I like Florida Audio Expo, and not just because it gives us northerners a chance to escape the winter (particularly miserable this year) in the middle of every February. It’s small enough to be manageable yet big enough to have the critical mass of a major undertaking. The venue, the Sheraton Tampa Brandon, is easy to navigate, with four floors of hotel room exhibits, plus the large ballrooms and marketplace area on the first floor.
At Florida Audio Expo 2026 there were a substantial number of manufacturers, vendors, distributors, and dealers (who hosted many of the rooms), plus live music events to remind us, after experiencing the sensory overload that happens after listening to dozens of systems and hundreds of components, of why we audio enthusiasts do this. High-performance audio is all about getting closer to the music. Or at least it should be.
The FAE show organizers do a good job in welcoming first-time attendees. The signage was excellent, the layout of exhibitors was easy to navigate (though thanks to my terrible sense of direction, I missed a few booths), the show directory offered a handy “what to listen for” guide, and there were plenty of informative seminars. Many families and younger people attended, although, as at any audio show, gray hairs did not feel alone. There was also an outdoor section of high-performance automotive audio, with an IASCA-sanctioned car audio sound quality event (IASCA stands for International Auto Sound Challenge Association). In talking to attendees it was clear that the auto sound area brings in a different crowd and provides the opportunity for cross pollination between home and car enthusiasts. (I focused on the home audio gear, though I was curious about how some of the car audio amps would sound in a home system.)
Our alligator friend from last year’s FAE was nowhere in sight.
Rather than recite my usual litany of caveats, I suggest you click on this link to my article, “Your Editor’s Tips for Attending Audio Shows.” I do need to emphasize the main rule, which cannot be repeated enough: you cannot make definitive judgments about the sound you hear at audio shows! There are too many variables that exhibitors have to struggle with, the main one being less-than-optimal and sometimes unfamiliar rooms. You can make judgments, obviously, but the sound you hear in exhibit rooms may not be the last word in what the components and systems can really do.
Case in point: Jacksonville, Florida audio dealer House of Stereo’s room with a big Ø Audio Verdande $45,000/pair horn loudspeaker system. I hadn’t warmed up to this brand’s speakers at previous shows, but I liked the Verdandes a lot here. Featuring a horn-loaded carbon fiber tweeter and 15-inch woofer, the speakers were mated with a very fine system with an Accustic Arts Amp I, Preamp I and Player III CD player/DAC ($25,179, $23, 638 and $14,480), VPI Avenger Direct turntable ($36,000), Wolf Audio Systems server ($19,000), Artesania Panzerholz rack (starting at $6,000), and Synergistic Research cables. The sound had vivid presence and great dynamic impact.
The Ø Audio Verdande speakers in one of the House of Stereo rooms.
Another example: I had been impressed with Popori Acoustics full-range electrostatic loudspeakers at previous shows in their ability to produce amazing amounts of highly articulate bass, and their characteristic electrostatic clarity, but they crossed my threshold from admiring them to feeling they were sensational at FAE in cable maker Spiritual Sound’s room, paired with AGD Productions electronics. They looked like they were set up much too widely apart, but they weren’t: the setup produced a warm, inviting sound and, as you can imagine, a wonderfully wide and deep soundstage, yet with good imaging. (Popori had another room with their striking Vitorla speaker and the coolest-looking music server you will ever see; I’ll report on that next issue.)
It looks like these Popori Acoustics speakers were placed way too far apart, but they weren't. The soundstage was vast.
The principle works both ways: some of the speakers that sounded fantastic at earlier shows did not sound as good at FAE. Naming them would be a disservice.
I saw many of the same or similar systems and combinations of gear at Capital Audiofest 2025 as I did at FAE, so I won’t go into as much detail with these rooms as with other exhibits. You can read both installments of Copper’s CAF 2025 coverage by clicking here and here.
As always, all opinions are strictly my own.
