I’m a little behind on my show coverage, because I’ve attended three shows in three months as of this writing: Florida Audio Expo (February), CanJam NYC (March), and AXPONA (April). All totaled, that was more than four hundred rooms and booths to see, and hundreds of manufacturers and people. So, Part Two of our Florida Audio Expo coverage (FAE) appears here (and Part Two of Copper’s CanJam NYC coverage is elsewhere in this issue), and there will be more AXPONA coverage in Issue 221 and maybe beyond. There’s only so much one human can cover, though I had able assistance from colleagues Harris Fogel (CanJam NYC) and Rudy Radelic (AXPONA).
Also, I like to take my time in the rooms, as much as the chaos of audio shows allows, rather than breeze through everything. At the very least, I want to listen to more than one song (in case they’re playing a turkey demo track initially) and sit in more than one place in the room (to see how it affects bass response).
Part One of our Florida Audio Expo show report appears in the last issue.
Also, I suggest reading my article on tips for attending audio shows. And If you have the chance, attending one of these shows! There’s nothing like them for seeing a massive amount of gear in a short time, and hanging out with the people who make high-end audio happen.
Here we go:
This is just my opinion, not supported by facts, but I feel like the percentage of affordable audio components is creeping up at shows. Geshelli Labs is a case in point, and at $1,299, their new G-BLOK monoblock amp offers 200 watts (into 8 ohms) of fully balanced Class AB power, RCA and XLR inputs, and a choice of four front and back panel colors including black, charcoal, red and purple. (I’d love to try one of the latter, and you know the first song I’d listen to on it.)
Their DACs and amplifiers offer a variety of chip, connection, metal and wood finish and color options, including swappable DAC modules. Complete components like the ERISH2 headphone amp start at $219.99. I didn’t get to hear the G-BLOK as its intro was very hush-hush (I promised I wouldn’t write about it until its official introduction after the show, but I’ve heard other Geshelli Labs components, most recently at the Grado Labs booth at CanJam NYC 2026, and have greatly liked what I’ve heard.
It was a light and sound show at the Geshelli Labs exhibit, which took up multiple rooms.
Geshelli Labs components can be ordered in a number of cabinet and glass faceplate color options.
I am growing ever fonder of Volti Audio horn-based speakers. At FAE they featured their Lucera, a three-way hybrid horn/bass reflex speaker featuring a midrange compression driver and neodymium horn tweeter mated with a 15-inch woofer. The Lucera is 99 dB efficient, and, mated with a Cary Audio SLI-80 integrated amplifier ($6,495), WiiM Ultra music server ($945 with Teddy Pardo Audio power supply), Mojo Audio Mystique Z DAC ($11,000) and Triode Wire Labs cables, the sound was as expansive and involving as you’d imagine these speakers would deliver. Joe Bonamassa playing acoustic guitar sounded wonderful, with superb clarity and texture to the guitar’s harmonics, and the drum sound was startlingly realistic with the power that high-efficiency horn speakers do so well.
The Lucera is available in a variety of wood finishes at $12,000 per pair. Volti Audio’s website shows the actual speakers that are available for purchase, or being made. The FAE show pair was finished in a lightly-hued, distinctively-patterned Knotty Elm that was absolutely gorgeous.
Horns done right: the Volti Audio Lucera speakers were clear and open and filled the demo room with dynamic sound.
At one point during the show I ran into Michael Fremer and Ken Redmond of Tracking Angle, and they said, “You have to go into the Aretai room!” Well, when guys like that say something like that, you pay attention. Well, they weren’t kidding. It was actually Syracuse, New York dealer DreamScapes A/V’s room, which featured the Aretai Contra 200F floorstanding speakers ($31,970/pair), Benchmark Audio AHB2 power amps ($3,499/each), a Grimm Audio MU2 streamer/DAC ($21,385) and Benchmark’s own cables. The 3.5-way Contra 200F was distinguished by its round, white waveguide tweeter, operating in conjunction with a midrange driver and dual 8-inch woofer, a configuration claimed by Aretai to work well in small- to medium-sized rooms.
Well, they’re not kidding. The system had amazing…well, everything; articulate bass, superb midrange clarity, open highs, and a soundstage that belied the dimensions of the room. London Grammar’s “Hey Now” sounded, as my notes said, incredible. The song’s soaring vocals drew me into the sound in a way that was, really, fantastic.
Grimm Audio showed their LS1c active loudspeakers and accompanying system, and, as was the case at Capital Audiofest, I was once again taken with its sound, though it was different this time, more expansive, because the system was in a bigger room. Female vocals sound particularly outstanding on these speakers, I think.
