My first visit to AXPONA

The room with the Magnepan 3.7i (6K /pair) sounded excellent.  Also the Neat speakers at $5K pair and the Whammerdyne room. (speakers about $6K pair, tube amp a couple of thousand)

There was a mention of the Vanatoo speakers on the other AXPONA thread, and I thought I would give them a shout out here.  I've owned the Transparent One's for a couple of years, and they are the best small active speakers I've heard, actually, to me ears, beat out my LS50's in some ways.  I'm very excited about the  new speakers coming this year which are larger than the T1's.  Check them out if you get a chance (and now with remote!).

I’ve gone to Axpona consistently for years.  I decided not to this year because I’m finished with abusing my hearing.  Restaurants are bad enough.  I don’t get why all the reps insist on ear-splitting sound levels in those small hotel rooms.  If that’s the way one listens these days, then by all means encourage young people to go into audiology.  Very soon there will be more work than they can handle.

Quintessence Audio had a room where they had many pieces of equipment displayed but they were using an Aurender A10 directly into a SimAudio Moon amplifier (might have been an integrated amplifier) into the small Wilson speakers.  Seems to me that the entire system with cables was well under $50K (perhaps, less than $40K... I don't know what power treatment and cables cost) and it sounded really, really great.  Yes, the more elaborate and expensive systems were better but it showed that ultra high end performance could be achieved without a 6 figure budget. I would never have known without asking that they weren't using the high end SimAudio Moon DAC and preamp with the 860 amp also being displayed which would have probably exceeded $75K.

High end audio is similar to many extremes of any hobby or sport. There is always a place where price and performance meet. For us that price point is higher than people who don’t appreciate systems like ours. There is a point where doubling price doesn’t add appreciable performance. To be truly elite is crazy expensive and is always on the cusp such as high jumpers, many collegiate jumpers can jump 7” but only a handful in the world can jump 7’2” plus, millions of dollars are spent to get milliseconds faster per lap on Indy and F1 cars, many examples abound. It is satisfying to know you don’t have to break the bank to get world class sound. Especially if you’re creative and patient.