It’s become Pavlovian to expect good sound from Valve Amplification Company (VAC) components with Acora Acoustics loudspeakers, and their exhibit by Texas and California dealer Scott Walker Audio was no exception. In fact, I thought the big room delivered the companies’ best sound ever, and that’s saying something. The recording of “Ave Maria” I heard offered what I’d consider perfect tonality, with the choir occupying a vast sonic space in an incredible virtual sonic reality. The recording sounded illuminated, where you could “see” into every corner of the sound field. I’m tempted to joke about saying it was a religious experience, but well, that would not be an inappropriate analogy.
The gear that delivered the goods included Acora VRC speakers in a striking Mari Blue finish (from $218,000/pair), VAC Master 300 iQ Mk II Musicbloc power amps ($50,000/each), Statement line stage and Statement phono stage ($94,000/each), plus an VPI Avenger Statement turntable with 12-inch arm ($50,000), Hana Umami Black phono cartridge ($11,500), Aurender N50 streamer ($38,500), Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Reference Series 3P and Alpha USB reference digital gear ($34,000 and $5,995) and Cardas Clear and Clear Beyond cables. Two smaller systems were also on display, but I got distracted and didn’t give them the audition they deserved.
From smallest to all-out, here are the three VAC/Acora Acoustics systems shown by Scott Walker Audio at Capital Audiofest 2025.
The more I hear Margules Audio components, the more I like them. They look the way they sound, beautiful, inviting, and organic (forgive me for using the audiophile cliché du jour, but “organic” is a good way to describe a system that sounds “alive”). At Capital Audiofest 2025 I was amazed at how their bookshelf Century Overture speakers overcame the limitations of a small room where they were up against a wall and couldn’t work – except they did. In the large Florida Audio Expo suite by Deep Dive Audio and Ball Audio Distribution and System Solutions (otherwise known as B.A.D.A.S.S., which has to be the best audio acronym ever) these speakers, as well as the main system, really had room to breathe.
The big system featured Margules Intermezzo floorstanding speakers ($30,000/pair), U280 SC 30th Anniversary Special Edition tube amplifiers ($12,000/each), an SF-220 tube preamp ($8,000), an MS-01 music server/streamer ($3,500), a Margules phono stage ($2,500) QR2 line conditioner ($2,650) and a TD-25 turntable and arm ($6,900). Yes, Margules even make their own turntable, and even their own headphones (the Margules Planar Headphones at $2,500, driven by the company’s OTL headphone amp/music server/streamer.
The main system was captivating. I did not want to tear myself away. It did all the audiophile stuff right, but its overall presentation made me forget all that and just bask in the music. I cannot tell you how gorgeous Eva Cassidy sounded. The gear, while not cheap, is sanely priced considering what you get.
Another Deep Dive Audio room featured YG Acoustics Carmel3 speakers ($29,800/pair), and an MJ Acoustics Buckingham subwoofer, interface, and cables ($24,999 for the sub and $2,397 for the interface and cables), Doshi Audio electronics including a 2MC phono preamp, Hybrid Stereo Amplifier and Line Preamplifier ($24,995, $25,995 and $23,995), a Pear Audio Blue Aras turntable with Cornet 3 tonearm ($16,500) and Mutech Hayate MC cartridge ($7,500), an Ideon EOS Streamer, Alpha Wave LAN Optimizer, Absolute Time reclocker, and ION DAC/preamp ($16,000, $7,900, $13,000, $29,000), plus VIABLUE and WireWorld cables, a Classic Zero rack ($4,650), and an RSX Power8-20 outlet box ($555). Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend enough time there but even a quick listen told me this was a serious system.
The main Margules Audio setup. My lackluster photography skills don't capture how beautiful these components look in real life.
Another Deep Dive Audio room showcased the YG Acoustics Carmel3 speakers, Doshi Audio electronics, and other components.
