June in Southern California means a lot of things to different people. In early June, the famed and notoriously dangerous surf spot known as “The Wedge” in Newport Beach had record waves, so much so that crowds descended from all over to this small strip of beach near the northernmost jetty that marks the entrance to Newport Bay. To say that the waves were insane isn’t hyperbole. Just Google it to get an idea.
Around the same time, the annual audiophile show, T.H.E. Show 2026, opened on June 26th at the Hilton/Orange County hotel in Costa Mesa. This show has a long history, with multiple owners, and accordingly, different visions over the years as to what it could be. The first one I attended had glam cars, a cigar tent, lots of folks with gold chains, and a Robb Report kind of luxury vibe, yet it also offered a bustling and energetic marketplace area complete with a personal audio and headphones. And of course, high-end audio. There were nighttime events including concerts, as well as lectures and seminars during the day. The high bucks glitz factor was very much in the air, but with smaller, budget systems to balance things out. These early shows were great fun.
The first T.H.E. Show was started by Mike Mahoney and partners and debuted in 1996 in Las Vegas at the St. Tropez Hotel. After that, Richard Beers took over, and he ran it until his passing in 2016. In his will he left the show to his friend, well-known Las Vegas caterer Maurice Jung. Beers and Jung were like brothers. Jung kept the show moving forward, and along the way he met and married musician Emiko Carlin, who he hired to do social media, and they ended up getting married. In 2023, she purchased the show from him. There are a few more twists and turns to the narrative, but the bottom line is that Carlin has had different ideas for moving T.H.E. Show over the past few years. I asked her about this and her thoughts are at the end of this article.
First and foremost for 2026 was the creation of an all-day live music festival to complement the audio exhibits. T.H.E. Music Festival, featured more than 15 local Southern California performers and bands, headlined by Grammy-award winning guitarist Larry Mitchell. The sound was provided by high-end audio manufacturer PBN Audio. I attended several performances, and all were universally strong and compelling. Some performances had only a few folks in attendance, which was a disappointment, while others filled the room. Saturday night featured the headliners, Larry Mitchell, Emiko Carlin, Mike Leach, and Matthew Moran. It was a wonderful evening of music. The show also featured T.H.E. Film Festival, with a curated set of videos and an all-out surround-sound system provided by Legacy Audio that included large floorstanding speakers, plus amplification and DSP room correction.
T.H.E. Show's Emiko Carlin was tireless in her efforts in making the show happen.
I thought having a music festival as part of an audio show was a neat idea, and hearing live music certainly reminds us of the limitations of recorded and reproduced sound. As good as it might be, nothing beats live music. One night, I sat with a group of “Ambassadors,” who are passionate fans of T.H.E Show, and volunteer their time and energy to help work and promote the show. The motto of T.H.E. Show is, “This Is Where Audio Becomes Family.” There was even a seminar dedicated to the subject.
Many musicians participated in T.H.E. Music Festival, including Grammy award-winning guitarist Larry Mitchell (above).
Carlin is interested in pushing T.H.E Show forward, due in part to the overall aging of audio show attendees, and the wish to bring younger people and more women into the hobby. However, there were some vendors who believed that anything that drew attendees away from their rooms was problematic, since it could potentially mean lost sales. While audio shows are friendly, social events, make no mistake that with the often substantial costs involved, these shows are about business, and the return on investment is critical.
As an example, the dwindling ROI for specialty audio manufacturers was a big part of what led to the decrease in audio exhibitors at CES. One could argue that the panel discussions, lectures, and workshops also draw attendees away from exhibitors, but on the other hand they are a well-attended fixture at audio shows, and one could also argue that they’re part of what brings people to shows. I for one do my best to attend as many of them as I can. Because they are educational, they help me to understand issues and trends in the industry, and the same is true for attendees.
One argument for keeping shows as they are, without trying to expand them with music festivals and other added events, is the successful show model for events like Capital Audiofest and AXPONA, now the undisputed patriarch of shows in the US ever since Rocky Mountain Audio Fest left the building.
