Show Report: AXPONA 2018 by MGD
I’m deeply honored to share this show report by my old friend and audio mentor Martin DeWulf. Marty, or MGD, founded Bound for Sound magazine back in 1989, and quickly became a major voice in the subjectivist high-end scene. More personally, he was hugely influential in my formative years as an audiophile. Back when I was a broke music student, he responded to my letter asking for affordable recommendations by sending me my first speakers, a pair of Tannoy bookshelves. Later he brought me on as a staff writer and taught me most everything I know about this crazy hobby. I’m forever grateful for his support and guidance over the years.
Marty had to stop publishing several years ago due to serious health issues, and after a long hiatus it was wonderful to hear from him again. He stopped by the AXPONA audio show in Chicago in April, and shared this thoughtful and touching account. Marty, it’s great to have you back.
It had been approximately 9 long, cold years since I had attended an audio show of any kind. There had been a time when audio and the trade shows were an indispensable part of my life…I went to at least one show a year for over 26 years. So, it was a decision of monumental proportions when I decided that I would go to AXPONA 2018. It would mean putting my cane away and driving to the Chicago area (Schaumberg). Worst of all, it would mean talking my wife, Laura, into going with me. I couldn’t go it alone and she is not a fan of audio shows.
MBL, VAC, Walsh HHR
Unfortunately, the illness that has been so much a part of my life for the last 9 years could not be totally cast off for even a day, not entirely anyway. My wife knew how much being there meant to me, so I begged her indulgence and promised her the moon in return…how could she not bend to my persuasion? She agreed to go once I plied her with chocolate. Laura even agreed to drive. We found the hotel with ease and made our way inside after putting the handicap placard in the window of our car. Once in the front door it smelled like audiophiles wearing cheap cologne and Burkenstocks. I started seeing people that I hadn’t seen in almost a decade. Paul McGowan was first to go by, I recognized him, but I don’t think he remembered me … just a big guy looking lost and a bit out of breath. Turning my attention down the hallway I spotted Richard Vandersteen. Not that many years ago (the middle 1970s but it seems like yesterday to me), Richard made his way to his first CES with a pair of Model II speakers under his arm, after which, and for good reason, he became an almost overnight audio sensation. Again, I wasn’t recognized, but he did smile nicely at my wife.
The longer I was there, the more those old feelings of purpose and belonging started coming back. As some of the pain that kept me away for so long started to settle in my back and legs, I knew it was only a matter of time until someone that I knew would turn around and be glad to see me too.
THERE ARE A LOT OF WAYS TO WRITE A SHOW REPORT
Every year in Las Vegas while I was reviewing, there would be a flock of manufacturers in big, fancy rooms setting up systems costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sometimes the speakers alone would cost more than a years’ wages, maybe double that - $35,000 for an amplifier, $25,000 for a preamp and another $20,000 for a source component. Put it all in an enormous room, far larger than any real audiophile would want, get lousy sound and then tell everyone how wonderful everything was under the conditions. Conditions!? A system costing over $150,000 should be able to overcome anything you throw at it. I am therefore, out of a sense of fairness, going to put an emphasis on those rooms that were smaller than a basketball court and filled by names which might not be, for the ordinary audiophile, common household names.
WHEN THREE ARE ONE
There were three rooms, which, in my estimation, were ahead of all others for reasons notable and different. Now this is what an audio show is all about!
As a whole, I thought the aggregate sound to be far above anything I’d heard while attending the various CES from 1989 through 2009. I believe some of the praise for the overall sound had to do with the quality of the rooms at the Renaissance convention center…far better than anything I can recall from CES Chicago or Las Vegas. If there was a common failing demonstrated from room to room there, it had to be in the bass. There was plenty of bass, everyone had bass, but save for the very few (that I will mention), the lower the bass went, the more “one-note” it became. Fortunately, by the time the music hit one-note-land it was sufficiently deep that most people wouldn’t even notice the effect.
PranaFidelity, HRT Stage VIII, YG Acoustics, Ayon Audio
There were three rooms that I felt to be well ahead of the others that I heard. Not having heard every room, please don’t view my opinions here as some Biblical truth on everything at the show – it’s not. Except for maybe these rooms:
GamuT: Until this day, I’d never really been a big Gamut fan…well, I am now. The Gamut amp, preamp and speakers (RS7 speakers, $39,000.00) disappeared in the room, but that isn’t what mesmerized me – no, it was the tone and organic texturing which hijacked my sonic expectations, expectations founded on years and years of listening and observing critically. I’m not referring to these things in the normal context of a reviewer writing for his readers. For, I have never, ever heard the human voice reproduced as naturally as it was in this room, and I expect, had you been in the room with me you would feel the same. For the “old audio soldier” who has quite literally “heard it all” and heard it all more than once, I had never before experienced the breathy sensation of life in front of a microphone being played back into a room like it had been that day. It was uncanny and, need I say?, lifelike. Extraordinarily, lifelike. Why? Pinning the “why?” on any one component is foolish and a sure way to be found wrong when the reason for this wonderful illusion is made manifest. But I should mention this, the components in this “living” room were all perched upon a product named Pneuance and the Pneupods. Feet that one inflates inside an industrial looking metal cup, and then places under the equipment (even the speakers, or so I’m told). Was it the Pneupods? I don’t know, and I suspect that even without the Pneupods the room would still have dropped my jaw multiple inches.
