Porsche
Active member
I appreciate it, hopefully get larger rooms next time
AXPONA 2025
- Thread starter Ritmo
- Start date
Mr Peabody
Well-known member
My random thoughts. I didn't get to all the rooms it was a big show and big crowd. Keep in mind this is all to my ears YYMV
I heard a couple of the cars. The DSP that puts the sound stage in front of you is a game changer IMO. One guy, not a factory guy, asked me to come hear his car he said, "I never demoed for a blind guy before", LOL. He had a Subaru with horns by the feet, 8" in the door, one 10" in the dash and two 15's in the back, there were a few more speakers in there as well. The bass was actually fairly flat despite all that conage.
I devoted a thread to my Yamaha thoughts, impressive.
As not normally a fan of Vandersteen they are winning me over with their upper end models that have been at the shows, very nice presentation. Also has good synergy with Audio Research.
I really enjoyed the MON Acoustics speakers with Accuphase. My first time hearing either, good sounding combo with Grim front end.
Doshi had a good room.
I met Dave Gordon. ARC is coming out with some solid state components and a more affordable tube preamp which will be around $8.5k the SS $7.5k. A new Reference preamp is coming the Ref 20.
Acora was in at least 2 rooms and maybe more. Still decent sound but as memory serves I thought they sounded better in the past, could be the room or different associated gear.
I really like the Goldman powered speakers, excellent control and sound. A friend wasn't impressed so it may depend on what was playing at the time. I heard Lights by The Weekend, the synth and bass was impressive. Not the amount of bass but the clarity and control.
Rogue Audio was sounding good driving Maggies, 1.7 something.
Rooms like MBL and MSB are always good. I still wonder if I made the right DAC decision when I hear MSB. They had the Cascade playing though. Berkley is another DAC I considered and I finally heard one, can't remember which room, I thought it was good as well, not Cascade good but good.
When I walked through the Boulder actually sounding very good with Wilson. For some reason in my head I wouldn't have thought that as good a combo.
I saw a more affordable brand Heaven 11 I hadn't heard of before. The integrated was a Class A tube section with Class D output stage. The cool thing you can select the amp with either ICE or Hypex. I was surprised I preferred the ICE. Seemed like ICE was sort of left when Hypex came along. The amp was only around $3k.
I have owned Pass and love the brand, luckily I am very familiar. I have to say they were not a good match at all with Pure Audio. Maybe they tuned it in some over the weekend but when I was in Friday I was thinking not a good debut for the new Preamp. I heard both rooms so I feel just not good synergy with that brand of speaker.
Some rooms may have sounded good but didn't leave an impression due to type of music playing at the time. A good example was I wanted to hear the Monitor Audio flagship and they were playing something with just acoustic guitar.
Zesto room was great.
VS with Westminster had excellent midrange up but the bass was overloading the room.
Linn had some interesting tech. The Sondek LP12 playing had a built-in phono stage where that is different the signal from the cart was converted to digital then sent to the DAC in the preamp. They used room correcting DSP. No microphone you just send the room measurements, location of any windows or doors, wall material etc. it sends that up to a cloud where calculations are made then sent back to the DSP to adjust the sound.
The large room with Dali and Mac I liked.
I saw much more but that's all I have for now off the top. Oh, Stenheim were in a couple rooms. Not bad but I thought "you guys need to get back with Nagra", which I didn't see or missed. Seemed a few regulars I normally see were missing this year.
I heard a couple of the cars. The DSP that puts the sound stage in front of you is a game changer IMO. One guy, not a factory guy, asked me to come hear his car he said, "I never demoed for a blind guy before", LOL. He had a Subaru with horns by the feet, 8" in the door, one 10" in the dash and two 15's in the back, there were a few more speakers in there as well. The bass was actually fairly flat despite all that conage.
I devoted a thread to my Yamaha thoughts, impressive.
As not normally a fan of Vandersteen they are winning me over with their upper end models that have been at the shows, very nice presentation. Also has good synergy with Audio Research.
I really enjoyed the MON Acoustics speakers with Accuphase. My first time hearing either, good sounding combo with Grim front end.
Doshi had a good room.
