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Sights, Sounds & Old Friends: Our AXPONA 2026 Highlights

Another AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) is in the books, and we saw and heard some wonderful things in Chicago – aside from running into old friends from this fun industry!  This was the biggest event yet, with consumers coming from all over the Midwest to see great audio gear, and even beyond.  Here are some of the goodies we saw and heard:

● Advance Paris showed their new flagship hybrid integrated amp (tube preamp, solid state poweramp) called Nova, which both looks and sounds great.  The streamer is optional, on a card-based device that plugs into the back of the amp if you don’t have your own streamer.

● IsoAcoustics had their isolation products on display. Paul and his team played demos for Gaia Neo, and clients who heard the difference purchased products in good numbers.

● Elac played their new flagship loudspeaker, the $50,000 per pair Concentro M807, a speaker that can be tuned to the room that it is in. They sounded great on a wide variety of musical material. 

● At Totem Acoustics, Vince and Nico played the now-shipping Thunderbird speaker, with the latest iteration of their Torrent driver.  The performance when listening to music far outpaces the relatively compact cabinet, imaging like crazy and delivering solid bottom end.

● Kevin Zarow showed off Denon’s DP-500BT Bluetooth turntable @ $899. Not only does it allow you to stream your vinyl like you can stream the rest of your content, it even has a built-in phono preamp

● SVS showed the compact 3000 Micro R|Evolution subwoofer. It’s slightly larger cabinet vs their prior sub offers 2 active 9” drivers, 50% more amp power, six times the DSP processing power, and plays louder, lower, and tighter bass notes than the compact sub it replaces.

● The folks at Kanto showed two new TUK powered desktop speakers, plus the soon to be upgraded YU4 and YU6 models. If you’d like a quality desktop speaker, Kanto is a must for your short list.

● Michi’s new electronics products look and sounds amazing. We auditioned the Michi X5 Series 2 integrated amp, at $9,499 an impressive powerhouse vs other high-end amplifiers. The Q5 CD transport/DAC combination also sounds terrific.

● Technics showed us their new, limited production Master Edition Direct Drive Turntable, the SL 1200GME (silver finish) and SL-1210GME (black), featuring twin-rotor coreless direct drive motor and magnesium tonearm. We were impressed. At $6,500, these are competitive with some much higher-end turntables.

There were many more impressive sounding rooms, and impressive components, but this hopefully gives you a glimpse into the latest and greatest from some of our key vendors.