I guess it’s a yearly thing now. This is the second time I’ve accompanied Doug Schneider to the Florida International Audio Expo, which takes place in late February in Tampa, Florida. Ottawa and Toronto, where Doug and I live, were clobbered in February with huge back-to-back snowstorms, so digging out and heading to sunny Florida had massive appeal. It’s the land of the cartoonishly large fruity drink, after all.
SoundStage! has cut down on the shows we cover, even as the number of shows being offered has dramatically increased. At the tail end of the Florida show, I spoke with a distributor about a possible product review, and we switched over to email to nail down the details. I didn’t hear back after my first email, so I followed up. In his response, he apologized and said he was “just trying to get through Southwest Audio Fest and AXPONA.” It’s a traveling roadshow across the continent.
There’s value in the audio-show concept, but it’s mostly concentrated around the foot traffic. For local audiophiles who want to see some of the best gear at one location, an audio show is like walking into King Tut’s tomb. For local dealers, it’s a great way to connect with far more potential customers than they’d ever encounter via walk-ins.
But for SoundStage!, there’s not as much value from show to show. How different would FLAX be from Southwest Audio Fest or AXPONA? Sure, AXPONA is larger, and there would likely be a few unique product debuts at one or the other, or maybe a handful of different exhibitors, but on the whole it would be a fairly homogeneous experience from one show to the next. So one North American audio show is newsworthy; more than that, journalistically, is flogging a dead horse. Next up for us is Munich’s High End 2025 in May, and then Warsaw’s Audio Video Show in October—both massive in scope. More important, the two shows are wildly different. These European events are packed with smaller companies showing high-value gear that may or may not make it to North America. There’s tons of cool tube gear from eastern former-Soviet countries, and turntables galore.
But I digress. Florida is our North American show, and it’s well worth the visit. This year, FLAX was hosted in a different hotel, the Sheraton Tampa Brandon. The halls felt spacious and open—far less cramped and claustrophobic than the Embassy Suites Westshore Hotel, which is where the show has been held in the past. Perhaps it helped that the elevators opened up into larger spaces, lined with tables full of ice-water pitchers. The main-floor lobby split into two directions for access to the obligatory conference rooms and ballrooms where the larger systems were displayed.
While the accommodations were excellent, lunch options were slim. The Sheraton is located in a corporate parkland shared with a bunch of large office buildings. Though this undoubtedly makes the Sheraton a splendid destination for weekday corporate conventions, it’s not such a great tourist destination. There were few restaurants within easy walking distance, and the only convenient option was a lobby setup with cold sandwiches and chafing dishes piled up with burgers and hot dogs. The sandwiches were pretty damn good, but I couldn’t face the sad-looking burgers.
A quick internet search found a well-reviewed small restaurant within a 15-minute walk, so I hoofed it and grabbed some sun on the way. The 160 Bistro turned out to be a fantastic little Mexican family restaurant with outdoor seating. The forearm-sized burrito I ordered was superb, and the next day I dragged Doug with me—he agreed it was the right place at the right time.
Since this was FLAX’s first year at the Sheraton, I’m more than willing to cut them some slack on the food aspect. I’m sure they’ll figure out something better for next year, but 160 Bistro will still be my backup plan.
As I said, the show layout was first-rate, and there were some excellent rooms. The two standouts for me were far from the most expensive systems on display. There were several systems on hand that approached the million-dollar mark, and at least one that exceeded that price.
Before I get to my two standouts, I think it’s valuable to put that million-plus system into perspective. I wrote about the Scott Walker Audio room in my show coverage over at SoundStage! Global. When I asked how much this entire system would cost, Josh Doyle, national sales manager for Scott Walker Audio, did a rough calculation and came up with a figure somewhere around $1.3 million (all prices in USD).
To just about anyone who’s not loaded down with fuck-you money, that’s an obscene amount of cash for a stereo system. It’s actually an obscene amount of cash for anything short of a house. Even so, I think there’s far too much outrage heaped on systems like this. Of course, most of us can’t afford anything even close to this—but that’s not the point here. While visiting Munich for High End 2024, Matt Bonaccio and I attended the Alte Pinakothek museum. Some of the huge old-master paintings, such as The Great Last Judgement by Rubens, were humbling in their scope. Standing next to such a monstrous achievement, I felt small, insignificant, like a temporary mote whose name will be forgotten after two generations.
I would never think of leaving a museum such as Alte Pinakothek resenting the fact that I can’t afford my own Rubens painting. Standing in the presence of The Great Last Judgement, or a big Pollock, or a Rothko, is an experience of the moment, but also a portable memory. I view my listening session in the Scott Walker Audio room in a similar way. My house has 8′ ceilings, so a huge Rothko wouldn’t fit, even if I turned it sideways. I will never be able to afford those Estelon Extreme Mk II speakers, and my listening room wouldn’t support them even if I could.