I met Dave Gordon. ARC is coming out with some solid state components and a more affordable tube preamp which will be around $8.5k the SS $7.5k. A new Reference preamp is coming the Ref 20.
Acora was in at least 2 rooms and maybe more. Still decent sound but as memory serves I thought they sounded better in the past, could be the room or different associated gear.
I really like the Goldman powered speakers, excellent control and sound. A friend wasn't impressed so it may depend on what was playing at the time. I heard Lights by The Weekend, the synth and bass was impressive. Not the amount of bass but the clarity and control.
Rogue Audio was sounding good driving Maggies, 1.7 something.
Rooms like MBL and MSB are always good. I still wonder if I made the right DAC decision when I hear MSB. They had the Cascade playing though. Berkley is another DAC I considered and I finally heard one, can't remember which room, I thought it was good as well, not Cascade good but good.
When I walked through the Boulder actually sounding very good with Wilson. For some reason in my head I wouldn't have thought that as good a combo.
I saw a more affordable brand Heaven 11 I hadn't heard of before. The integrated was a Class A tube section with Class D output stage. The cool thing you can select the amp with either ICE or Hypex. I was surprised I preferred the ICE. Seemed like ICE was sort of left when Hypex came along. The amp was only around $3k.
I have owned Pass and love the brand, luckily I am very familiar. I have to say they were not a good match at all with Pure Audio. Maybe they tuned it in some over the weekend but when I was in Friday I was thinking not a good debut for the new Preamp. I heard both rooms so I feel just not good synergy with that brand of speaker.
Some rooms may have sounded good but didn't leave an impression due to type of music playing at the time. A good example was I wanted to hear the Monitor Audio flagship and they were playing something with just acoustic guitar.
Zesto room was great.
VS with Westminster had excellent midrange up but the bass was overloading the room.
Linn had some interesting tech. The Sondek LP12 playing had a built-in phono stage where that is different the signal from the cart was converted to digital then sent to the DAC in the preamp. They used room correcting DSP. No microphone you just send the room measurements, location of any windows or doors, wall material etc. it sends that up to a cloud where calculations are made then sent back to the DSP to adjust the sound.
The large room with Dali and Mac I liked.
I saw much more but that's all I have for now off the top. Oh, Stenheim were in a couple rooms. Not bad but I thought "you guys need to get back with Nagra", which I didn't see or missed. Seemed a few regulars I normally see were missing this year.
Ricky64
Member
Hi,My random thoughts. I didn't get to all the rooms it was a big show and big crowd. Keep in mind this is all to my ears YYMV
I heard a couple of the cars. The DSP that puts the sound stage in front of you is a game changer IMO. One guy, not a factory guy, asked me to come hear his car he said, "I never demoed for a blind guy before", LOL. He had a Subaru with horns by the feet, 8" in the door, one 10" in the dash and two 15's in the back, there were a few more speakers in there as well. The bass was actually fairly flat despite all that conage.
I devoted a thread to my Yamaha thoughts, impressive.
As not normally a fan of Vandersteen they are winning me over with their upper end models that have been at the shows, very nice presentation. Also has good synergy with Audio Research.
I really enjoyed the MON Acoustics speakers with Accuphase. My first time hearing either, good sounding combo with Grim front end.
Doshi had a good room.
I met Dave Gordon. ARC is coming out with some solid state components and a more affordable tube preamp which will be around $8.5k the SS $7.5k. A new Reference preamp is coming the Ref 20.
Acora was in at least 2 rooms and maybe more. Still decent sound but as memory serves I thought they sounded better in the past, could be the room or different associated gear.
I really like the Goldman powered speakers, excellent control and sound. A friend wasn't impressed so it may depend on what was playing at the time. I heard Lights by The Weekend, the synth and bass was impressive. Not the amount of bass but the clarity and control.
Rogue Audio was sounding good driving Maggies, 1.7 something.
Rooms like MBL and MSB are always good. I still wonder if I made the right DAC decision when I hear MSB. They had the Cascade playing though. Berkley is another DAC I considered and I finally heard one, can't remember which room, I thought it was good as well, not Cascade good but good.
When I walked through the Boulder actually sounding very good with Wilson. For some reason in my head I wouldn't have thought that as good a combo.