Prana Fidelity: Here we have a speaker that doesn’t cost more than a new Harley Davidson, though it may be just as exciting. Steve Norber is a wonderful human being, but now I suspect he might be an even better audio designer!!! Fed by a Luxman CD player, Steve designed the preamp (purna/ca $5,950.00), the power amp (purna/ma, 400 wpc, $8,950.00) and the loudspeakers (Bhava $4,950.00). The speakers heard that day were a relatively small three driver, two way affair mounted upon sturdy stands by Sound Anchor. Immutable are the laws of physics. A clear understanding of electrical engineering and speaker design might allow a designer to cheat a physical law here or there (something Bob Carver has been a genius at), but, from what I was hearing with these speakers, amp and preamp combo, there appeared to be a complete re-write of the laws of audiology in progress. How did Steve do it? The one note bass in other rooms was not present here. With speakers this size, bass response isn’t generally expected in prodigiously clean amounts, yet, bass from this compact speaker went wonderfully low, and scary loud without the faintest hint of distortion or fatigue inducing colorations. If looking for a speaker in the $5,000 range, I strongly suggest visiting Steve Norber at Prana.
HRT Stage VIII stacked speaker system from Elite AV Distribution: The speaker arrangement was indeed unusual being unique in my experience and very favorably priced. Supported by a distinguished group of backup components those speakers truly sang. Paired with a table that costs more than I’ll ever be able to afford, the beautiful Kuzma Stabi M ($19,225.00), with another $10,000.00 worth of arm and cartridge, feeding a Plinius phono stage, was a dynamo, even explosive at times, making some of the hottest vinyl of the ‘70s seem on fire. But the speakers were the attention getters in this room. A pair of HRT speakers will set you back $650.00. That’s not a typo. What Elite did, something most audiophiles would not think of doing, was stack multiple pairs of the HRT speakers one upon the other. I haven’t seen someone do that since the hot audiophile trick of stacking large Advent speakers one upon the other back in the 1970s. Was it 8 pairs here? I forget, but once tied together with some very effective Furutech wires and cabling, the system was capable of a stentorian assault on the human auditory system – oh, could it go loud! And yet on getting a simple whisper right, the system excelled. Good job Elite.
A WONDERFUL SECOND RANK
These are the show entrants which, for one reason or another, struck me as superb performers and fully deserving of mention:
The VAC Amplification Company is here, not for a single performance in any one room, but for the fact that VAC gear was sounding exceptional in any number of rooms. VAC, with speakers from Von Schweikert, Sonist and Gershman enhanced their presentations. I particularly liked the Posh speakers from Gershman with the VAC electronics. They gave a full room experience that was balanced and enjoyable.
I’ve known Bill Dudleston for a long time and was hoping to talk to him in his room … he wasn’t there (when I was, anyway). But his speakers were and acted like the world class performers they are. Taking up a small corner of a very large room, Legacy Audio demonstrated the AERIS, 4.5 way system ($21,450.00). They sounded articulate as well as potent, all packaged in a very attractive industrial motif.
Legacy Audio, Acapella Audio Arts, Clearaudio Innovation
Being an audiophile born in the 50s, but coming of age in the 70s, I have known of and wanted, at times desperately, a speaker based on the Ohm/Walsh driver. In Chicago was HHR Exotic Speakers and their top of the line product carried the moniker TLS-1 ($15,000.00). Low and behold, what I saw was a single 12” Walsh type driver with full 360 degree dispersion filling the room with seamless sound! No woofer, no midrange driver, no crossover, just the beautiful Walsh driver energizing a room of happy audiophiles. I believe that this speaker may have made the top rank were it not for the sensation I had that the driver wasn’t quite broken in. The exhibitor confirmed my suspicion when he said that the speaker had been built just for the show…and I was there on the first day.