There were many excellent seminars at FAE, too many to cover in depth. Honestly, you could spend almost the entire show attending them, and learning a lot. That said, I made it a point to attend the “Women in Hifi: From Her Point of View” panel, which included Dee Goldstein (Innovo Audio Designs), Darlene Monteiro-Hayes (Valve Amplification Company), Sherri Geshelli (Geshelli Labs), Ofra Gershman (Gershman Acoustics), May Anwar (101 Audio), Anne Bisson (recording artist), Anastasia Protopappas (Pass Laboratories), and Sheree Cora (Acora Acoustics), moderated by Steve Rochlin of Enjoy the Music.
As Steve noted in an editorial on ETM, it “served as a focused forum to highlight, connect, and support women working across the home-audio industry. The seminar brought together industry professionals, advocates, and attendees for a mix of panel discussions, career path conversations, and practical advice aimed at increasing visibility and opportunity for women in engineering, manufacturing, retail, media, and events within the hi-fi community.”
Unfortunately, the recording I made of the proceedings was unintelligible, but you can see a good portion of the seminar in the YouTube video below. So, I can only make a couple of general comments, the main one being: guys, if you want the women in your lives to enjoy your systems as much as you do, invite them to participate in your audio pursuits! If we want more women to be included in the hobby, well, include them! Seems obvious, but one guy in the audience showed a lot that was wrong by going on about his system and his room and his wants while making it clear that his wife had no say in the process.
Also, news flash, women may have different musical priorities than men. Though some of them can get techy with the best of the gearhead guys, many of the panelists stressed that, for them, it was all about the emotional connection with the music and the gear was just a means to this end. And, again not breaking news, audio equipment should complement the living space.
Anette Askvik’s “Liberty” from the album of the same name (see our review in Issue 223) has rightfully become a must-hear system demo track, and in Deep Dive Audio’s other big room, it sounded stunning, rich, deep, and incredibly spacious. The electric piano and sax were reach-out-and-touch-them tangible.
In another Deep Dive Audio room (they had three), the Marten Parker Duo monitor speakers were featured ($15,200/pair, $4,000 for the stands), were an object lesson in matching the speakers to the room. They worked perfectly in the small hotel room, with surprisingly ample bass, and all the soundstage width and depth and detail you could want. They’re gorgeous in their gloss black finish.
The associated equipment included a Zesto Audio Andros Deluxe II phono preamp, ($8,300), Norma IPA-140B integrated amp and DS-2 CD player/DAC ($7,500) Pear Audio Blue Captain J. Handy turntable with Cornet 1 arm ($4,500 in custom finish), Ortofon MC X40 cartridge ($1,150), Silent Angel MU-OTB-S-US streamer, Bonn N8 Pro-US Ethernet switch and LP-Forester F2-US power supply ($3,199, $1,699 and $1,849), Jorma Trinity cables, and other gear. It was a lesson in careful system matching.
The Deep Dive Audio display with the Marten Parker Duo speakers. I thought they were a perfect match with the exhibit room.
Once again I heard a demo of IsoAcoustics GAIA speaker isolation devices. Once again the improvement they provide was immediately and obviously heard. (They also make isolation products for components, turntables, pro audio gear and even guitar amps!)
It had been a while since I’d heard Monitor Audio speakers, and found them sharing a room with Michi, Rotel’s line of higher-end electronics. The Monitor Audio Platinum 200 ($15,295/pair) is a beautiful slim tower (available in satin white, gloss black, and ebony wood) with an MPD III (Micro-Pleated Diaphragm) AMT tweeter, 4-inch midrange and dual woofers. The speakers have unique torque tuning bolts that hold the drivers against the cabinet, and they can be adjusted to optimize the sound. Michi offers a transport/DAC, integrated amplifiers, a preamp, and stereo and mono amplifiers, with the components ranging from $5,599 to 49,499, and they were an excellent match with the Platinum 200 speakers. A Leonard Cohen recording had superb clarity and tonal realism, and Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” revealed nuances I never knew were there. The small nook that the system was situated in proved to be no obstacle to the system’s ability to deliver outstanding imaging and a satisfying sound field.
