Florida International Audio Expo 2026 Produced Major Surprises

new product debuts and new lines imported to the United States

The Florida International Audio Expo held last weekend in the Tampa-St. Pete Brandon Sheraton Hotel caught many seasoned show vets by surprise. New and important products made their debuts, the show truly was international, there were products at every price point, youth was served.

Polish loudspeaker manufacturer Pylon made its American debut at the show. It's a wide ranging line I've seen for more than a decade at the Warsaw show and it's a line sure to attract attention. America's two print mags mistakenly didn't show up as best as I could tell, preferring to wait for the much bigger AXPONA show in April, thus journalists from online sites and YouTubers got a series of scoops some of which you will see in Tracking Angle's videos.

This is only the first of at least 3 show videos. Once all have been edited and posted I'll end with a summation plus photos.

In addition to start ups and upstarts, the major distributors, including Rhythm Distribution, Playback Distribution and others that have entered the market and consolidated distribution of major brands, in conjunction with local and regional dealers filled rooms with great systems and more importantly impressive sound.

The show occupied but a few floors, however, they were packed with high performance audio at all price points. Admittedly analog took a back seat to streaming, with limited brand participation from, a few manufacturers including, Clearaudio, VPI and Pear Audio Blue. Cynics who think high performance audio is only for the old, will be surprised by how this 40 minute video begins. That's all I'm going to say.

With a huge east coast storm predicted for Sunday, I cut short my visit, feeling obliged to leave Saturday afternoon rather my planned Sunday evening exit. I changed from Sunday evening to Sunday late afternoon to Sunday early afternoon and finally when it appeared a "bomb cyclone" was approaching Saturday afternoon seemed a good idea, even though it meant I'd have to cut short a seminar I was running with J.R. Boisclair titled "Michael Fremer and J.R.. Boisclair Will Not Answer Your Questions About Analog Playback" or words to that effect. I was also supposed to play records in one of the Deep Diver Audio rooms featuring Doshi electronics, YG Carmel speakers, Buckingham subwoofers (debut), and Pear Audio Blue turntable fitted with a MuTech Hyate cartridge recently reviewed on this site.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending upon your perspective) the flight kept getting delayed so I was able to remain at the hotel long enough to do the full seminar and play records! The plane left at around 8:00 and I got home just before it started to snow and snow and snow.

For most of the two days our Ken Redmond traveled the halls with me and that was a show highlight for me as Ken is great company and has insights I lack about many brands.

On Friday evening I played records in the big Acora Acoustics room starting at 8PM and ending I can't remember when but it was S.R.O. for most of it, which was good because I shlepped a huge, heavy record bag filled with great test pressings, lacquers and difficult to find pressings and it would have been a shame to play to an empty house.

Someone posted this photo which mostly shows the genius of my hair cutting guy. He's costly but worth it!