Florida International Audio Expo 2023

[amirm]

As MZKM said, a lot of stairs, some of which led nowhere.
We were semi-gently kicked out of a room as the rep had to attend to a member of the press ... "because that's what pays my bills".

I have had that happen multiple times at audio shows and find it so insulting.

 

[truckers_atlas]

Hope @RayDunzl is well.

I went to the expo today for roughly 5 hours, my first time at the venue.
I didn't go to every single room so mine is a limited sampling.

Liked without reservations:
- Gheshelli. Very nice people. Loved the new Pro headphone amp (not announced yet). I cranked and cranked Skrillex but my ears gave up before the HP and the amp.
- RME. Nice rep. I tried the RME ADI-2 PRO FS with unknown HP fed by my own phone via USB. Very nice until the HP gave up at about -9. Everything first class, the display, the controls, the sound.
- Joseph Audio. Hearing is believing. Their Pulsar 2 mini monitors were just good. Smooth, dynamic, could play loud without strain, the speakers that kept on giving. The tweeters just rocked. I probably cannot afford the boxes they come in.
- Magnepan + LCH (who?) passive subs + NAD chain - one track only but what was coming out was awesome ... and loud (I know, small rooms ...). Unlike most everything else, no resonances or overbearing bass. No DRC!?

Liked with reservations:
- TAD Reference One (large meeting room). Like: very resolving, smooth, dynamic, full range. Dislike: somewhat recessed voices, price.
- MBL Radialstrahler 101 (large meeting room). Like: not sure, I just stayed in the room for a long time. Dislike: price, uneven across the band in term of resolution/distortion. btw, amazing things happen when you listen with your eyes closed.

That's it!
The rest of the rooms I visited were disappointing at multiple levels.
No DRC anywhere despite the obvious booming bass and ear-piercing resonances.
Even the notorious subwoofer brand home theater set up with the awesome DTS demo was all over the places.

I am even starting to suspect that the ASR crowd might not be the intended audience

Parting comments:
Apparently a lot of ancillary equipment comes fresh from Best Buy due to various misadventures in shipping and transportation.
Do not expect any form of network connection, anywhere, cellular or otherwise.
As MZKM said, a lot of stairs, some of which led nowhere.
We were semi-gently kicked out of a room as the rep had to attend to a member of the press ... "because that's what pays my bills".
Only places where I saw people in the 20-30yo range were headphone-related.

Peace.

I saw Erin from Erin's Audio Corner, who was great to talk with, and he did talk about the Magnepan + LCH room. If I recall correctly, Erin thought the Magnepan + LCH room sounded nice but he wasn't satisfied when he questioned them further about their subwoofer claims.

I'll second your note about the rooms being terrible. I thought the room I have my Kalis in has problems. It sounded like a professional studio compared to these rooms. I'm surprised more dealers aren't cheating like hell and using DSP and room correction to squeeze good sound out of these spaces. It's not like their target customers would notice the difference.

I don't think the speakers were all that good either. I'd take the $400 Klipsch towers that Geshelli had hooked up to their speaker amp over a lot of the brands whose speakers cost as much as a good used car. There were a lot of speakers I listened to that had a hole in the mids, or piercing treble intended for customers who cannot hear above 8K anymore. There were no KEF, or Revel dealers on-site.

Went today as well. I mainly visited Floor 14 for all the headphones. Spent most of my time in Moon Audio as they had a wide selection of headphones.

I tried pretty much every headphone they had available, and my conclusions were that I absolutely love the Dan Clark Expanse & Stealths I have. My only upgrade path is the Susvara’s.

Overall, had a great time & everyone was very friendly. Moon Audio was very accommodating along with Audeze.

Did you get to try out the Warwick Acoustics Bravura? That was the best thing I listened to all day. The Susvara was wonderful for music that relied on strings, such as classical, but when I played the rock I usually listen to, the Susvara did not fare as well as the Bravura. The Bravura is the purest expression of the Harman goal of headphones sounding like great speakers in a great room that I've listened to. Here's the measurement:

https://imgur.com/M9WDWyM

Here are my impressions of the show in general from my perspective, a listener in his 20s who's primarily into headphones and IEMs and is starting to branch out into speakers.

