Here’s my Axpona 2019 update. I generally enjoyed the show more this year and ended up spending almost 8 hours there on Saturday. I took my time and attended a few seminars as well.
The show is bigger. Both vendors and attendees. I tried to avoid the elevator because you could wait 5-10 minutes.
I’ll talk more about rooms and speakers than equipment I think it is hard to evaluate other pieces of equipment very easily in this show setting. Most of my comments will be on rooms with Decware friendly speakers.
It started out kind of on a low point. I went into a higher end room only because the other rooms on that floor were not open yet. They sounded fine but they couldn’t control the bass. I was a little shocked that they were asking $122K. Beautiful wood work, but it takes some real cojones to ask that much for speakers that are not that different from your competition. I definitely didn’t pause and say, “oh wow, they have something here.”
Anyway, the guy running the room was nice and we talked a little about the industry while I waited for the other rooms to open.
Then I went to one of the highlights of the show – Vinnies Rossi’s room. I think I share some of Vinnie’s preferences for both music and sound because I really didn’t want to leave.
He had his pre/dac and his monoblocks with his prototype speakers (run off a mac air). The sound was toe tapping musical and he was projecting a nice soundstage despite the lengthwise setup of his room. The speakers are somewhat modular in that the bottom is open baffle bass (Acoustic Elegance 15”) with a sealed mid/tweet on the top.
You can tell Vinnie loves music first as he was jamming to the tunes he played. Anyway, a real treat. I stopped back twice to listen again to see if maybe I had misjudged, but it sounded great each time. Higher end stuff than I would ever buy ($20K for the speakers) but I really like Vinnie’s sound. It was very Decware like to me.
I may also experiment with this hybrid setup in the future. It would be hard for me to leave open baffle bass, but there are some things I like about my boxed speakers.
I was also impressed with Spatial. They had their X3 (?) running in two rooms on two different systems and I thought the sound was very good. I came away more impressed than the last time I heard them. I did like the way they added the horn housing to the ribbon tweeter and might experiment with that on my own speakers. AT around 95db and $8K, these are more Decware friendly.
For the first time in around three auditions, I liked the Voxativ drivers. In the past, they sounded thin and maybe a little harsh to me. This time I heard the 1.6 in the Pure Audio Project modular baffles with the 4 10” drivers and liked the overall sound.
Also, PAP is also shipping a fully assembled speaker now that basically has a wooden frame and fabric stretched over it. Nice look. This version uses the wood cone Voxativ which I felt was far superior to the 1.6. Significantly fuller and smoother. I believe both speakers were under $10K but I’d have to visit the web site to be sure.
I also liked the sound pressure of the two 15s to the 4 10s.
I preferred the Spatial to the first PAP with the 1.6 but it was more of a toss up versus the fully assembled version with the wood cone voxativ.
Another speaker that I like this time around was Daludeas (sp?). They are also 95-96db and had a nice sound. I didn’t get the price on these but they are probably considerably more given the cabinet work.
The first person I ran into at the show as I got off the elevator to start working my first floor was Paul from PS Audio. He was as gracious as could be despite the fact that he had no idea who I was.
PS Audio had quite a spread at Axpona this year. Two sections of the ballroom right behind registration. Lots of signage and display of a lot of their gear. Ted Smith was there talking about the new statement DAC and they had their prototype AN3 speakers. I wish I could say I liked the overall sound, but I felt it lacked top and end and the bottom was muddy. Some of that could have been the room but I didn’t come away feeling these were great.
One interesting room was a guy with all bamboo gear. Shelving, speakers, turntable, everything was bamboo. My isolation platform is a cheap piece of bamboo so I was intrigued. The owners pitch was bamboo is the poor man’s carbon fiber. Anyway, I liked the sound and so I checked out the speakers. They were basically an over/under Eminence 15 with a Betsy in the middle. The xover was in a bamboo box so I couldn’t tell what it was, but basically this was a bamboo betsy.
Something else I came away impressed by were the line array speakers. I heard 3-4 versions and each time I felt I was getting the soundstage I get from my 25th amp. They look like a real pain to build but I think Parts Express has a kit.
While in the Parts Express Room, I did inquire about building a super tweeter. I have been following that thread here on the forums and may build one just to see if I can get it to work. They guy told me three quarters of the battle is finding a suitable tweeter. He said ribbons hold up much better at the higher frequencies and you need one that is around 5 db more efficient than your speaker drivers. He said that eliminates about 95% of the tweeters out there. He pointed me towards a Fountek which I will check out.
I was also impressed by RTR. They are more home theater, but I thought the music I heard through their speakers sounded very good in a very large room. Their home theater demo was awesome. Very efficient speakers.
I attended two seminars. One was on the future of high def digital music. Not very informative and one on using REW that was very informative. I wish I could have stuck around because they had an extension of the seminar in the RTR room at 6:00 that evening.
Basically, they guy found that auto room correction rarely gets it right. He did admit that if his client has it, he uses it as a baseline but always ends up changing things to get the room right.
Overall, I was listening to hear what my DIY speakers are missing. Some mid range presence. Maybe some top end sparkle. My bass was on par or superior to anything I heard. I heard no soundstage that even approached what I have at home. Open baffle + 25th = HUGE, layered and interesting.
I always come away with an appreciation for the quality of my Decware gear, especially at the price point its offered. A lot of markup in the higher end of this industry without that much performance to back it up.
I shazamed about 70 songs so here is the Tidal playlist. Not a great crop this year, but some interesting songs to listen to and test your system.
https://tidal.com/playlist/303f1aa8-daaa-47b2-a9d0-1ed7e7356acf