So, it’s fair to ask: what is the key mission of an audio show? Sales? Media attention? An opportunity for attendees and manufacturers to socialize? Listening sessions? The opportunity to experience luxury audio, or budget audio, or both? I say, fill in the blanks for yourself and for your expectations. For me, it’s a combination of all these factors and more, but as a member of the press, I’m not a typical attendee.
Carlin also made a strategic decision to encourage an increase in larger exhibit rooms, with fewer of the smaller normal hotel rooms. Every attendee I met had told me they had a good time and planned to return. The rooms were mostly busy, and most had wonderful-sounding systems. The large rooms in the lower levels were the same as in the past, hosting new speakers and components from Audience, PBN Audio/Kimber Kable, Synergistic Research, Supreme Acoustic Systems, The Audio Association, Gestalt Audio, Ayre Acoustics, MC AudioTech, HiRes HiFi, and Aaudio Imports, among others.
The larger rooms helped to encourage good sound. Here's PBN Audio's exhibit.
The Lobby level offered T.H.E. Marketplace and T.H.E. Music Festival as well as T.H.E. Vintage Lounge, which had a superb system with Charles White of Studio Maxe DJ’ing and sponsored by Simco Audio and vintage audio aficionado Mahina Kim. The Marketplace featured Kirmuss Audio, EnMusic, OnFILTER, American Recorder Technologies, Auribus Acoustics, AV Room Service/Wally Tools/WAM Engineering), and the Analog Shop.
The second floor hosted 13 rooms, including Cerwin Vega, Triangle Art, PranaFidelity, Jaguar Audio, Zesto Audio/Cardas Audio, Lone Mountain Audio, Odyssey Audio, Shakuto Audio, Lounge Audio, Sunny Components, Tonian Labs, and Audio Note UK (who featured Stephen Hoffman playing unreleased audio treasures from his mastering career). As you can see from exhibitors listed, a wide variety of systems were represented.
I asked Emiko about T.H.E. Show and her objectives for it.
Harris Fogel: Do you have any statistics about this year’s show?
Emiko Carlin: Yes, we do. Advance ticket sales were on par with our 2025 SoCal show. Our door sales increased significantly, which was a lovely surprise.
HF: What about the layout of the rooms?
EC: There were significant differences this year, especially with us rolling out new developments and initiatives in our show model. First, we intentionally focused on the large-scale rooms in the conference center and lobby levels of T.H.E. Show. Whereas in past years, we had vacant large-scale rooms that either ended up being used for a single use (i.e. a kick-off party, seminars, etc.), this year, all of the large-scale rooms were filled with exhibitors. We were delighted to see this, and to know [that] many exhibitors wanted to upgrade their footprint from a standard-sized room (or multiple standard rooms) to large scale rooms, including the ballrooms.
Given these upgrades to larger rooms, the count of standard-sized exhibit rooms naturally decreased. When we looked at it by square footage occupied, T.H.E. Show was actually larger this year even though there were fewer rooms upstairs. This also tells us something about exhibitor behavior – that they want more spacious exhibits in which they can set up in unique and welcoming ways to benefit attendees.
In another of the larger rooms with a system from The Audio Association, Keith Gray of Cohearent Audio and Andrey Kosobutsky of tape machine specialist ATR Service, Inc. gave a talk about analog recording techniques.
Additionally and very importantly, there were two highlights at SoCal that differ from any other show. T.H.E. Film Festival completed a full year at our Austin show in May and this past June marked its entry into its second year. We had films from all over the world including Japan, Russia, India, the UK, and of course, the US.
SoCal 2026 was [also] the premiere of T.H.E. Music Festival, which is a three-day live music festival. [It] featured 18 artists of all genres over three days.
I do want to take a moment to express this to you and offer some context. Time and time again I have heard the audio industry asking the same questions over and over: “How can we attract younger audiences? Why aren't there more women in audio? How do we keep this hobby alive?” I fully support these questions but at the same time, I see them being asked in echo chambers. At some point, one has to stop talking about the problem and start actively creating the solution.
Sure, [our show is] very different. Sure, some might say it's a gamble. Those who understood it this past June made themselves known and got it right away – and the same but opposite with those who didn't. What became incredibly evident was that there is a contingent of people who are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They want this industry and hobby to continue but they don't want to participate in growing it.