The headphones were worth the drive to Tampa, both for the quality of the gear on display, and how friendly and accommodating the headphones people were. Shout-out to the Audeze, Geshelli, Moon Audio, and Warwick Acoustics teams, who were very chill with me hooking up my laptop so that I could play my library. The Audeze guys even acknowledged how their headphones work well with EQ! There was more camaraderie in the headphones rooms too. I had a good conversation with one of the Geshelli people about their upcoming speaker amp, and I could hear the excitement in one dad's voice when he realized that I also knew who crinacle was, and that I also have a Blessing 2 Dusk.

By and large, I did not feel like I belonged in the speaker rooms. To start, the music they played just feels so remote from what music lovers would play. I swear to god I only heard vocal jazz. I didn't hear the classics of the genre, e.g. Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker. It's all Patricia Barber, or Diana Krall. If proper jazz was played, you were gonna hear Kind Of Blue only. One guy had to bring a CD so that he could hear Coltrane.

I suspect this music is chosen because they don't reveal very much about the overall balance of a system. Yes you can hear detail, because that's the only noteworthy thing about this type of music. Audiophiles are the only people who listen to this musical Ambien. The system I heard Coltrane on made me do an impression of this Tyll Hertsens video with how sharp Coltrane's saxophone sounded, and it fell apart fast when I requested Stevie Wonder be played:

It also feels like a pain to actually play your music out of these systems. You had to go out of your way to break the vocal jazz cycle for requests. Even acknowledging the technical difficulties with everyone streaming hi-res lossless on hotel Wi-Fi, it felt like no one had anything interesting locally. I was expecting to be sick of Steely Dan coming into this show, and I didn't hear Steely Dan once. I was thrilled to see 2 David Bowie albums, and Lou Reed's Transformer on the Warwick Acoustics server! I had never been so excited to hear Wet Leg as when I saw it in the Pro-Ject room. (An aside: I generally don't agree with Herb Reichert but he has my respect for requesting that Wet Leg be played at a Pro-Ject press demo.) I mentioned that I had my laptop with me and the stereo exhibitors looked at me like I was from Mars. One exhibitor mentioned that while his system supported AirPlay, he didn't want me to use AirPlay because "you'd lose quality." Never mind the fact that AirPlay is audibly transparent.

The big exception to the music problem in the speaker rooms was the Orchard Audio room. They were very happy to play my requests, and those guys even have a sense of humor! They should make something big and heavy for the audiophile market, because I swear a lot of guys that walked in thought "no way something this small could sound so good when compared next to my massive stack."

There's something odd about the vibes in the speaker rooms. The smell in the Andrew Jones MoFi room was "anime convention" bad. The hi-fi industry has its own version of "booth babes". Their "booth babes" are the sort of women in their 40s or 50s who could find themselves with a fabulously rich husband if they spent some time in West Palm Beach if you know what I mean. And man, I felt bad for the spouses that got dragged along. No wonder audiophiles complain about their spouses hating their gear to the point of cracking sexist jokes about "wife acceptance factor." It's because they make zero effort to include their spouses as a part of the process.

And the worst part about the speaker rooms was how out-of-touch the pricing felt. One distributor had a "budget" room in addition to their main room. The "budget" room was over $10K easy. One salesperson just casually mentioned how their audio stack was $12K, and framed that as a bargain. The Warwick Bravura started to feel like as much of a deal at this show as the Truthear Zeros feel here. None of this stuff felt remotely accessible to me, and I'm a software developer by trade. I had a suspicion that the hi-fi industry is oriented around shaking rich old guys out of every last cent before they leave this world. This show confirmed that suspicion.

 

[danielsmi]

I went yesterday as well, and I'll probably go back today. There was someone selling records and SACDs so I picked up DSOTM on SACD.

I really enjoyed the Geshelli room, friendly family, local, affordable and unique-looking equipment , they had lots of equipment to test, I sat and listened to a few songs of my choice on their DAC and headphone amp and enjoyed it. Cool to see them partner with Sparkos Labs for their design. I'd love to see them reviewed by ASR.

