AXPONA 2013

I wish I could say something of import about International Phonograph Inc.'s room, which was showcasing the Artisan Fidelity turntable. The marvelous TAD Reference One loudspeakers were mated with Lamm electronics to play master tapes of jazz and other genres. Alas, there was far more talking than music going on when I stopped by, and the promised equipment list never made it to my inbox. Hopefully, others can fill in the blanks in the comments section below.

The boys from Illinois in the Sonic Hemisphere room were in high sales mode, as in talk loud over the music. Playing their larger Fidelity One 3-way loudspeakers ($5750/pair) with an Oppo CD player, Nottingham turntable, K&K phono preamp, Carey pre-amp, and Clayton Audio amp—models and prices not supplied - the sound was a little shouty, and distant at lower volumes. Offered a "female vocal"—don't you love that term, "female vocal"?—it's as generic as an offer of "red wine" without the vintage—I enjoyed the nice midrange on a track by jazz artist Anne Bisson. The bass boomed, but not to the extent it boomed in some rooms. Not auditioned was the 2-way Fidelity Monitor ($1925/pair).

When Steve Davis told me that people were hungry for an audio show in Chicago, he wasn’t kidding. What Davis believes to be over 4000 attendees—2000 tickets had been sold before the Show opened—visited over the course of three days, March 8–10. They mobbed many of the rooms on Saturday and actually managing to keep things lively in most of the rooms I visited on the 8th floor on Sunday. And that was with people having to choose among 90 exhibit rooms, a bunch of table displays, an art show, multiple seminars, and lively marketplace that together extended over five floors of the Doubletree in Rosemont (Ground, mezzanine, and all of floors 7, 8, and 9) near O’Hare Airport. (My thanks to John Atkinson for standing outside in the pouring rain to get the photograph of the hotel.)

I don’t know what the sound was like at Chicago’s last consumer audio show, sponsored by Stereophile, which took place in the Palmer House Hilton in the Loop in 1999, but at the Doubletree, a large number of dealers and manufacturers managed to produce good to excellent sound within the confines of hotel rooms that they had never before exhibited in.

Both at and post-show, Buffer (aka L. Langdon Ergmann, Jr.) was charmingly apologetic. Having read my "As We See It," "There's No Business without Show Business," in the April issue of Stereophile just hours before I walked into his Laufer Teknik room, he knew that his inability to supply a list of components and prices, add a track to his Memory Player from one of my six USB sticks, or even tell me what music was playing on his own music server (as in "We don't have an internet connection, so we can't identify the track") had left him a prime candidate for the Duncecap Dealer of the Day award.

In the room set up by Holm Audio of Woodridge, IL, Sony SS-AR1 loudspeakers ($27,000/pair) dominated a system in which Nordost Odin cabling—Odin power cord ($15,999/2.5m), interconnects ($19,999/2m) and speaker cable ($25,999/2m)—transmitted signals from a Rega RP6 turntable ($1990 with Rega Exact cartridge), Hegel HD25 32-bit DAC ($2500), Manley Chinook phono preamp ($2250), Hegel CDP2A ($2650), Hegel P20 preamplifier ($2900), and Hegel H20 amplifier ($5750). On Randy Crawford's CD, We'll Fly Away, the sound was very smooth and non-fatiguing, but lacked sparkle.

My first opportunity to hear the exaSound e20 DSD/DXD/PCM DAC ($2500) did not disappoint. The company that self-effacingly identifies itself as "exaSound," with a small "e," played along with surprisingly extended Janszen 2A2.1 electrostatic loudspeakers ($7495/pair),, which are reputedly flat to 40Hz, and the Bryston Power Pac 250 amp ($2350) to deliver a beautiful smooth, wide soundstage on a DSD recording from Channel Classics.

In a room shared with Audiogon, Cary Audio constructed a system of lower cost Audio Electronics brand equipment designed and hand built in Apex, North Carolina. With circuit designs less complex than those in traditional Cary Audio components, the line's four components utilize no global feedback, and their audio stages are predominantly class-A designs. New to the line is the Lightning USB 24/192 DAC ($1295). Utilizing asynchronous USB technology from Gordon Rankin of Wavelength, the Lightning is set to strike the market around April 1.