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Category: The Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2025

Morning had broken, and so had my head! After a truly sublime dinner with a couple of Naim friends at the end of the first day of the Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2025, we had unwisely decided to return to the hotel bar for a nightcap, only to find that the party was still in full swing. This industry might give the impression of being full of boffins debating the merits of different power-supply architectures, but we can party as well as any touring rock band! Catching up with industry friends over some single malts, it struck me how much I adore the British hi-fi industry and the people in it.

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Category: The Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2025

I have attended the Bristol Hi-Fi Show for more than 30 years, and it remains one of my favorite weekends of the audio calendar. Other shows have their merits, but there’s a real energy to the Bristol Hi-Fi Show, with its crowded rooms and corridors and the expansive bar where the public rub shoulders with manufacturers over a steady stream of ale. At the close of play on the Friday night, it seems that every single exhibitor, customer rep, journalist, and PR person who’s ever worked in hi-fi descends on the bar, creating a glorious cacophony of conversation that rises like the instrumental crescendo in “A Day in the Life.”

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

Assessing the sound quality of any system—let alone an individual component—at a hi-fi show is nearly impossible. With unfamiliar rooms, components, and music selections, it’s difficult to determine much about any specific element. The only thing you can know for certain is whether the system sounds good at that moment. Nonetheless, we still attempt to compare systems, even in unfamiliar surroundings, by playing some of our favorite tracks as we move from room to room.

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

For a while, I followed Doug Schneider around, checking out systems that people could actually afford. Although the socialist in me recognized this pursuit as valuable, it was mighty boring. While looking at $1500 amplifiers and $5000 speakers, I found myself mentally rolling my eyes, knowing there were other rooms jam-packed with systems that cost more than a house.

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

One of my goals for day one was to find a room that (a) sounded great and (b) would add a zero to the price of one of Doug’s sensibly priced systems. I managed to satisfy both criteria in House of Stereo’s room. House of Stereo is a Florida-based retailer, and this room featured products by Electrocompaniet, Stenheim, and Nordost.

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

The Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla are my benchmark products for value in the auto and hi-fi industries. A quick Google search indicates that in the United States, the 2025 version of the former starts at $24,500 and the latter at $22,325.

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

That’s a whole lot of very expensive wood, I thought to myself as I walked into the Volti Audio room and took note of the large, sumptuous New Vittora loudspeaker system—an update of the company’s original Vittora—which was making its world debut here at the Florida International Audio Expo.

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

Occasionally, I’ll walk into a room and instantly know that the speakers, the room, and the electronics are right. There’s a sense of cohesiveness to a room that’s right. After experiencing room after room where the music is missing that elusive something, you’ll walk into one of these magic rooms, and within a single bar, you’ll just know.

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

From the outset, I knew that our coverage of this show would be an exercise in extremes. My sole reporting partner at this year’s Florida International Audio Expo is Jason Thorpe, senior editor of SoundStage! Ultra. So it made sense for Jason to focus on more expensive products. The subject of Jason’s first dispatch was the Oneiros loudspeaker by Oneiros Audio, which starts at $650,000 per pair (all prices in USD)—talk about extremes! After reading it, I knew I had to uncover some more affordable products.

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

I first met Jonathan Magnus Cook when he greeted me at the door of the Ø Audio room in Warsaw at Audio Video Show 2024. At that time, they were playing some seriously ominous metal. I turned to Cook and asked about this terrifying music, which was being played at a very high volume. “This is Norwegian metal,” he responded. “We are Norwegian.”

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Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025

There’s a lighted billboard on Interstate 75 just outside of Tampa. A big one. “ONEIROS—WORLD-CLASS AUDIO,” it exclaims, pointing viewers toward the Florida International Audio Expo at the Sheraton Tampa Brandon. Oneiros Audio clearly took this to heart. Here they were, jumping into this big-speaker thing without restraint.

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Category: Jason Thorpe

When last we met, I told the tale of my two-houses-down neighbors Quentin and Laurielle and how a question about a Sonos replacement led to my invasion of their house armed with a Bluesound-and-PSB streaming system.

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Category: Jason Thorpe

We’re a gregarious bunch, for the most part, here in our little community of nine townhouses. An open garage with a running power tool is often all it’ll take for one or two neighbors to amble over and see what’s up.

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Category: Jason Thorpe

As you may have read in my November editorial over at SoundStage! Ultra, it’s been a busy, nutty time in and out of my listening room over the past couple of weeks. In late October, just before penning that editorial, I had to figure out how to receive the brand-new, first-in-North America Epikore 9 speakers DALI had just shipped.

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Category: Audio Video Show 2024

The Golden Tulip is another trendy hotel just across the way from the Radisson Blu Sobieski, which is where we stayed and where the majority of exhibitors at Audio Video Show 2024 were located for the previous three days. It’s a much smaller show area, but it’s disproportionately packed with gems, especially since much of the exhibition space is divided across conference rooms that are large enough to really show the capabilities of an ultra-high-end system. Destination Audio didn’t reserve one of those huge spaces, though I kind of think they’re better off for it, frankly.

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Category: Audio Video Show 2024

It seems that every audio show you go to will have at least one manufacturer who completely sideswipes you. It’s usually the local guys, folks who are at only their first or second show and seem a little bit nervous about being on such a big stage. It goes like this: you enter half a dozen rooms that have you leaving after four or five minutes, saying, “Hmm, yes, very nice.” And then you wander into a room that knocks you on your ass. This time, it was ElinsAudio’s.

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Category: Audio Video Show 2024

It’s not often I find a vinyl-related product that intimidates me. Turntables, no matter how large or complicated, generally distill down to simple components with known operating principles. Perhaps the most complicated products out there are air-bearing turntables and tonearms, but even these are fairly easy to understand and operate. The air-bearing platter floats like a hovercraft, and the air-bearing tonearm is a tube that rides in a sleeve. Not that hard to understand, right?

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Category: Audio Video Show 2024

Over the past few years, Pro-Ject Audio Systems, the Austrian manufacturer of turntables of all sizes and types, has focused on affordable ’tables, seemingly at the expense of its higher-end models. Who can blame the brand? The vinyl revival has undoubtedly been a goldmine for Pro-Ject. Churning out thousands of affordable turntables just has to be more profitable than a slow trickle of high-priced audiophile models.

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Category: Audio Video Show 2024

It’s so very true that many audiophile speakers can’t rock out. Oh sure, a well-designed speaker should be able to play any kind of music satisfactorily, but audiophiles seem to value the dainty attributes of speakers over sheer muscle.

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Category: Audio Video Show 2024

We got ditched for dinner. SoundStage! Ultra’s senior editor, Jason Thorpe, and I were left to our own devices by SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider the other night. “Not coming,” he’d texted us. “Dinner with this Norwegian brand.” We didn’t think much of it till we wandered into a room put together by someone we’d never heard of here at the Radisson Blu Sobieski, one of the three Audio Video Show 2024 locations. “You know these guys?” Jason asked in a text to Doug.

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