There was a guy selling Gallium Nitride class D amps that fit into a tube, basically it looked like a tube amp but the glowing orange was LEDs, the amp was built into the "glass tube" and they were upgradeable since you can remove the "tube" in a few seconds and replace it with another. Interesting design.

These guys had speakers with a "plasma tweeter" IDK what that means but I agree with Gene from Audioholics something was wrong with them since the stereo image was shifted far to the left. I thought I was going deaf at first since it was the first system I heard and I do hear a little better with my left than my right ear

 

[truckers_atlas]

I went yesterday as well, and I'll probably go back today. There was someone selling records and SACDs so I picked up DSOTM on SACD.

I really enjoyed the Geshelli room, friendly family, local, affordable and unique-looking equipment , they had lots of equipment to test, I sat and listened to a few songs of my choice on their DAC and headphone amp and enjoyed it. Cool to see them partner with Sparkos Labs for their design. I'd love to see them reviewed by ASR.

View attachment 265818View attachment 265819

There was a guy selling Gallium Nitride class D amps that fit into a tube, basically it looked like a tube amp but the glowing orange was LEDs, the amp was built into the "glass tube" and they were upgradeable since you can remove the "tube" in a few seconds and replace it with another. Interesting design.

View attachment 265820

Here's a review of a Geshelli DAC and the manufacturer are willing to say hi here in the thread. I think the performance is more than sufficient, and the manufacturing and build are a compelling USP over yet another DAC or amplifier that has nothing else to offer other than a high SINAD number.

The AGD room was one of the better rooms I listened to. If I had more time I would've liked to go back to hear something musically more interesting and challenging. Most importantly, it had great presentation. The mood was correctly set in that room, with lighting and some sort of nice scent. That's how you should catch the big fish floating around in that hotel.

 

[WeBuild4Life]

This is my first audio event, and the people up above have summed the show better than I can. I will keep it short. The below is only for speaker rooms. Everyone headphone room was awesome and inviting. Learned a lot and I do not regret my decision to go with the A90D/D90LE and HD800s combo.

In one word, it was inconsistent and obnoxious. This may be the usual for shows like this, but most of the rooms were demoing $20,000+ amplifiers rather than quality speakers. Not to say the speakers weren't good, but you'd leave one room which had $100,000 of gear disappointed, only to enter another room with obtainable items around $10,000 for the system that were much better. These rooms also tended to play real music rather than the same 4 test tracks. Muddy mids/lows, unbalanced vocals and tapered treble is how i'd describe the majority of the set ups. All the while they are saying the speakers sound so good because they have a $20,000 CD player hooked up to a $40,000 DAC hooked up to $100,000 of amps playing on $30,000 speakers. I knew this was a stereotype of the HiFi world but man was it in full force.

PLENTY of rooms had great systems.

Out of the expensive rooms I do think the TAD bookshelves were the best by far, even better than the Big ones across the room. More balanced and higher quality lows. The granite ones were memey but did sound suburb if you sat in the sweet spot, was mediocre everywhere else.

Upstairs there was one room that had REAL horns, just one. Rest were just woofers with wave guides. Those horns were fabulous in my opinion, a bit peaky but I don't mind. I do forget, but on the upper floors there was just a distributor showing off stuff, and there was a pair of $8000 floor speakers which were great. Amazing bass extension and good all around. These were my personal pick of the show.

The SVS room was a blast. Their little powered bookshelves are a killer value, and their 5.2.2 setup was movie-theater like.


Most rooms were pretty dry and uninviting, and I think I'll pass on attending again. Even the Focal room was setup poorly and had extreme boomy bass issues. I know they are working with what they have, but it was baaaad.

 

[WeBuild4Life]

Here's a review of a Geshelli DAC and the manufacturer are willing to say hi here in the thread. I think the performance is more than sufficient, and the manufacturing and build are a compelling USP over yet another DAC or amplifier that has nothing else to offer other than a high SINAD number.

The AGD room was one of the better rooms I listened to. If I had more time I would've liked to go back to hear something musically more interesting and challenging. Most importantly, it had great presentation. The mood was correctly set in that room, with lighting and some sort of nice scent. That's how you should catch the big fish floating around in that hotel.

