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AXPONA 2016 SHOW TRIP REPORT


Bubo

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Following are my unscientific biased observations from the 2016 show held near O'Hare Airport.

 

In no particular order.

 

 

Facilities

 

Westin Hotels continue as top shelf properties.

 

Friday Parking was frustrating 45 mins to find a spot, Saturday was zero minutes to find a spot. Hotel says parking is a work in progress.

 

Approximately 6 floors of vendors, 4 are in hotel rooms which isn't bad in many cases.

 

Axpona Staff friendly and efficient as usual. After hours entertainment was a nice touch.

 

Admission was $30 a day at the door, which seemed fair.

 

Show General Info

 

While almost everything imaginable is available on line and in PDF formats, it's still a good idea to bring cut sheets and or a brochure to trade shows. Not all vendors know this, including some of the ones that want $$$$.

 

Almost all of the vendors are very accommodating if you bring a CD, USB stick or favorite movie with you. Uncompressed lossless is your best chance of getting your sample to play. If you want to lug a vinyl record around, most have turntables connected since vinyl is hot.

 

Bring music you know well if you want to get a feel for the gear.

 

If you want to photograph the gear, ask permission.

 

My baseline for Evaluation

 

Like most of us, my home system is my control baseline for evaluating the gear at the show. Mine is McIntosh TOTL circa 1980 driving Klipsch LaScalas using an EQ. For control, I use a pair of AKG 702 headphones jacked into the C-32 pre amp to compare to what is coming out of the Speakers.

 

After 35 years I am convinced that PWK liked to hear the Angels sing, and there is still no other speaker that I have found that is better for listening to female vocals, almost entirely on the mid range horns.

 

I think my Yamaha MX-600 and MX-800 amps sound a little sweeter than the Mc-2205 Amp and have better damping greater than 20, which I understand to be the magic number. But I like the blue glow, so it's all Mac on my 2 Ch rig.

 

General Observations

 

Every piece of Equipment begins life as a product definition, then a set of design goals and a budget. Then the trade-offs and limiting factors begin. After many months of pain and agony, a product is born. No product does everything better than every other product, all represent a series of trade-offs and tech limits, each has a personality. Think of an aircraft carrier vs a submarine.

 

The human voice is the hardest sound to reproduce accurately, and easiest to detect if it's inaccurate. Many, if not most vendors, will play instrumentals........frequently jazz. Unless you are a proficient trumpet, or sax player with good hearing, you won't learn anything. The easiest way to beat on a design and system is Piano with Female Vocal, cymbal hits with the stick are also very telling. Female A Capella or even speaking with a soft voice is very telling. 

 

The surround demos focused on robot sounds, and black hole sounds....whatever a black hole is supposed to sound like.

 

Tubes, lots of tubes. Most were disappointing observed in systems. Lots of giant box amplifiers, some with surprisingly small Watt outputs. Apparently, it's easier to make a good to great sounding solid state amps at moderate output levels and a comparatively modest price. Speaker efficiency matters.

 

Turn Tables, lots of turn tables, most fully manual. I like auto pick up for those senior moments when you leave the system on.

 

Many, if not most, of the vendors are garage shops, less than 10 employees.

 

The vendors are incredibly accommodating if you bring your own source, but there are lots of others wanting to play their song. Consequently, it is difficult if not impossible to take the time necessary to break-down the systems to see what they will and won't do and how well they perform different tasks. Bring samples of the music you listen to, favorite singers are best since they will break down the designs sometimes in less than one minute. 3 crossover points is three potential drop outs with a soft voice.

 

Don't be the guy that asks to play one song, then insists on the entire 6 minutes, and then insists on one more song, four times. If they had a bar in the room, I'm certain someone would have thrown a bottle.

 

I am a tire kicker, so I try to respect the vendor's time and limit it to one or two 3 minute or less songs or even change songs after the first minute. If you are there to buy, make appointments and get a demo before the show opens, the intelligent vendors are there to transact. Day one, get to as many as possible and schedule demos for your short list on day two and three.

 

 

Gear

 

I probably visited less than half of the vendors with 2 days, and many for only a minute.

 

Emotiva was again the vendor with the most trade show professional display and lots of helpful staff. In many ways, they continue to be an innovator in the industry. Some new things work, some don't, but they get up and move to the next one when they do have a fail. Their demo push was the surround receivers and amps, heavy on stuff like the transformers fights and black holes, most of the audience had grey hair. We did sneak in a few 2 ch tracks in the surround theater, Johnny Cash and wife did sound pretty good. Increasingly Made in the USA

 

GIK Acoustics, Atlanta, very helpful Shelly....... everything a sales interaction should be. If in the market for sound treatment home or commercial app panels, I would look at them. Only treatment vendor I spoke with. They ship everywhere. Made in Atlanta

 

Raven Tube and Legacy Speakers, both really nice and helpful. The big Legacys  always sound good, it would require time and an intent to purchase to really break them down. Same goes for the Raven gear. Both Made in the USA.