But sitting there, letting side 2 of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, played on a reel-to-reel tape deck, wash over me was an experience almost as impactful as seeing the Rubens. The big Estelons are works of art themselves. The Vitus Audio amps are brutalist sculptures that radiate power and density.
It’s an experience, to sit in the presence of a well-assembled system playing excellent music. These types of rooms are in the minority, as the work-of-art image can easily be extinguished by shitty music or pompous presentation. The Scott Walker Audio folks did it right.
What’s that you say? You don’t have a spare million kicking around? Well, you’re not out of luck. At the other end of the spectrum was the Orchard Audio and Soundfield Audio room, where you could walk out the door with a full system for $3700—that’s for speakers and amps. That’s not even a fraction of the sales tax on the price of the Scott Walker Audio system.
And holy hell, did the Soundfield Audio Mini Monitor speakers driven by a pair of Starkrimson Mono Premium amplifiers sound superb. Not good for the price. Not good for a small pair of speakers. No, this was a great-sounding system for any price. Bass that was far deeper than should be possible from such a small cabinet, pure highs, and excellent imaging. Doug and I sat for quite a while listening to a bunch of our favorite tracks and thoroughly enjoying them. I could live with these speakers, I found myself thinking. Keep in mind I get to listen to extremely expensive speakers that often—but not always—live up to their stratospheric prices. This was insane value.
My other takeaway from FLAX was the discovery of the new-to-me Popori Acoustics electrostatic speakers. I’ve long been a fan of electrostats for their luscious, otherworldly sound and the sheer gee-whiz factor of translucent panels. While I owned a pair of planar-magnetic Magnepan 1.5s a lifetime ago, I’ve never really settled in with panel speakers, because, despite my love of them, I haven’t been able to look past their flaws. Limited or disjointed bass and a lack of sparkle way up top have been deal-breakers for me.
So imagine my surprise as I walked into the UniQue Home Audio room and, even from the far, far end of the double-long room, heard the Popori Acoustics electrostats just tearing up a drum-and-bass track. At $64,000 per pair, the Popori WR1s aren’t cheap like the Soundfield Audio speakers, but they’re not breathtakingly expensive—just sorta luxury-SUV expensive. Taking a close look at the WR1s, I noted exceptional build quality that was aimed at performance rather than bling, and man oh man, do these guys perform.
The hotel’s Wi-Fi wasn’t cooperating, so the system’s streamer was down and we were restricted on requests—but Michael Swek of UniQue Home Audio had a backup hard drive, allowing us to audition a bunch of tracks that I wasn’t familiar with. No matter; it was real music, not audiophile pap, and I was happy to let Swek curate. The WR1 is a full-range electrostat, meaning there’s no dynamic woofer propping up the low end, but it still slammed down low, filling the large room with fantastic bass. It sounded to me like they captured the magic of electrostats with none of the flaws. I’m hoping to check this speaker out in more detail later this year.
So it was a great show, with a ton of interesting, excellent rooms, but one room made me sad: I left the Suncoast Audio room, featuring the ginormous Clarisys Audio Atrium speakers, with a feeling of empathetic sympathy. I don’t know much about this company, having had only this one passing experience, but it was clear from the scale of the room, from the size of these formidable three-piece ribbon speakers, that Clarisys Audio had invested an enormous amount of capital in producing the 16.5′-tall Atrium speakers and displaying them at FLAX. As I walked into the room, I was gobsmacked by these two-panel speakers, which were augmented by an additional outboard ribbon subwoofer, because what the hell, why not?
As I sat down to listen to the Atriums, I experienced a feeling of tense expectation, waiting for music that would deeply impress me. When it started—I don’t remember what they were playing—I was instantly confused. The sound was phasey, echoey almost. There was a lack of cohesion right through the frequency spectrum that made it disjointed and unpleasant.
Looking around the room, at the setup, at the ancillary equipment, I couldn’t reconcile how it could sound like this. Thinking about it in retrospect, the speakers looked to be pretty much right in the middle of the square room. Open-panel speakers radiate to the rear equally—was there some sort of room interaction that Clarisys Audio hadn’t anticipated?
I can’t watch shows like The Office, as I feel the cringeworthy embarrassment of others as if it were my own, and I don’t like that feeling. After a couple of minutes in the Clarisys room, I felt that embarrassment creeping up my spine and had to leave. Those folks had put so much effort into the manufacture of their speaker and into their room setup, I almost felt distress for them. I did not speak to the representatives, nor did I inquire as to the cost or availability of this new speaker.
Look. The Atrium is a noble, ambitious attempt to build what’s likely the world’s largest panel speaker, and I deeply respect that effort. This speaker should sound superb. I’m hoping that FLAX will be a learning experience for these folks, and they’ll emerge at another show with a better setup.
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