Saw Geshelli today. Fun room, I do like their amps if I was in that $200 range. Felt to me about the same as Schiit in quality though (not bad, but nothing world class)

 

[Jimster480]

Saw Geshelli today. Fun room, I do like their amps if I was in that $200 range. Felt to me about the same as Schiit in quality though (not bad, but nothing world class)

Idk I have one for over 2y with no issues. Simple and just works.
I like the new one and will probably buy one on launch.

Yea… unfortunately I couldn’t listen to any headphone I wanted to try on a “normal” stack. Every stack they had me plugged into was 20-30k of tubes or nonsense. When I brought up my Topping stack, they looked at me like I have 10 eyes lol.

Yea this is how the moon audio room was. But they did have the new matrix that was just tested here (but I didn't know at the time). I still used it to demo the stealth VS my Aeon (big upgrade). As well as my friends ZMF Planar headphone.

However the most impressive headphone systems there were from Warwick Acoustics!

Pricey but amazing sound that wasn't paralleled by literally any setup including the Stealth. The drivers are so fast that instruments don't blend in the same way. You can pick just one sound in a song and listen to it separate from others...
The pictured Aperio is $30k+ but they have a $7k model. Both are amazing and entirely proprietary systems. Honestly if I could justify such a budget for headphones I would have tried to buy it on the spot.

 

[57gold]

First visit to an audio show.

Initial impression was, "strange music" was being played with electronic keyboards, over processed vocals...kept on walking past rooms with this crap playing. Found a few rooms playing recordings of real acoustic instruments playing, piano, guitars, sax, drum kits and singers without tons of effects altering their voices.

Listened and liked:

• Perlisten monitors couple with some large ass subwoofers (which kind of defeats the size advantage of monitors), the towers with the upgraded drivers sounded too bright/etched to me...but the music was some of the strange stuff in that room.
• Jospeh Audio monitors sounded like there might be a subwoofer in the room and Mr Joseph confirmed there was not, very big sounding little cabinets with graphene (whatever that is?), would like to hear his other speakers, and
• Much to my dismay, a ridiculously expensive DAC rig by MSB - 3 aluminum slabs, one the DAC, one the power supply and then another D to D converter that is some super filtering device, all yours for like $70K or so. DACzilla drove their mono amps and some Magico speakers. A 1960s crooner/jazz SACD and then a Diana Krall tune sounded very lifelike, they are there in the room spooky good. No upconversion software involved, just the D to D filtering a rebook CD that sounded high def to me. Was kind of hoping that the emperor would have no clothes or just sound like all the rest...

Popped into a few more rooms that had pretty nice sound, and they should with the cost of the gear they contained. Thought of this forum as I observed tons of garden hose wiring by AQ, Cardas...all in use in each room.

 

[Jimster480]

First visit to an audio show.

Initial impression was, "strange music" was being played with electronic keyboards, over processed vocals...kept on walking past rooms with this crap playing. Found a few rooms playing recordings of real acoustic instruments playing, piano, guitars, sax, drum kits and singers without tons of effects altering their voices.

Listened and liked:

• Perlisten monitors couple with some large ass subwoofers (which kind of defeats the size advantage of monitors), the towers with the upgraded drivers sounded too bright/etched to me...but the music was some of the strange stuff in that room.
• Jospeh Audio monitors sounded like there might be a subwoofer in the room and Mr Joseph confirmed there was not, very big sounding little cabinets with graphene (whatever that is?), would like to hear his other speakers, and
• Much to my dismay, a ridiculously expensive DAC rig by MSB - 3 aluminum slabs, one the DAC, one the power supply and then another D to D converter that is some super filtering device, all yours for like $70K or so. DACzilla drove their mono amps and some Magico speakers. A 1960s crooner/jazz SACD and then a Diana Krall tune sounded very lifelike, they are there in the room spooky good. No upconversion software involved, just the D to D filtering a rebook CD that sounded high def to me. Was kind of hoping that the emperor would have no clothes or just sound like all the rest...

Popped into a few more rooms that had pretty nice sound, and they should with the cost of the gear they contained. Thought of this forum as I observed tons of garden hose wiring by AQ, Cardas...all in use in each room.