The system is sold a la carte: the company offers a pair of speaker enclosures with the stands and bases (LS1c); the pair of SB1 motion-feedback subwoofers and the MU1 music server are sold separately. All necessary cables are included. The LS1c is available for $28,850 – $30,300/pair in lacquer finishes ($30,300/pair in bamboo wood veneer and $35,990/pair in HIMACS engineered stone (as shown at CAF). The SB1 subs are $14,950/pair in black finish, and the MU1 server is $14,400, with an optional 4TB SSD drive installed at an extra $490.
Focal and Naim joined forces to demonstrate their new Mu-so Hekla all-in-one 7.1.2 immersive audio system ($3,600). It looked somewhat like a soundbar but offered a lot more from its brushed aluminum exterior – Dolby Atmos, room calibration, the Naim Pulse streaming platform (compatible with Tidal, Qobuz and other streaming services), and HDMI, eARC and portable device connectivity among other features. It was set up in a big room and attendees were invited to listen to the system from a variety of locations, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the virtual surround from points throughout the room. (I chose the couch as my prime spot – audio shows can be exhausting!) It worked, and convincingly. The sound really was immersive, it did good bass, and it sounded high-fidelity-clear, not gimmicky and phasey.
Another room featured the mighty Diva Mezza Utopia 3-way active loudspeaker, the bigger successor to the Diva Utopia. The Mezza ($69,000/pair) has four 8-inch woofers, a 6.5-inch midbass driver and a pure beryllium inverted dome tweeter. Each speaker is tri-amplified and has hi-res wireless, as well as wired connectivity, DSP room correction – just add a music source. It wasn’t being demoed when I was there, one of a handful of demos at FAE I managed to miss.
The Focal Diva Mezza Utopia speakers captured listeners' attention in an open-space demo room that was easy to get to.
I am growing accustomed to hearing great sound from Gershman Acoustics at audio shows. The reason is simple: Gershman Acoustics gets great sound at audio shows. Like Capital Audiofest 2025, at FAE 2026 they showed the Symphoria speakers ($70,000/pair). Like CAF 2025, their room sounded superb, truly one of the five-star systems at the show – or as far as I’m concerned, anywhere.
Listening to Chris Stapleton’s “Death Row,” the guitar sounded incredible; it just leapt out into the room. The sound was fantastic, rich, warm, deep, and involving. Keiko Matsui’s piano on “The Road” was startlingly lifelike. I know from experience that a big part of this was because of the LampizatOr Horizon 360 DAC ($65,000) and Gulfstream music streamer ($9,600), which I’m starting to think have some kind of magic bottled in those tubes and chassis. The electronics comprised the Pass Labs XP32 preamp and X600.8 mono amplifiers ($20,000, $31,000), with everything connected by Cardas cable.
The Symphoria is a 3-way floorstander with dual custom 8-inch woofers, each with a specially designed bass trap chamber to control bass energy, along with a custom midrange and 1-inch tweeter. Gershman’s Separate Sub Alignment System (SSAS) floats the midrange/tweeter module on IsoAcoustics isolation devices to completely isolate it from the bass enclosure. The removable walnut grilles are distinctive looking, and to me, striking, making the appearance of the Symphoria unlike any other speaker.
It was hard to leave the room with the Gershman Acoustics Symphoria speakers, here shown with their grilles off.
The American Sound Distribution room featured the debut of many products, including the Avantgarde Opus1 horn loudspeakers, Air Tight ATC6 vacuum tube preamp and ATE 5 phono stage, Synthesis Embrace vacuum-tube headphone amp, Analog Relax EX700 moving-coil cartridge, and the Rethm Aarka active speaker. I somehow misplaced or didn’t take an information sheet, but briefly: the Opus1 features a horn that reproduces midrange and high frequencies from 700 – 20,000 Hz, to eliminate the need for a crossover in this critical sonic region. It’s mated with a 10-inch bass driver. Air Tight components are impeccably designed and built: check out this YouTube video. The Italian Embrace is built around a pair of 300B tubes and operates in Class A. The EX700 features a body made from Tyrolean spruce, the same wood used for Stradivarius violins.
Not all these components were playing during my time in the room, and I'm kicking myself for not noting which Avantgarde speakers were playing with the Air Tight preamp and amp – but the sound was super-clean and transparent, not “tube-coloration-like.” A Lonnie Liston Smith track had incredible dynamics and scale, and uncanny instrumental realism.
