AXPONA 2017 Protocol

I could be wrong, but this year the gold pass does not seem to include an extra hour in the rooms. In my experience, while the traffic is lighter Friday, especially after noon, the rooms commonly sound the worst at the start and improve over the weekend. And by "worst" I mean sometimes uselessly bad. Also these days visitors more commonly rely on the large banks of music the vendors have on hard drives for audition rather than plug in their own music. It is not impolite to ask, certainly.

The MBL demo at AXPONA is popular for good reason, even if you'd never want to look at those loudspeakers for one minute in your own home.  On the other hand, the Marten Coltrane loudspeaker demo was phenomenal.  Expensive, but worth a listen.  The big Wilson room was in a room that was . . . big.  Awesome sound, but for prairie-sized listening spaces.  Last year, a few rooms played R2R tape. You know, the stuff that sounds great but that you'll probably never listen to at your place. Gotta remember that it's about the music that works for you and the musical media to which you have real world access.

Real world demo excellence at AXPONA 2016 (IMO): Bryston, Gershmann speakers, Vandersteen, Harbeth, Salk, McIntosh.  Lots of others. It's an excellent show.

Do bring the music you want to hear.  Try not to be discouraged by the poor musical taste demonstrated by some convention attendees.  Run the other way if you hear movie soundtracks!

Analog: beware many (not all) vendors also have terrible taste in LP selection. Way too many "audiophile" spectacular disks.  Let's be honest: no one really likes to hear those at home.  Bring along a few LPs that you'd be willing to hear in a demo.

As much as I agree that you should bring some music,  you must also be ready for some real disappointment... Most of these rooms will be very busy,  some will be hard to get into.... Make it clear that you are in the market to purchase and "This is on my Short List".... that may help, but I suspect that quite often (not always) you won't get your music selection played.  Good Luck,  Tim

Looking forward to Axpona, Check out the reviews on Proac D48R

The Endeavors you are looking at are definelity worth the audition time and may be best of your bunch and a listen to the newest Von Schweirkert' s even though out of price limit can give a reference to what is possible. I would narrow down to three serious contenders or a listen and then have more casual fun rest of the day. It will be my first time at a show too, arriving Thursday and staying through Saturday.