of their products that suggested the speakers would be quite musical and connect me to the music. What I heard was not what I expected. There was a lack of coherence and complexity to the sound that I found distracting. Interesting soundstage presentation, but it seems to change with frequency and complexity of the music.

Always interesting, in my experience are the PSB speakers. Holm had another room with NAD electronics and PSB, using a Rega turntable, and this was more interesting than the Rogue/Nola display to me. I tend to find a little extra presence in the PSB products, that seems to be common these days, but they certainly have a lot to like about them. Open and detailed, easy to get good sound out of, and just generally good values, this room was clean fun.

I visited one of my old favorites to see where their journey has taken them. I was one of the first owners of Thiel products when they started building speakers in the late 1970s. Unfortunately, from a speaker perspective, they are not at all the same company, and the sound from their speakers was a complete disappointment. The old team are all gone. They are making some interesting moves into streaming music and wireless speakers with the Aurora LifeStream products, however. Lots of companies are trying to be the future of wireless and streaming, and this is a good effort. Getting music streaming with content and quality into people’s lifestyles will be a challenge over the next few years, but there are so many good options, something good should shake out that gives real options to low res content when it comes to easy access.

Of course, shows like this would not be the same without the novelty products like Volya. These huge drivers with mid and high drivers embedded are certainly unique, both in design and sound. Over the top on both accounts, in my opinion, but fun to see and talk about.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

So it is late in the day on Saturday, 2 of 3 days are nearly done. I got to visit most of what I wanted on all but the 2nd and 3rd floors. Those are supposed to have some of the highlights, like the Paragon room. I made it downstairs today and got to spend a few minutes in each of several rooms that are getting a lot of interest. I can't say that I was all that impressed with some of the higher profile systems. While they might be impressive, the purist in me looks more for musicality and definition. The B&O room, for instance, was a knockout, in terms of being impressive and unique, but not to my liking, as it did not reproduce anything that sounded like real music...

Sitting at the bar in the Westin again, drinking a Two Brothers ale and writing this and working on my 4th floor summary. I'll post that as soon as I get it done.

I hope this blather is giving someone an idea of what it is like to be here who cannot attend. It certainly is an experience. It might be more fun if I was not trying to see so much and could spend a little more time in some rooms. Or more time getting to know some of the players, but I felt it was important to cover as much ground as I could for our readers.

Dennis and I are going to hang around for the blues show here at the Westin tonight. JTR is providing speakers for the show and it looks like there will be some good Chicago blues musicians playing.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

The Jazz Foundation show...great performance and great sound provided by JTR.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

...and the performance...
(Click on the Thumbnail. The high res pictures take longer to load in the thread so I am inserting thumbnails.)

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

Sunday morning is quiet, with lots of people having left, and the rooms are less active. There is more opportunity to talk to the designers or vendors. I had not been to the 2nd and 3rd floors so I started there after an early visit to the JTR room on the Lobby level. Jeff from JTR is a very pleasant gentleman, soft spoken and passionate about his products. He speaks openly about his design philosophy, which is not mainstream, for sure, but quite sound engineering. The result is a very pleasant surprise, with products like the NOESIS 210RT, which are efficient, tremendously powerful, and extremely low distortion. For such a monster in terms of its power, it is quite pleasing to listen to and is capable of a solid and expansive sound stage, has superb balance, and did I mention, low distortion. As most of you know who have been around me, my starting point for speakers is very low distortion, particularly in the mid-range. It is here that we are most sensitive, and where most content is that requires precision, IMNSHO. With his coaxial compression driver and careful attention to horn design, he achieves precisely this. With the mid-range response of his driver, the crossovers can be moved well out of the mid-range resulting in a seamless transition that many speakers have trouble with. Jeff is one of those engineering types that really does not care to attend to marketing and presentation, just wants to build better products. We look forward to getting to know his speakers better and working with him to get reviews and perhaps even some product giveaways. His was one of the better stories of the show, in spite of his apparent lack of interest in such. He provided speakers to support the blues show Saturday night, as well as stage monitors (note his speakers on the high stands on either side of the stage in the pictures of the show). The results were astoundingly good, and the monitors were said by performers to be among the best they had used.

His theater demonstration was a knockout, being limited only by the power that the hotel could provide. On Sunday morning JTR was able to get an additional 20A circuit, and this allowed them to get more volume. They had 7 channels at 2500 watts each of available amplification, but could not take advantage of it. The bass seemed more controlled with less distortion today, even though before the system sounded impressive.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

The 2nd and 3rd floors, lobby, and lower level.

