The premier of the LA Audio Show was something of a mixed bag. With veteran show organizer Marine Presson at the helm and Bob Levi and the LA and Orange County Audio Society behind it, ...

Great audio shows are not born overnight­—they are works in progress. The inaugural LA Audio Show at the Sheraton-Gateway Hotel proved that despite some organizational hiccups there is much potential still to be mined. Indeed, ...

Some say the first L.A. audio show in recent times was a success. Crowds were more than respectable for a first outing, attendees had access to a bevy of gear and industry figures, and the ...

While the M.O.C. exhibition center housing the Munich High End Show generated a lot of heat, only some of it was produced by hot products making their debuts. A combination of record-setting crowds (up 10% ...

Five Most Significant Product Introductions McIntosh MP1100 Phonostage and D1100 Digital Linestage McIntosh launched the highly capable new MP1100 all-tube phonostage. The MP1100 is packed with features including three inputs along with nine profiles (five ...

This year’s Munich High End show was a hot one in every sense of the word (more so than ever given the unseasonably warm temps in Bavaria and the heat generated in demo rooms full ...

The big story at this year’s Munich show was the rapidly increasing number of manufacturers incorporating MQA decoding in their products. Perhaps even more significant for the format, however, was Sony Music’s statement that it ...

Imagine a collision between CES and CEDIA when both were at their peak, and you’ll have an idea of how enormous and jam-packed with goodies Munich High End is. There’s simply nothing else like it ...

This was the fourth (and final) year for AXPONA being held at The Westin Hotel in Rosemont, IL, right next to O’Hare airport. While this is the last exhibit at this location, it’s not the ...

Five Most Significant Debuts Aavik Acoustics M-300 Monoblock Amplifiers, C-300 Preamplifier The Aavik M-300 monoblocks ($48k) and C-300 made their active-demo debuts in a sweet-sounding setup (alas, all digitally sourced, a Naim CD player used ...

The 2017 event, which was clearly the best attended and most vibrant of the current four-year Chicago run of AXPONAs, will be last in this highly successful series to be held at the Westin O’Hare. ...

In anticipation of an early start on Friday morning at AXPONA, I went to set the hotel’s alarm clock before turning in. That’s when I discovered that it was an iHome “Clock Radio” that required ...

As was the case at CES in January, I have some good news and some bad news about AXPONA 2017, held the third week of April in Chi-Town. The funny thing is that the good ...

CES 2017 and its often-fractious relationship with the high end might very well be encapsulated by the Bob Dylan lyric, “It's not dark yet, but it’s gettin' there.” The decline in exhibitors at the Venetian ...

ELECTRONICS $15K AND UP Top Five Most Significant Introductions Constellation Revelation line and Centaur II stereo power amplifier Constellation’s new mid-priced Revelation line, on static display only, offers a welcome middle ground between the maker’s ...