AXPONA 2025

I’d heard Lithuania’s Silent Pound speakers paired with New Zealand’s Perreaux amplification at several audio shows in Warsaw. This year at AXPONA, the two companies brought that same transcontinental partnership to Illinois. It was my first encounter with Silent Pound’s flagship Challenger II floorstanders ($32,500–$36,150/pair, depending on finish), and they didn’t disappoint. The system also included Perreaux’s 300ix integrated amplifier ($9995), fronted by an Aurender A15 server/streamer/DAC ($8400). Cabling from Life Audio and Titan Audio, plus a Solid Tech Radius Solo 3 rack, completed the setup.

I heard people at the show, including Stereophile writers, were talking about the Ø Audio room—though when I say they were talking about it, I don’t mean that they were saying the company’s name, since no one knew how to do that. I looked it up. Ø is a letter in Norwegian and Danish that comes after the end of our alphabet, after Æ and before Å. If you want to know how to pronounce it, I'll provide a link to a pronunciation guide. You'll notice that the pronunciation in Danish and Norwegian is quite different—though the pronunciation I heard from Norwegian Jonathan Cook to me sounded more like Danish.

Tom Vu founded TriangleArt in 1999, and he’s not about to let up now.

No fewer than five Stereophilers visited Fidelity Imports’ Utopia-D room during AXPONA 2025. I focused on the Audia Flight Strumento No.8 monoblocks ($34,999/each) that had joined forces with Audia Flight’s Strumento No.1 EVO preamplifier ($29,995), an FLS 20 SACD player/streamer ($21,999), and a Flight Phono ($6999).

Charlotte de Witte’s Sanctum, my current techno obsession, was already spinning when I stepped into the Audio Note UK room. Sales exec Adrian Ford-Crush stood nearby; across the room, founder Peter Qvortrup — the company’s resident iconoclast — paged through Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI, a scathing look at the environmental and ethical costs of artificial intelligence. But then the music took over, as it always does in this room.

In front of a passive hallway display in the lobby of the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center, Mark Henninger and I caught up with TJ Goldsby, AXISS Audio's vice president of sales and dealer relations, and Takaya Inokuma, senior management director, Accuphase Laboratory. Together, we chatted about the first showing of the brand-new, entry-level Accuphase E-3000 integrated amplifier ($8975). Accuphase's new class-AB integrated outputs 100Wpc into 8 ohms.

Before I heard the new Soulution 717 monoblocks ($109,975 each), I spoke with Cyrill Hammer, Soulution’s CEO and Chief Designer, and Cliff Duffey, President of AXISS Audio. The conversation was illuminating. The listening? Something else entirely.

Watch our exclusive video interview with Cyrill Hammer and Cliff Duffey.