Yea the wiring is pretty nuts

Just look at all the crazy wiring on the floor as well as the cable risers and device risers...
This setup did sound pretty good on the weird vocal jazz they were playing....

 

[gallionetech]

Idk I have one for over 2y with no issues. Simple and just works.
I like the new one and will probably buy one on launch.

Yea this is how the moon audio room was. But they did have the new matrix that was just tested here (but I didn't know at the time). I still used it to demo the stealth VS my Aeon (big upgrade). As well as my friends ZMF Planar headphone.

However the most impressive headphone systems there were from Warwick Acoustics!
View attachment 266048
Pricey but amazing sound that wasn't paralleled by literally any setup including the Stealth. The drivers are so fast that instruments don't blend in the same way. You can pick just one sound in a song and listen to it separate from others...
The pictured Aperio is $30k+ but they have a $7k model. Both are amazing and entirely proprietary systems. Honestly if I could justify such a budget for headphones I would have tried to buy it on the spot.

Ugh I ignored Warwick because I never heard of them before wish I tried them!

Has anyone ever seen the HE-1 at any shows?

 

[Jimster480]

Ugh I ignored Warwick because I never heard of them before wish I tried them!

Has anyone ever seen the HE-1 at any shows?

Yea I hadn't heard of them but my friend actually bought the Bravura before! It is beyond incredible.

 

[iamjohngalt]

I couldn't make the drive down from Atlanta - my car was in the shop. ;^)
Did anyone visit the Eminent Technology (speakers) room, and if so, what
was their setup and how did it sound?
I don't see any reviews of it elsewhere online at his point.

 

[Jimster480]

I couldn't make the drive down from Atlanta - my car was in the shop. ;^)
Did anyone visit the Eminent Technology (speakers) room, and if so, what
was their setup and how did it sound?
I don't see any reviews of it elsewhere online at his point.

You really need to go for the whole 3 days to really demo everything. My friend was there from the morning on Sunday and he barely made it back to Floor 8 trying to demo all the different stuff.

 

[iamjohngalt]

You really need to go for the whole 3 days to really demo everything. My friend was there from the morning on Sunday and he barely made it back to Floor 8 trying to demo all the different stuff.

Yes, I went to the show in 2020 and it was very hectic.
Getting the rooms to sound good is also a challenge for the exhibitors.
I may have to take a road trip to Tallahassee to the Eminent factory.

 

[Jimster480]

Yes, I went to the show in 2020 and it was very hectic.
Getting the rooms to sound good is also a challenge for the exhibitors.
I may have to take a road trip to Tallahassee to the Eminent factory.

Probably better if you are very serious about trying something. I wanted to try the Stealth which is why I went. I also listened to a few other headphones including a few Audeze and the HE1000V2.
However I am glad I went just because I got to experience the Warwick headphones which were a whole other world that now I can't unhear...

 

[orchardaudio]

The big exception to the music problem in the speaker rooms was the Orchard Audio room. They were very happy to play my requests, and those guys even have a sense of humor! They should make something big and heavy for the audiophile market, because I swear a lot of guys that walked in thought "no way something this small could sound so good when compared next to my massive stack."

Thanks for stopping by.

 

[57gold]

Crap...should have listened to the Orchard amps to hear what the GAN technology was all about. Decided to drive up the street to the show at the last minute and had only speakers on my mind. Visited the 5th floor to hear Joseph Audio speakers, same as Orchard...what a knucklehead!

 

[HighFutility]

Hey, I am in the Orlando area for a week any audio shops worth checking out? In or around the city?

 

[JStewart]

Hey, I am in the Orlando area for a week any audio shops worth checking out? In or around the city?

sadly, there are no shops here I’m aware of.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Yea… unfortunately I couldn’t listen to any headphone I wanted to try on a “normal” stack. Every stack they had me plugged into was 20-30k of tubes or nonsense. When I brought up my Topping stack, they looked at me like I have 10 eyes lol.

I was at Bristol hifi show UK recently .
I had taken my Hugo2 and LCD-XC 21 with me.
No one said no to me when i asked if i could try my own.
Focal headphones, Chord, Astel & Kern just to name a few.
They even asked me how the comparison went!