I don’t usually think of audio when I hear the word Einstein. From Germany comes Einstein audio electronics. As I sat and listened, the more I was convinced that these guys with their tube and solid state designs knew the sound of music and saw to it that their equipment reflected that. I wish I had more facts to give you other than a few subjective findings; the sonic experience in the Einstein room was a worthy one. Which brings me to a new marque called Eikon. From Gayle Sanders of Martin Logan fame comes a new DSP intelligent loudspeaker that, if I understand this correctly, constantly adjusts its output to compensate for irregularities in the listening room. Ordinarily, I’d be supremely skeptical of such a system - too complicated - but it sounded good. I liked it a hair less than the Gamut (less refined, not as amazingly textured), but the potential to be better does seem to be there. Ayon tube electronics with Lumen White loudspeakers showed fast and full range at the same time. The Orthos mono amps with Spheris preamp retail for around $60,000.00 together. The Lumen White speakers had an unusual finish and retail for $49,900.00.
Help! I need something that costs less than thirty-fifty thousand dollars – quick! Whew, leave it to an Italian firm to come to the rescue. AudioThesis of Arlington, Texas is importing a sweet sounding, single-ended integrated tube amplifier from Mastersound with a retail price of $3,500.00. Now we’re talking! Appearing much more expensive than its price, the unit was refined yet dynamic sounding, while maintaining that certain organic sweetness so many audiophiles hunger for. If you are not an oil baron or social network owner, the Mastersound may be your musical ticket. And while on the enjoyable subject of equipment some would say is affordable, let me introduce Wells Audio. Showing with Anticables and Salk Sound, Wells featured the Commander preamplifier. Trying to get technical aspects of a product correct in a full blown review can be difficult, much less in a show report, but let me try. This preamplifier is a tube/transistor hybrid using a 12BH7A triode tube and phase splitter buffer stage . . . and it just gets more complex after that. But the gear sounds really good. Affordable? They have solid state power amps at $4,000.00, $6,000.00 and a coming amp at $1,699.00. I’m going to keep an eye on these guys because the power amplifiers look especially worthy of coverage.
A decade ago, I didn’t care for these speakers at all. Nor did I care much for the sound of their power amps and preamps. The company was mbl, my first exposure being to the Radialstrahler metal driver loudspeaker. You’ve seen them. They look like a metal football on top of a shiny base. When I first heard them so many years ago, they sounded metallic and hard: which they were, they being made of metal and being hard. They sounded better this year, a lot better, so much so, that I thoroughly enjoyed my 15 minutes or so in the mbl suite. The drivers kind of remind me of the Walsh driver, at least in principle, and that’s a good thing. Expensive? Don’t ask.
Pass Labs has it right. Pricey electronics, okay, I understand that. But the build quality, in my opinion, justifies the price. For $4,900.00 Pass has introduced a 25 wpc pure class A amplifier, and they have a new preamp in the affordable range too. The cool thing about Pass is that they may introduce a less expensive model every now and then, but they don’t sacrifice sonics to do so. In my estimation, the 25 wpc amp sounds as fine as the 30 wpc amp, which sounds as fine as the 60 wpc amp. They just have less power, but since they all run pure class A and are built to a similarly high quality – they all sound fantastic. I’d be as happy as a hound dog chasin’ a raccoon if I had a set of 160 wpc mono amps, but owning the 30 wpc Pass stereo amplifier has made me a happy audiophile for a long time.
With the rejuvenated interest in vinyl records, the invasion of the record cleaners was in full force – it had to happen. I’m not naming them, nor am I making any recommendations as to what works and what does not. Why don’t you buy one and then tell me.
Joseph Audio Pearl 3, GamuT RS7
HONORABLE MENTION
I didn’t feel that I could walk away from this assignment without first giving a nod to some of the attendees that came across extremely well without me being able to have an extended listen to the products themselves. Here are my impressions:
Joseph Audio: Fine drivers with Infinite Slope crossovers.
Pear Audio turntables: Made great sound in more than one room – made me want one.
Karan Acoustics: Beautiful electronics made to high standards.
NOLA loudspeakers: The Contender S3 for $6,900.00, high efficiency with purity of sound.
Dynaudio: I love their drivers…
Clearaudio turntables: Beauty with functionality (and I own one!).
VPI turntables: They were everywhere.
Magico: I’ve always loved the sound of these, if only they didn’t cost so much!!!
Daedalus speakers: Gorgeous build quality and sound. Made great advancements in sound.
ELAC: Old name, new promise with a nice sounding inexpensive speaker.
Rogue Audio: Every room they were in sounded good.
YG Acoustics: Didn’t care for this speaker a few years back, much better now.
Kronos: Beautiful turntables with counter rotating platters that I had a hard time taking my eyes off of.
Parasound: I got to their room just as I was starting to feel pretty poorly. As always, Richard Schram was amiable and a joy to talk to, but I wasn’t able to take him up on his offer of a tour. They were showing with Tekton loudspeakers, a brand I’ve been dying to hear, if only for the unique, some might say weird, tweeter arrangements. Sorry guys, I couldn’t stay.
And kudos to the two guys from Peoria, Illinois that not only remembered me but remembered my heart’s work, Bound for Sound.
-MGD