American Sound Distribution featured many components, including these Air Tight electronics and Avantgarde speakers, whiich were just a portion of the many components on display.
The power and scale that a big system can deliver (in a big room) is literally unmatched by more modest loudspeakers. Murray Head’s 1984 hit “One Night in Bangkok” has a dense, complex mix, an unexpected audiophile torture test demo track, and the all-out Audio Group Denmark system with Børresen speakers, Aavik electronics, and Ansuz and Axxess cables and accessories unraveled it with astonishing ease. A friend and I were cracking up at some of the lyrics, which we had never heard before via any other auditory means, and I’d venture to say most systems would not be as adept at unraveling them. Did you know that one line goes, “I don't see you guys rating/The kind of mate I'm contemplating?” Yeah, neither did I. For “Natural Mystic” by Bob Marley I simply wrote in my notes, “You want bass? You got it!” The low end synthesizer on Alphaville’s “A Victory of Love” was insane.
Highlights of the system included the Børresen T5 SSE Loudspeakers ($230,000/pair) and Bass Modules ($21,000 each), Aavik Acoustics SD-588 Streamer/DAC, I-588 integrated amp and P-588 power amp ($30,000 each component), and Ansuz D3 Series cables and accessories.
Audio Group Denmark went wide and deep at FAE 2026.
Heard on the big Scott Walker Audio/Von Schweikert Audio system based around their Ultra11 loudspeakers ($395,000/pair) and a pair of ARIS 12 subwoofers ($24,900 each), Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” was awesome in its spaciousness and depth. You could literally hear the spot in the room where the instrument or Jackson’s vocals were coming from, and walk into it. Talk about having fun at an audio show, to say nothing of having your mind blown! (I saw a number of attendees doing the same thing, as if they couldn’t believe that the illusion of hearing sounds coming from all over the room was actually happening.
Big audio dynamite: the Scott Walker Audio/Von Schweikert Audio system spared no effort or expense to immerse attendees in a powerful sonic experience.
Here's a behind the scenes look at this mega-system.
The fact that we were listening to tapes played on a SonoruS ATR 10mkII reel-to-reel deck ($35,000) certainly helped. Interestingly, the subwoofers were located at the rear of the large listening room and firing backward rather than into the room. Damon Von Schweikert explained that this was done to cancel the low-frequency back wave coming off the rear wall. Yet another example of how subwoofers can be beneficial not just in pumping out raw power, but in dealing with room response anomalies to achieve smoother, more accurate bass.
The rest of the system included a VAC Statement preamp and Vac Master 300iQmkII amplifiers ($94,000, $50,000 each), a Synergistic Research Voodoo server ($14,995) and MSB Cascade DAC ($95,000), Synergistic cables and accessories, no less than 10 Seismion active isolation platforms (and these things work, as I found out at an AXPONA demo that I will talk about in a future issue), plus Audio Realignment Technology (ART) noise reducing plates and EkustiK Parametric Towers and bass traps. I spent a good amount of time in that room.
Listening to Thriller on a car radio or TV in 1983, we never knew what we were missing. Which was…a lot.
For me, no contest; the Apex Designs custom music server in the Unique Home Audio room was the most striking audio component at the show.
Listening at the feet of pyramid power! The Popori Acoustics room at FAE 2026.
She's a model and she's looking good...the woman who welcomes attendees to the Popori Acoustics room has become a Florida Audio Expo tradition.
Here's an inside look at the Valve Amplification Company (VAC) Signature 202 iQ MusicBloc switchable stereo/mono amplifier.
There was no shortage of ultra-high-end systems at FAE 2026. Here's the Clarisys Audio Aria speaker system ($195,000), featuring pure ribbon drivers all around. The formidable equipment roster included Pass Labs X600.8 and XA160.8 amplifiers ($31,460 each), a Pass Labs XS Pre 2 preamplifier ($56,000), a Pink Faun Dual Ultra streamer ($75,900), an MSB Cascade DAC, plus Signal Projects cables and Ictra Design racks. The sound was transparent in that ribbon-driver way, and need we say, powerful and present?
The Denmark Audio Group room showcased the J. Sikora Aspire turntable and arm, available at around $10,000.
Tampa, Florida's own Soundfield Audio displayed a number of loudspeakers that could be custom-configured in a variety of passive and active configurations and driver types, with provision for variable directivity to accommodate differences in listening rooms and user preferences.
Header image: Let the sound shine in! These very fine Tobian Sound Systems 12 Signature loudspeakers in the Suncoast Audio room were one of many horn-based designs at Florida Audio Expo 2026.
All images courtesy of the author.
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