This is exactly why T.H.E. Show is no longer just a traditional high-end audio exhibition. Since 2023, we have intentionally been evolving into a celebration of the entire creative ecosystem, bringing together the people who build the equipment with the people who create the music and films that give that equipment its purpose.
T.H.E. Music Festival and Film Festival aren't meant to be side attractions – they are essential parts of this vision. They're meant to introduce attendees to emerging artists, filmmakers, and composers while giving creators a platform to connect directly with an audience that truly values high-quality sound and storytelling. At the same time, they introduce music lovers and creators to the world of hi-fi, which we got to do [last] June, and see the impact this makes on everyone first hand when the artists were connected with the exhibitors in their rooms.
T.H.E. Film Festival attracted audiences beyond the traditional audiophile community, and T.H.E. Music Festival has proven our conceptual theory. Artists sold albums directly to attendees, attendees discovered new music, meaningful conversations happened between creators and listeners, and those experiences continued well beyond the performances themselves.
To us, this is exactly what the future should look like. If we want hi-fi and audio to thrive for the next generation, we have to expand beyond and see past the noses on our faces. Get rid of the echo chambers. We must – I'll say it again – we must welcome creators, musicians, filmmakers, younger audiences, women, and people from every background, not simply as spectators, but as active participants in the community. Strong ways to do this are to expand our programming, realize the reputation that the audio industry has had, and make serious strides in changing the conversation.
We believe that the expansion of T.H.E. Show isn't a departure from hi-fi and high-end audio; it's a return to its very purpose. Extraordinary components and systems exist to reproduce extraordinary art. We shouldn't be leaving artists out in the cold and just focus on one [aspect]. By bringing these worlds together under one roof, [our aim is to] create a richer experience for everyone and ensure that our industry remains vibrant, relevant, and growing for decades to come.
Here are more scenes from The Total Hi-Fi Experience Show.
Bob Donnelly of the Analog Shoppe Vintage Vinyl brought some tasty LPs to peruse, including the excellent Impex Records re-issue of Bud Shank's Sounds of Brazil.
Alan Adelstein, president of equipment supplier American Recorder Technologies hosted a well-stocked booth in the Marketplace.
Sarahlyn delivered a moving performance during her set at T.H.E. Music Festival.
It takes a lot of people to put together an audio show. Here are T.H.E. Show's Mike Leach, Olivia Doby, Emiko Carlin, Wayne Carter, Maritte Green, and Brian Green (left to right.)
Here are Peter Noerbaek (PBN Audio) and Lonny Gould (Kimber Kable) with performing artists Stacy Robin (holding her CD, Where Truth Lies,) and Tom McCauley (showing his CD, He Said, She Said,) in the PBN Audio room.
One of the more interesting accessories was the powerClamp from Audience. It provides strain relief for heavy AC power cords, and it clamps them in what is claimed to reduce physical vibrations. (Full disclosure: the editor does some occasional work for Audience.)
Hiram and Gabriel Toro, father and son of Paradise, Nevada dealer Supreme Acoustic Systems, brought some Western fashion flair to Costa Mesa.
Debbie Levy is T.H.E. Show's in-house photographer and graphic designer. She wasn't about to use an iPhone camera for this event!
Dan Meinwald (E.A.R. USA), jazz drummer Jacob Wendt, and Steven Norber (Principal Ponderer) listened to Wendt's album Silver Street, which sounded superb in the PranaFidelity room.
Mastering engineer and Rolleiflex enthusiast Steve Hoffman (left) played unreleased master recordings in the Audio Note room. Not surprisingly, it was well attended.
Grimm Audio touted a minimalist system featuring their LS1c speaker and MU1 digital music source. As in previous shows it was elegant, simple, and musically convincing.
Dan Rosca and John McDonald of Audience demonstrate their Bellare floorstanding loudspeaker.
Lounge Audio left no doubt as to what they were featuring in their exhibit.
Norman Varney of AV Room Service and J.R. Boisclair of WAM Engineering/Wally Tools were having a good time at the show, demonstrating their room treatment and analog setup products.
Header image: Charles White of Studio Maxe spinning tracks in The Vintage Lounge.
All images courtesy of the author.
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