I had been hitting the lower level and lobby rooms all weekend trying to work in things when the crowds were down. On one end were JTR, Emotiva, Legacy, Von Schweikert, and Scaena. On the other end was the Marketplace and Seaton. Seaton had a large theater set up like JTR. Both were powerful and impressive. The sound from both was equally impressive. Emotiva also had an impressive theater, also impressive in sound. It did not have the shear power of the JTR and Seaton systems but was equally immersive and precise sound. The middle of the lobby level was dedicated to the Ear Gear Expo, with everything imaginable in terms of headphones and related gear..

The lower level had some of the biggest draws. Always with unique products, Bang & Olufsen was a crowd pleaser. Their powerful Beolab 90, with its 18 drivers with individual channels of amplification and DSP is impressive. Incredibly powerful with off axis response that most speaker designers only dream of, it is definitely something to experience. Another European standout in terms of design is the German Physiks omni-directional speakers. They certainly have spatial characteristics that are interesting, with an open and vast sound stage which holds up from various listening positions. I am not sure about the balance and distortion levels, but I would certainly like to listen more to them. Other rooms included KEF, Monitor Audio, Salk, Synergistic Research, and Classic Audio.

The KEF was the most appealing of these to me. As one would expect from KEF, the sound was precise, with excellent sound stage presentation. The disappointment was the Salk room. Here I expected much more, but did not hear the clarity nor the presentation of image that I had hoped for. I also hoped for more from Monitor Audio, as I have really liked some of their more modestly priced products. Nothing to stand out here, particularly compared to some of the better presentations in a market with so many products. Still, I would like to get more familiarity with them, as the potential seems to be there.

As I mentioned earlier, Sunday is the day to get to really talk to the folks presenting the products. I have been a little brutal on some of the rooms, and maybe that should be tempered a bit after talking with some of them about the challenges in a hotel. The small rooms, the soft walls and ceilings, the constant battle with HVAC, both when running and not, all make for a very challenging setup. Some of it is of their own making, or budgets, as obviously the larger rooms afford more control. Some of them are tiny, just regular hotel rooms. Dr. Laurence Borden from German Physiks pointed some of these out, in defense of his competitors. I asked if their omni-directional speakers were more forgiving, assuming correctly that they are, but he pointed out some of the additional issues with bass control that everyone deals with. They had a larger room than most, but still had challenges.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

The wrap-up.

While this is an a audio show, three theaters bear mention. JTR, Seaton, and Emotiva all had superb presentations of theater systems. Emotiva had an excellent Atmos implementation, and in that sense, excelled. JTR and Seaton had more conventional surround, but were equally impressive aside from the overhead effects of the Atmos system. Neither needed subs because their systems are so powerful. The JVC 4K projector that JTR had was the best calibrated and on 4K material did the best job. The shear power and low distortion of all three systems was impressive.

The show can overall be summarized by saying there was an astounding amount of very high quality equipment, a large presence for vinyl reproduction and tape, and a rapidly growing number of technologies for wireless streaming of audio. The last of these will be the most exciting over the next few years, and I believe will fundamentally change the way we interact with audio. There was also a vast selection of headphones and related electronics. This, too, will be a large part of our audio future, in my opinion, as higher quality sources become ubiquitous and we start to demand more from headphones.

To sum up the loudspeaker presentations, still the biggest variable all of us have in our systems, there were so many fine systems that even some great ones seemed less impressive among the few that nailed it. Those would be, in my opinion, the Kismet from Odyssey, the KEF Blade, and the Joseph Perspective. None of which are the most expensive, by far. Surely some of the others missed my call because of presentation or placement, but that is the nature of these kinds of shows. In terms of curiosity and just plain interesting stuff, the Smyth Realiser technology, the German Physiks speakers, and the B&O Beolab 90 were my pick for cool factor.

Then there are the people. There are many genuinely welcoming and friendly people, among the few that are condescending and full of themselves. The former make it worthwhile and there are far too many to name. The latter are the minority and simply worth a chuckle. Of course I am biased, but our team that was here, Dennis, Wayne, Sonnie, and myself, are the best. We had fun, renewed old acquaintances, made new friends and strengthened existing industry relationships, and had some great food and great times. The people, ultimately, are what make any endeavor worth more than its inherent interest and value.

Now, Sonnie and I hit the road to drive home. I will add images to the posts as I crop and size them and sort through the dozens that I captured.

 

[JBrax]

Thank you all for your work and allowing those of us who couldn't attend a glimpse inside. Many of those brands I've never heard of and interesting designs to say the least. On a side note I'd love to hear those KEF Blade's in person!

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

You are welcome, JBrax. It was a fun and hard working trip.

 

[tesseract]

Good stuff, Leonard. Thanks for helping others vicariously experience the thrill of the 2017 AXPONA show.

 

[tesseract]

Edits and additions to be added to the Official Show Report... stay tuned!