AXPONA 2018

When JD Events' Liz MiIler invited me to give the keynote speech at the 2018 AXPONA, in Chicago suburb Schaumburg, I was at first not sure what to talk about. But then I realized that not only was 2018 the 32nd anniversary of my joining Stereophile as editor and the 42nd anniversary of my joining Hi-Fi News & Record Review magazine as a lowly editorial assistant, it also marked 50 years since I bought my first audio system!

A half-hour after the show opened (held today, tomorrow, and Sunday at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel, 1551 Thoreau Drive North, Schaumburg, IL), this was the scene in front of the seminar center, where a presentation on Room EQ Wizard was about to start. With well over 160 exhibit and listening rooms and another 80 booths, and what must be every dealer in Illinois participating, this is the biggest consumer audio show to be held in the US in quite a while.

The remarkably relaxed, smiling faces of AXPONA Tradeshow Coordinator Jordan Brereton (left) and VP/Event Director Liz Miller (right) say it all. Photographed after show's close, Jordan and Liz were poised to announce that under the leadership of JD Events Founder and CEO Joel Davis, their team of 8 had sold 8134 tickets—up 21% from 2017—and welcomed 5718 unique visitors to the largest consumer audio show in the United States. The number of tickets sold to students ages 15-25 increased by 27%. This to a show with 165 active exhibit rooms and an over-15,000 square foot exhibit hall that hosted booths from 96 companies, half of which were part of the Ear Gear Expo.

In the first of the videos we shot at AXPONA 2018, Herb Reichert takes you along with him in a brief exploration of the Expo Hall, featuring Gayle Sanders' Lamborghini, Todd Garfinkle of M•A Recordings, a crowd of headphone wearers, and a mysterious abundance of lab coats.

After visiting the Expo Hall with Herb Reichert, we move on to the Schaumburg Renaissance Hotel's upper levels to visit a few rooms, capturing binaural sound so, on headphones, you can hear what Herb heard.

I remember the sound character of early (1990s) Audio Physic loudspeakers. They were the first radically slender floor-standers. They generated humongous soundstages, and precise imaging was their raison d'être. Users would position the speakers extremely far apart, usually on the long wall. They used plenty of toe-in, crossing the speaker's direct waves in front of them. Finally, the listener would sit closer to the speakers than the distance between the speakers. Their side-firing woofers made tight-ish bass, but, if memory serves, their midrange, though quite clear, was less rich and dense than I prefer.

Even though the weather in Chicago is cold and wet, all these acres of glass seems to double the light…