I saw a more affordable brand Heaven 11 I hadn't heard of before. The integrated was a Class A tube section with Class D output stage. The cool thing you can select the amp with either ICE or Hypex. I was surprised I preferred the ICE. Seemed like ICE was sort of left when Hypex came along. The amp was only around $3k.
I have owned Pass and love the brand, luckily I am very familiar. I have to say they were not a good match at all with Pure Audio. Maybe they tuned it in some over the weekend but when I was in Friday I was thinking not a good debut for the new Preamp. I heard both rooms so I feel just not good synergy with that brand of speaker.
Some rooms may have sounded good but didn't leave an impression due to type of music playing at the time. A good example was I wanted to hear the Monitor Audio flagship and they were playing something with just acoustic guitar.
Zesto room was great.
VS with Westminster had excellent midrange up but the bass was overloading the room.
Linn had some interesting tech. The Sondek LP12 playing had a built-in phono stage where that is different the signal from the cart was converted to digital then sent to the DAC in the preamp. They used room correcting DSP. No microphone you just send the room measurements, location of any windows or doors, wall material etc. it sends that up to a cloud where calculations are made then sent back to the DSP to adjust the sound.
The large room with Dali and Mac I liked.
I saw much more but that's all I have for now off the top. Oh, Stenheim were in a couple rooms. Not bad but I thought "you guys need to get back with Nagra", which I didn't see or missed. Seemed a few regulars I normally see were missing this year.
Agree on the Stenheim rooms. Two years ago the large room was superb. This time, the large room was not impressive, and the smaller room with Dartzeel electronics didn't sound good at all, IMHO.
Agree the Boulder/Wilson room sounded good.
The main Acora room sounded pretty good to me in spite of a poor setup. They also had them in a 5 channel room that was stunningly good.
The large MBL room sounded amazing. The radiators just do special things no other speaker does.
I heard some rumblings that on Friday the M9's driven by D'Agostino didn't sound good, but on Saturday they were astounding.
The large Fynes sounded superb in a challenging space. These are an amazing value.
I did not care for the larger Sonus Faber room. Congested midrange and uncontrolled bass (a common theme of the show, and likely hard to manage). Of course they were playing them painfully loud.
The large Wilson Room was hard to appreciate. They were playing older recordings of The Rite of Spring and another not very accessible song. Probably on me, but turned me off and didn't stick around.
It was the second time I heard the large PS Audios. Way too much bass for my taste. Not sure if that can be teased out of them, but in looking at the array, I doubt it.
Vinnie Rossi and Rockport Lynx = great sound
The large Vivids with Audionet always sound good, and Bill Parrish sets up the room well. I didn't care for the sound in the small vivid room with Mola Mola.
There was one room with Small Magico A3 (?) and Keces components. Sound was amazing for the price point.
The ampsandsound room was pretty stunning. Romantic yet articulate.
Me thinks Axiss needs a different speaker line. The Gauder speakers actually made Norah Jones on vinyl sound bright with nice Soulution electronics. Also, made Accuphase sound bright.
I did not care for the sound in the rooms with Borreson Two ways. Boomy bass and tilted upper midrange was the common theme. The larger room with the M2's and new subs sounded quite good.
Agree the MSB room sounded great. I believe they were using Magico M2's.
Agree that the Doshi room sounded great, certainly partly due to the Joseph Audio Pearls. Noisy location though.
YG's were in an awful location on the mezzanine. Did they get in their application late, or make someone at Axpona mad?
Would like to hear others" flyby impressions. I will come back and edit and add a few more thoughts
Last edited:
Mr Peabody
Well-known member
Agree;
Vinnie Rossi and Rockport Lynx = great sound
The large Vivids with Audionet always sound good, and Bill Parrish sets up the room well. I didn't care for the sound in the small vivid room with Mola Mola.
There was one room with Small Magico A3 (?) and Keces components. Sound was amazing for the price point.
First time I heard Keces and they were great with the A3. I'll have to research Keces. I don't know if it was just me or maybe too many shows but for the most part I found the music selections not interesting and not helpful. Sometimes the room manager asked for a request.
MSB did use M2 the guy uses them all the shows I've seen him at. They're his personal speakers