This was my first show. I'm glad they came to town, so I didn't have to waste a trip to a more distant location.
https://floridaaudioexpo.com/exhibitors/
Friday, visited for an hour or so late in afternoon. It was a recon mission for Sunday, where I went with a friend all day. I'd say it was well-attended, people moving through the halls on all the floors, and multiple listeners in most rooms all day.
I was first on an elevator Friday afternoon, pushed buttons for others, turned around and found myself face-to-face with Michael Fremer. That was my only celebrity sighting.
The second floor was a lobby and three large conference-type rooms.
Von Schweikert had the biggest room, speakers at each end, long cables running to equipment in the center of the sidewall. Masterbuilt cables. Lots of $$$ there. I don't remember hearing anything, just saw a lot of chairs, and a lot of suits standing around waiting to make their videos or other deals.
Martin Logan had a smaller big room with a pair of red Neoliths on one end and a smaller pair on the other. Met Dennis Chern, told him his speakers have become to rich for my blood.
MBL had a large room, and lots of interest. Visited three times, there was always a seated full house. My first visit I thought blur (omni speakers), second visit I thought good, third visit some orchestral tape, too loud, sounded compressed, so, no good.
A fourth large room, across the patio from the second floor of the hotel itself, had a big boxy horn-topped things, Classic Audio Loudspeakers.
There was a Mytek table in the hall, with a few headphones, and people checking things out each time I passed, Didn't see any other other headphone area, no headphone rooms.
The rest of the show inhabited floors 3 through 8, with maybe 4 to six rooms in use per floor.
A majority of the rooms were playing vinyl or had turntables prominently displayed, and, maybe, a majority of rooms had tubes in play, and a few tape decks were present. We really didn't take much notice of the electronics, not detecting any obvious deficiencies nor exceptional performance in that area, whatever was jiggling the electrons.
We basically just went room to room after room after room and listened to speakers.
You can look at the gear listing to see what was available to see, we pretty much hit every room.
Harbeth stood out for interesting clarity/image. They caught our attention. Best in Show for a small three-way?
Legacy had a really smooth and rich sound.
TAD sounded good.
Joseph Audio impressed with bass on some organ piece, then we found the subwoofer, don't remember if they were as impressive after that.
The Paradigm room was too full to enter, but was creating copious amounts of bass.
The JBL Retro Speaker room was crowded and loud, we just peeked in.
I had wanted to hear the Avant Garde horns, but the two rooms that had them didn't leave much of an impression.
I don't remember seeing any "active" speakers, maybe there were a couple, Some speakers were multi-amped. Oh, the MBL were at least bi-amped, four amplifiers for the two speakers. As I said, we weren't paying a lot of attention to electronics. I presume most of the boxes were passive.
No specialty electronics, that I remember, no BACCH or visible DSP or anything fancy like that.
No multichannel, all stereo. There was a room promoting vinyl mono, but they had two speakers, so ??? Don't even remember if anything was playing there.
Some rooms were not well attended. Many did not provide anything particularly memorable for us. Most were just playing tunes to a rotating set of guests, with few rooms wasting your time explaining what you were listening to.
Some rooms were set with speakers on the long wall, most on the short wall. I think the rooms that fired in the long direction were generally better sounding.
All the listening was pretty quick, sometimes in the sweet spot, sometimes not, depending on the traffic, and whether or not what we did hear piqued interest. We didn't request tunes, just allowed them to play whatever they were going to play.
It interesting how some systems really stood out, and others didn't. I suppose the material being played had some bearing on the impressions, but impressions were all we had time for, a few minutes for each room.
Very few rooms sounded bad (some sort of did), many sounded rather average - at least, they didn't make much of an impression, but a few really made us take notice.
I'm measurably deaf, my audio buddy is not, but we have the same impressions and come to the same conclusions on sound quality, so, being deaf isn't such a handicap.
I enjoyed the visit, will go again if there's a repeat performance, and it was well worth the nothing it cost except to be there.
Hopefully the promoters won't read my review and cancel plans for another.
I said "Hello, Mr Fremer" (in my best Agent Smith voice). He looked surprised, looked for my name tag (none), and declared the show to be a lot of work but looking successful, so, maybe it'll be ok.