The Monitor Audio/Michi setup may look modest, but it delivered really, really satisfying sound.
Orchard Audio always delivers an object lesson in overachieving sound at sane prices, and their FAE systems with Soundfield Audio speakers were no exception. The floorstanding system, comprised of an Orchard Audio PecanPi+ Streamer Premium streamer/DAC/preamp, Starkrimson Stereo Ultra DMC 2.5 amp, and Soundfield Audio Obelisk T7 Passive speakers, cost $17,750 (without cables). The bookshelf system with the same streamer, a pair of Starkrimson 25 Mono Premium amps, and Soundfield Audio MiniMon stand-mount speakers, was priced at $5,400 without cables.
The first thing I heard, “Little Paradise” by Eliane Elias, sounded superb. Her voice riveted me. So how could I resist staying for the extraordinary in-the-room bass and real-sounding piano of the Ray Brown Trio? Even that too-tired demo cut, Boz Scaggs’ “Thanks to You,” was gripping, with its excellent sound field and the depth of the horn section. They were giving out Girl Scout cookies in the room, and as Orchard’s Joe Goswami told me to tell people, “You wanna listen, you gotta eat!” I ate.
Orchard Audio demonstrated two reasonably-priced systems that proved you don't have to drain your IRA to hear great sound.
Another listen to the Chesky Audio LC-2 bookshelf monitors driven by Cambridge Audio electronics confirmed that these are superb speakers I could live with forever, at $2,000 a pair. The sound in their modestly-sized room was so good I didn’t feel like I was missing anything needed for musical enjoyment.
Sometimes in my haste to cover as much ground as possible I forget to take notes, or hastily write them in the hallway after visiting a few rooms in a row. So I’m kicking myself for reading these: “Los Lobos, ‘Hearts of Stone,’ AMAZING, room with Marten big black speakers. Rumer, ‘Walk On By,’ piano…vibraphone…stunning.” I will try to cross-reference this and find this exhibit room so I can do it justice.
Visual appeal is a thing. Maybe that’s why I have three 1970s receivers in my home, and illuminated blue McIntosh meters are iconic. Such was the case in the Playback Distribution room, featuring the gorgeous Advance Paris A12 Apex integrated amplifier ($4,999) and ACD Apex CD player ($1,399). These vacuum-tube components had an elegant, understated appearance with, yes, large blue (or white) meters, a combination of timeless and modern aesthetics. They were driving the Amphion Argon 3LX floorstanding speakers ($6,998/pair in black, white, or walnut) and the system sounded excellent. As Amphion’s website puts it, “[The Argon 3LX] combines the midrange detail and speed of our best bookshelf speaker with a surprising bass extension.” That’s what I heard, I’m sure in no small part to a new tweeter and upgraded crossover for the model. The source was a Silent Angel Munich M1T streamer, and Bonn, Forester, Esprit and Quadraspire products rounded out the system, all connected with Advance Paris cables. I wanted to take the integrated amp home with me.
Looking good: Advance Paris components in the Playback Distribution room.
It’s no stretch to say that many audiophiles prize vocal reproduction above all in a system. Well, you should have heard Dean Martin in the MSB Technology room. It was one of the most realistic instances of vocal reproduction I’ve ever heard, just off-the-meter incredible. It was the same with Elton John’s “Love Song,” though not the best recording – the vocals are split between hard left and hard right, with Elton on the right and Lesley Duncan on the left, an acoustic guitar panned hard left, and for some reason, the sounds of children at a playground, entering in the middle about halfway through the song. But the sense of the singers being in the room was downright spooky. The lack of stereo imaging didn’t even matter.
The MSB components making the very special sound included the MSB Cascade DAC ($95,000) and MSB M500 mono amplifiers ($172,500/pair), playing through Magico M2 speakers. The Cascade DAC puts the processing, signal sources and necessary interfaces into its Cascade Digital Director. As MSB informed me, all of the electrical interference and electrical noise coming from sources such as computer servers and their power supplies, USB and Ethernet, TV and radio stations, Wi-Fi and so on that are coming into the Cascade’s Director are completely isolated from the DAC. The only connection between the DAC and the Director is a laser-driven fiber cable. Then, all the low-noise analog electronics are located in the Cascade Digital to Analog Converter, and all the analog power supplies are housed in the Cascade Powerbase. The M500 amplifier features a massive 1.0 farad “Power Core,” and is housed in a very impressive-looking machined billet enclosure.
You might have noticed that this system didn’t have a preamp. As Vince Galbo of MSB Technology explained, “It begs the question of, what does a preamp do? RCA established line level [signal levels] back in the 1930s and we are still using the connector today. A preamp takes the industry [standard] line level signal and boosts it up one or more gain stages to full volume for the sole purpose of…turning it down again! We consider the output of the ladders [in the ladder DAC] the place in the circuitry where the analog signal is the most pure and the most precious. For that reason, our ladders put out full volume. Therefore, we only need to attenuate (turn down the loudness). We do this with extreme-quality resistors only. After that, the analog signal goes directly to the output jacks. The output is very robust and more than enough drive for any amps or interconnects.”
I was first knocked out by the Grandinote Mach 8XL speakers ($128,000/pair)and Solo amplifier (starting at $22,500) combination, linked up by Kimber Kable, at Capital Audiofest 2024, and since then I always check them out at shows. The Mach 8XL have eight “unfiltered and un-equalized” woofers, which means no crossover is used (there’s a high-pass capacitor for the tweeter). The woofers flank a 1-inch horn compression tweeter. The Mach 8XL stands about 69 inches high, and can fill a room with incredible layered depth and image precision. This time I was bowled over by Tommy Schneider and friends performing an instrumental version of “Ain’t No Sunshine.” The sheer forcefulness and physical power of the organ, sax, and drums was incredible. The full line of Grandinote products is now distributed in the US by Effortless HiFi.
The Class A zero feedback Solo amp has a distinctive large illuminated front panel that can be set to display different colors, and delivers 60 watts per channel with a frequency response from 2 Hz to 240 kHz. The Kimber Kable used included the KS6065 speaker cable, PK10 Palladian and PK10G PowerKords, and the new NEO-CU interconnects, which will be officially released at AXPONA.
I’ve also had multiple opportunities to hear the Innovo Audio Designs Luxe T1, a 3-way tri-amplified active speaker system that’s less than six inches deep, thanks to its side-mounted proprietary elliptical bass drivers. The speaker’s distinctive, curved enclosure is available in a number of wood finishes beginning at $24,000 per pair. At FAE, Paul Simon’s “Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes” had a big, wide soundspace with the electric bass sounding kinetic, and its distinctive “growl” coming through with great power. The electric guitar sounded like someone was really playing it in the room. For more information about the Luxe T1, you can read the Copper interview with designer Yair Raz at this link.
Want to save some money and are handy with a soldering iron? Elekit offers a range of vacuum-tube amps and preamps that offer the satisfaction of building a superb audio component yourself.
You can also build your own transmission line speaker enclosures from Neil Blanchard Designs, as shown in the Geshelli Labs booth. The customer supplies the drivers and other parts.
Orange is the new black, as evidenced by this Perreaux 300iX integrated amplifier, seen at Sarasota, Florida dealer's Suncoast Audio exhibit. As Perreaux notes, it's available in any color of your heart's desire – or black.
It's not easy covering an audio show! Carlo LoRaso of Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity does his part to help keep things in order.
Part Two of our Florida Audio Expo show report will appear in the next issue.
Header image: setting up a turntable in one of the House of Stereo rooms before the show.
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