 

Belden Cable makers of the worlds finest Telco and Radio RF cables has entered the high end audio cable market with the Lab Tests and Engineering to back it up. Blue Jeans Cable offers Belden as does a distributor. I forget the exact numbers, but something like twenty-five fifty for a pair, which I thought was great until I put on my glasses and read $2550.00 a pair. Made in the USA.

 

Anti Cables, had a bunch of stuff they make or have made. The guy I spoke with reminded me of all of the good engineers I have worked with in high tech. The products still have to prove out. Their very large toroidal Autoformer aka impedance matching transformer for connecting 4 ohm speakers to 8 ohm amps (where amps are happiest), look interesting. Think large electrostatic or other power hungry speakers that come in 4 ohms. Not sure where made.

 

Seaton Sound supported by Calibrations, had a home theater demo going on the ground floor next door to Emo. Also very helpfully great guys, more than willing to play your song. Seaton is a Direct Sales Speaker Manufacturer that began life in the sub woofer business and still plumbs the depths of low frequencies. Demo room had three 18 inch subs stacked on both sides of the screen, best kick drum I have ever heard, not sure which speakers it came out of. Looked like conventional speaker driver tech. Another Chicago area company. Guessing Made in the USA

 

http://www. promusicaaudio.com/ is a local Chicago Retailer that had a room, I thought they did a great job of demonstrating how good affordable ( a relative term) gear can sound and the single driver (no crossover) speakers they had sounded very good in their space. The Sales guy was very helpful and had good answers. Their demo sounded as good, maybe better than some of the ones that were multiples of their price.

 

Audio Research and Sonus Faber had a very good sounding demo up on the 12th floor, approx $200K out the door. I'm guessing that AR is Made in the US.

 

Classic Audio Loudspeakers with their large Horn Loaded Speakers continues to be a great measuring stick for comparing other speakers, not many sound better and the price points are a good measurement too. At 108db and 105db you don't need a huge amp to drive the speakers. Made in the USA

 

2015 the reel to reel jumped out.

 

2016 This year the Grande Avant Garde Speakers (22-20KHz, 89db 1W/M) by www.gershmanacoustics.com totally jumped out of the pack. Rapid dispersion and image were killer in the hotel room. Drivers are staggered like Theil for proper phase alignment. These may be the best small (comparatively) room speakers I have ever heard. IDK price, but in the first 30 seconds these jumped out. Before slapping down the credit card, I would want a full demo with my tunes to determine what they can and can't do.......Made in Canada

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry my comments are so late.... But I just saw this. I have been going to Axpona for as long as I can remember. I always book my ticket earlier so it's half price.

Actually for the first time I was really disappointed. Many of the vendors I look forward to checking out were not there.. Lawrence Audio/ Prima Luna. to name a few.

There were some up and coming vendors with some good gear.

If you get a chance check out Elac speakers.... best small speaker this year IMO. Also check out something called Sugercube.... this device blue me away.

Thanks

G.E.M

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So.... no pictures?

 

Maybe I will remember to bring a camera next year.

 

No doubt, some companies spend a lot of money on design, which looks very cool and may add a lot of cost.

 

For speakers, when it's no holds barred and used for earning revenue as part of a business, the speakers look like Altec VOT, Klispch LaScala and their current Theater line and big JBLs, all large squares or rectangles. Volti and Classic are more in this category.

 

Small footprint tower front speakers have been the rage for some time, and use a myriad of techniques and tricks to try to emulate the sound of the theater speakers with varying degrees of success.

 

It's probably unfair, but I tend to discount the Design Heavy speakers as carrying a large premium with no performance improvement, plus I'm not sure how you can ever dust the things. As with my experience with dating, sometimes the best lookers are not the best performers.

 

In terms of the electronic hardware, I like to have monitoring and control and have a strong preference towards analog instrumentation. Meters, lights, gauges, knobs etc are all good, though no grantee of quality.

 

Perhaps some room shots would be useful, and some of the designs look cool. I'll try to remember.

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Sorry my comments are so late.... But I just saw this. I have been going to Axpona for as long as I can remember. I always book my ticket earlier so it's half price.

Actually for the first time I was really disappointed. Many of the vendors I look forward to checking out were not there.. Lawrence Audio/ Prima Luna. to name a few.

There were some up and coming vendors with some good gear.

If you get a chance check out Elac speakers.... best small speaker this year IMO. Also check out something called Sugercube.... this device blue me away.

Thanks

G.E.M

 

Can you post some links to the products you referenced?

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