AXPONA 2022

When I've visited the Zesto Audio room at different hi-fi shows in recent years, I've noticed that sometimes they've shown their tubed electronics driving modern loudspeakers from Lumen White, for instance. Other times, it's been vintage classics, such as Tannoys. At AXPONA, they chose very old-school Tannoy Kensington GR loudspeakers ($18,000/pair), which of course, showed quite different sound characteristics from, say, Lumen Whites.

Could a year have passed since I spent a particularly memorable month reviewing the top-line, two-piece Esoteric Grandioso C1X preamplifier? As hard as it may be to realize that time has moved so fast during these strangely elongated years of pandemic isolation, revisiting Esoteric components in 11 Trading Company's room at AXPONA 2022 was like reuniting with an old friend. There was a lovely grace to this Esoteric system's presentation—an ease and flow—that set it apart from many of the other systems encountered at the show.

More debuts awaited in Fidelis Distribution's second room, where Heretic Loudspeaker Company's handcrafted-in-Montreal A612 high-sensitivity loudspeaker (price TBD—no more than $10,000/pair, I was told) and Lab 12's handcrafted-in-Athens electronics sang with AVIDHIFI's Volvere turntable ($8000, below) equipped with a TA-3 tonearm ($650) and inexpensive (by audiophile standards) Grado Opus3 cartridge ($275). Through Lab 12 and Siltech cabling, the sax on "Trippin' Out," on an LP from Vanessa Fernandez, sounded fabulous, The energy of the track came through loud and clear. It was all I could do to stop myself from getting up and dancing. Without a doubt, this system delivered the most fun I'd had during my first two days at the show.

MoFi Distribution showed some classic hi-fi gear—tube amps and classic speakers—in two of their four rooms, suites 330, which I cover here, and 346 (report to come). A few products debuted, including tubed amplification from Mastersound, an Italian company with a rather un-Italian name. MoFi Distribution's VP of Sales & Marketing Jon Derda told me that Mastersound winds their own transformers in-house. The brand is new to MoFi's roster—and new to me.

Upstate New York manufacturer Alta Audio debuted its new The Adam floorstanding speaker ($17,000/pair in piano black, $18,000/pair in rosewood or beech) at Axpona, in two separate rooms.

The Adam features a 5.75" neodymium magnet ribbon tweeter, 6" midrange driver, and an 8.75" woofer "whose tuning parameters are coupled to the unique cabinet design for its infrasonic (floor-moving) bass and for refined cohesion between The Adam's XTL (Extended Line Transmission) and its pure aluminum ribbon tweeter," stated the company's website. That's potentially copious bass created from a transmission-line approach.

The Rega room was one of two rooms the Sound Organisation, a distributor of several brands from the UK, had at the show. Their other exhibit in room 662 consisted of some recent gear from Chord Electronics, such as stacked racks of the Chord Qutest DAC, Huei phono preamplifier, etc. on static display. The active system was rather old-meets-new: It had BBC School Spendor Classic 2/3 speakers ($6100/pair, just over $7000/pair with stands) and a 180Wpc Chord Ultima 6 ($9200) stereo power amplifier.