Legacy Audio
Legacy Audio of Springfield, Illinois featured not one but three systems at AXPONA including three show debuts.
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Ken Micallef
Interview: Fyne Audio's Dr. Paul Mills and Andrzej Sosna
The following interview, with Fyne Audio Technical Director Dr. Paul Mills and Managing Director Andrzej Sosna, conducted by Stereophile Contributing Editor Ken Micallef, was posted previously embedded in a report on Harmonia Distribution's rooms at AXPONA. Here, we present it on its own so that more people will see it.
MoFi Electronics
Affable speaker designer Andrew Jones held court in room 334, explaining the details behind his new SourcePoint 888 floorstanding speakers ($4999/pair), an AXPONA world premiere (review forthcoming). Unfortunately, he couldn’t play his speakers due to the hotel’s intermittent Wi-Fi, which plagued many rooms.
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Audio Note (UK)
I typically attend Audio Note (UK) rooms not just to listen, but to learn.
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Sierra Sound, Aesthetix Audio Corp, Analog Manufaktur Germany, Benz Micro Switzerland
First-time AXPONA exhibitor Sierra Sound was founded in 2020 as a distributor for strictly analog hi-fi equipment. Rather high minded, wouldn’t you say? Personally, I’m all in.
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Rhythm Distribution, Tannoy, Garrard, Goldmund, Lumin, AudioQuest, Nordost
Rhythm Distribution’s Craig Hoffman teamed up with Garrard, Goldmund, and Tannoy to unveil a beautiful-looking, primarily analog rig at AXPONA. Kat Ourlian—Global Head of Sales and Marketing for SME—was on hand to spin vinyl; she had Room 660 rocking from the first needle-drop.
Magnepan and Rogue Audio
Rogue Audio's Nick Fitzsimmons and Bill Magerman ran a room that operated smoothly and sounded smooth.
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DeVore Fidelity
In the room operated by Brooklyn’s John DeVore, we time traveled to the 1940s and 50s as he spun pristine shellac 78s on an EMT turntable, playing through the world premieres of both his O/bronze Loudspeakers (30,000/pair) and the 7Wpc Komuro Amplifier Company K300S direct-coupled SET 300B stereo amplifier ($20,000).
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Tone Imports: Revival Audio, Dynavector, Audio MusiKraft, FonoLab, Leben, Tellurium, Sugden, Box Furniture
Meeting up with Tone Imports’ Jonathan Halpern and Pitch Perfect Audio’s Matthew Rotunda was like a family reunion for me. Along with John DeVore and Twittering Machines’ Michael Lavorgna, Halpern is one of my oldest friends and audio guides. His east coast (or Midwest) appearances are rare since he restationed himself in the sunny California desert. His and Rotunda’s ability to assemble a beautiful sounding system remains the same as it ever was.
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Technics Grand Class SL-1200/1210GR2 record player
In the early 1980s, I worked in a pop band playing AM radio hits, grooving behind my Yamaha drums and Zildjian cymbals as sweat drenched my body and my ears rang. We danced. We pranced. My shiny silk jumpsuit led upwards to a 2"-high afro, which women ran fingers through in hopes of finding contraband smokes ... Then overnight, everything changed.
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At the beginning of the previous decade, Technics had released the SP-10, the first direct drive turntable. That was followed in short order by the SL-1100. Clive Campbell, aka Jamaican-American DJ Kool Herc, pioneered the simultaneous use of two Technics SL-1100s, initially at his sister's birthday party in the Bronx, inspiring "block parties" (rigging streetlamps for power) and hip-hop culture. Kool Herc isolated drumbeats from records by James Brown (with drummers Clyde Stubblefield and John "Jabo" Starks) and the Incredible Bongo Band (powered by master studio drummer Jim Gordon), among others, creating "breaks" for heated dance-floor partying. Soon, Lace Taylor (aka Afrika Bambaataa) and Grandmaster Flash (The Message) took Kool Herc's inventions into the mainstream, and hip-hop went global.