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- Details
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025
One of my goals for day one was to find a room that (a) sounded great and (b) would add a zero to the price of one of Doug’s sensibly priced systems. I managed to satisfy both criteria in House of Stereo’s room. House of Stereo is a Florida-based retailer, and this room featured products by Electrocompaniet, Stenheim, and Nordost.
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- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025
The Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla are my benchmark products for value in the auto and hi-fi industries. A quick Google search indicates that in the United States, the 2025 version of the former starts at $24,500 and the latter at $22,325.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025
That’s a whole lot of very expensive wood, I thought to myself as I walked into the Volti Audio room and took note of the large, sumptuous New Vittora loudspeaker system—an update of the company’s original Vittora—which was making its world debut here at the Florida International Audio Expo.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025
Occasionally, I’ll walk into a room and instantly know that the speakers, the room, and the electronics are right. There’s a sense of cohesiveness to a room that’s right. After experiencing room after room where the music is missing that elusive something, you’ll walk into one of these magic rooms, and within a single bar, you’ll just know.
- Details
- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025
From the outset, I knew that our coverage of this show would be an exercise in extremes. My sole reporting partner at this year’s Florida International Audio Expo is Jason Thorpe, senior editor of SoundStage! Ultra. So it made sense for Jason to focus on more expensive products. The subject of Jason’s first dispatch was the Oneiros loudspeaker by Oneiros Audio, which starts at $650,000 per pair (all prices in USD)—talk about extremes! After reading it, I knew I had to uncover some more affordable products.
- Details
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025
I first met Jonathan Magnus Cook when he greeted me at the door of the Ø Audio room in Warsaw at Audio Video Show 2024. At that time, they were playing some seriously ominous metal. I turned to Cook and asked about this terrifying music, which was being played at a very high volume. “This is Norwegian metal,” he responded. “We are Norwegian.”
- Details
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2025
There’s a lighted billboard on Interstate 75 just outside of Tampa. A big one. “ONEIROS—WORLD-CLASS AUDIO,” it exclaims, pointing viewers toward the Florida International Audio Expo at the Sheraton Tampa Brandon. Oneiros Audio clearly took this to heart. Here they were, jumping into this big-speaker thing without restraint.
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- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
The Golden Tulip is another trendy hotel just across the way from the Radisson Blu Sobieski, which is where we stayed and where the majority of exhibitors at Audio Video Show 2024 were located for the previous three days. It’s a much smaller show area, but it’s disproportionately packed with gems, especially since much of the exhibition space is divided across conference rooms that are large enough to really show the capabilities of an ultra-high-end system. Destination Audio didn’t reserve one of those huge spaces, though I kind of think they’re better off for it, frankly.
- Details
- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
It seems that every audio show you go to will have at least one manufacturer who completely sideswipes you. It’s usually the local guys, folks who are at only their first or second show and seem a little bit nervous about being on such a big stage. It goes like this: you enter half a dozen rooms that have you leaving after four or five minutes, saying, “Hmm, yes, very nice.” And then you wander into a room that knocks you on your ass. This time, it was ElinsAudio’s.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
It’s not often I find a vinyl-related product that intimidates me. Turntables, no matter how large or complicated, generally distill down to simple components with known operating principles. Perhaps the most complicated products out there are air-bearing turntables and tonearms, but even these are fairly easy to understand and operate. The air-bearing platter floats like a hovercraft, and the air-bearing tonearm is a tube that rides in a sleeve. Not that hard to understand, right?
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
Over the past few years, Pro-Ject Audio Systems, the Austrian manufacturer of turntables of all sizes and types, has focused on affordable ’tables, seemingly at the expense of its higher-end models. Who can blame the brand? The vinyl revival has undoubtedly been a goldmine for Pro-Ject. Churning out thousands of affordable turntables just has to be more profitable than a slow trickle of high-priced audiophile models.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
It’s so very true that many audiophile speakers can’t rock out. Oh sure, a well-designed speaker should be able to play any kind of music satisfactorily, but audiophiles seem to value the dainty attributes of speakers over sheer muscle.
- Details
- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
We got ditched for dinner. SoundStage! Ultra’s senior editor, Jason Thorpe, and I were left to our own devices by SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider the other night. “Not coming,” he’d texted us. “Dinner with this Norwegian brand.” We didn’t think much of it till we wandered into a room put together by someone we’d never heard of here at the Radisson Blu Sobieski, one of the three Audio Video Show 2024 locations. “You know these guys?” Jason asked in a text to Doug.
- Details
- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
As the boys and I—and by “boys,” I mean SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider and Ultra editor Jason Thorpe—finished our survey of PGE Narodowy, we wandered into Polish distributor SoundClub’s room. Though it wasn’t a part of the Super-System Alley we’d just checked out, the EgglestonWorks loudspeakers displayed were brain-meltingly good. They are also wallet-meltingly expensive. As the distributor is based in Poland, all the prices that follow are in zlotys.
- Details
- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
If you’ve read some of my output on SoundStage! Hi-Fi, you’ve probably picked up that I’m quite fond of DIY audio. I’ll cop to regularly visiting the DIY Audio Forum, North America’s premier message board for building amps, DACs, speakers, and more. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Poland has a DIY forum of its own, and then multiply that by about a billion when I found that the moderators of the site had ponied up for a room at this year’s Audio Video Show.
- Details
- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
Here at SoundStage!, we would never write up an audio manufacturer in exchange for favors like fancy dinners. To do so would be a serious breach of journalistic ethics, would call into question our authority on the subject, and worst of all, would place at risk the trust our readers have in us, which we’ve worked for years to build. Anyway, after a tour of its facility in Pruszków and a dinner of traditional Polish dishes, culminating with a prime cut of top sirloin, grilled to a perfect medium rare and served with a peppercorn sauce, here’s what you need to know about Ferrum Audio.
- Details
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
Matt Bonaccio and I opted for a top-down approach to the exhibits at the Radisson Blu Sobieski location at Audio Video Show 2024. So we climbed up the stairs to the seventh floor and walked to the far end of the corridor.
- Details
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
The Dark Side of the Moon has become a parody of itself. I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I don’t tend to listen to DSOTM because it’s been so ridiculously overplayed. I originally sat down in the Homogenix room intending to bide my time until I could get some information about this brand-new company’s line of cartridges. But “Time” rocketed out of these dramatic, odd horn speakers with such authority, and at such high levels, that it made me giggle. These horn speakers and this cartridge made me sit through the entirety of side 1. That’s saying something. There was huge power here, with minimal horn colorations. Deep bass, perhaps missing the ultimate extension, but tight as a fish’s ass. These are huge speakers in a small room, but my stars, did it work as a whole.
- Details
- Written by: Matt Bonaccio
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
If you want to go to Poland’s annual Audio Video Show—or any trade expo, for that matter—it’s wise to plan your trip to avoid the crowds, if at all possible. Doug Schneider, Jason Thorpe, and I judiciously chose to focus our first day on PGE Narodowy, Warsaw’s huge sporting stadium and event center. As I entered the concourse dedicated to exhibiting all things ’phones, I recalled the throngs filling this space at last year’s event, and silently thanked Doug for pushing to go here first. The hall was still nearly empty; I’d have full access to brand reps and distributors as I tested out the latest offerings. Here’s what I found. Take note of the prices, as they are presented here in both US dollars and Polish zlotys.
- Details
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Audio Video Show 2024
There’s a hallway in Warsaw’s PGE Narodowy Stadium that houses several rooms designed for recording television broadcasts at sporting events. These rooms are acoustically treated, large in size, and typically locked down yearly by exhibitors showing the largest, most expensive systems.
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