@Sal1950 went to the show on Saturday, then came by my house afterwards. It took nearly an hour to drive him away with my musical selections.
https://floridaaudioexpo.com/exhibitors/
Friday, visited for an hour or so late in afternoon. It was a recon mission for Sunday, where I went with a friend all day. I'd say it was well-attended, people moving through the halls on all the floors, and multiple listeners in most rooms all day.
I was first on an elevator Friday afternoon, pushed buttons for others, turned around and found myself face-to-face with Michael Fremer. That was my only celebrity sighting.
The second floor was a lobby and three large conference-type rooms.
Von Schweikert had the biggest room, speakers at each end, long cables running to equipment in the center of the sidewall. Masterbuilt cables. Lots of $$$ there. I don't remember hearing anything, just saw a lot of chairs, and a lot of suits standing around waiting to make their videos or other deals.
Martin Logan had a smaller big room with a pair of red Neoliths on one end and a smaller pair on the other. Met Dennis Chern, told him his speakers have become to rich for my blood.
MBL had a large room, and lots of interest. Visited three times, there was always a seated full house. My first visit I thought blur (omni speakers), second visit I thought good, third visit some orchestral tape, too loud, sounded compressed, so, no good.
A fourth large room, across the patio from the second floor of the hotel itself, had a big boxy horn-topped things, Classic Audio Loudspeakers.
There was a Mytek table in the hall, with a few headphones, and people checking things out each time I passed, Didn't see any other other headphone area, no headphone rooms.
The rest of the show inhabited floors 3 through 8, with maybe 4 to six rooms in use per floor.
A majority of the rooms were playing vinyl or had turntables prominently displayed, and, maybe, a majority of rooms had tubes in play, and a few tape decks were present. We really didn't take much notice of the electronics, not detecting any obvious deficiencies nor exceptional performance in that area, whatever was jiggling the electrons.
We basically just went room to room after room after room and listened to speakers.
You can look at the gear listing to see what was available to see, we pretty much hit every room.
Harbeth stood out for interesting clarity/image. They caught our attention. Best in Show for a small three-way?
Legacy had a really smooth and rich sound.
TAD sounded good.
Joseph Audio impressed with bass on some organ piece, then we found the subwoofer, don't remember if they were as impressive after that.
The Paradigm room was too full to enter, but was creating copious amounts of bass.
The JBL Retro Speaker room was crowded and loud, we just peeked in.
I had wanted to hear the Avant Garde horns, but the two rooms that had them didn't leave much of an impression.
I don't remember seeing any "active" speakers, maybe there were a couple, Some speakers were multi-amped. Oh, the MBL were at least bi-amped, four amplifiers for the two speakers. As I said, we weren't paying a lot of attention to electronics. I presume most of the boxes were passive.
No specialty electronics, that I remember, no BACCH or visible DSP or anything fancy like that.
No multichannel, all stereo. There was a room promoting vinyl mono, but they had two speakers, so ??? Don't even remember if anything was playing there.
Some rooms were not well attended. Many did not provide anything particularly memorable for us. Most were just playing tunes to a rotating set of guests, with few rooms wasting your time explaining what you were listening to.
Some rooms were set with speakers on the long wall, most on the short wall. I think the rooms that fired in the long direction were generally better sounding.
All the listening was pretty quick, sometimes in the sweet spot, sometimes not, depending on the traffic, and whether or not what we did hear piqued interest. We didn't request tunes, just allowed them to play whatever they were going to play.
It interesting how some systems really stood out, and others didn't. I suppose the material being played had some bearing on the impressions, but impressions were all we had time for, a few minutes for each room.
Very few rooms sounded bad (some sort of did), many sounded rather average - at least, they didn't make much of an impression, but a few really made us take notice.
I'm measurably deaf, my audio buddy is not, but we have the same impressions and come to the same conclusions on sound quality, so, being deaf isn't such a handicap.
I enjoyed the visit, will go again if there's a repeat performance, and it was well worth the nothing it cost except to be there.
Hopefully the promoters won't read my review and cancel plans for another.
I said "Hello, Mr Fremer" (in my best Agent Smith voice). He looked surprised, looked for my name tag (none), and declared the show to be a lot of work but looking successful, so, maybe it'll be ok.
@Sal1950 went to the show on Saturday, then came by my house afterwards. It took nearly an hour to drive him away with my musical selections.
Last edited: