Inside AXPONA 2026 America's Largest, Best Attended Audio Show Ever

12,000+ attendees and 750 brands from 50+ countries

The final tally wasn't required for anyone and everyone in attendance at AXPONA 2026 to know that this show was the best attended AXPONA ever and by a considerable margin. The crowd was 15% larger than last year and the younger demographic—a 52% increase in Gen Z passes—fueled a high energy vibe that began Friday morning and continued throughout the show's three day run.

(lead photo show YG Acoustics/Moon Audio big room)

The crowd was younger and more diverse, resembling the Warsaw Show's energy and vitality. Headphones, car audio and the Marketplace sales area were major draws among the younger crowd but the high performance audio rooms were also packed with youngsters eager for musical thrills.

Sorry it's taken so long for this first short report to appear but I'm editing video as quickly as I can and there will be a lot of it coming up here. Our Ken Redmond came down with the flu and couldn't attend, which pretty much left it all up to me and J.J. French who had no particular assignments so I'm not sure what he might contribute.

The idea that i could cover the entire show myself or that the two of us could was of course ludicrous so I avoided rooms presented by companies I"d covered at FLAX and last Fall at the Capital Audio Fest as well as rooms I figured would be least interesting to you.

Friday at noon I moderated a well-attended panel discussion "Vinyl Records: Is There More Performance Yet to Come?" with Wilson-Benesch's Craig Milnes, Supatrac's Richard Braine, WallyTools/WAM Engineering's J.R. Boisclair (who i jokingly referred to as "the angel of death" for all of his much needed poking around the cartridge world and discovering less than satisfactory build quality and delivering to us the bad news) and Döhmann Audio's Mark Döhmann.

Before getting to what's left to discover in the grooves and how we're going to get there, I threw a curve-ball and asked the panel what they'd buy given a max budget of $10,000 for turntable and tonearm. The response were interesting and I'm hoping AXPONA will provide me with a board recording i can post on this site.

This was the line waiting to get into the 400+ seat theater

Friday evening Caelan Cardello and his trio (Dana Hall on drums, Clark Summers on bass) performed for a packed theater that seats 400 and there were but a few empty seats. I'd lobbied AXPONA V.P. Event Director Liz Smith to spend a considerable amount extra for a Steinway Grand for Caelan and I just worried that following the crazy day, attendees would go home and show participants would leave for dinner and there'd be a small crowd clustered at the front of a mostly empty hall. NO PROBLEM!

Thanks to Wireworld for sponsoring the concert! I got up and talked about how I'd met Caelan at the NYC Jazz Piano Marathon hosted by Klavierhaus, a piano showroom, how I'd gone there with Robyatt Audio's Robin Wyatt to support our jazz concert promoter friend Jim Luce, in a post Covid environment, and after a few more remarks quickly left the stage.

Caelan's trio performed an exciting, high energy concert. The audience reacted as they do at rock shows. There was a crush outside after the show for autographed CDs and vinyl records. Acoustic Sounds distributes the vinyl version and when Chad Kassem saw the people lining up to buy autographed merch he ran back to the Marketplace and brought back a box of LPs. You can see Caelan's head just to the right of the guy wearing the colorful plaid shirt.

Fans lined up post concert for merch

Drummer Dana Hall and bassist Clark Sommers had never before played with Caelan. The Chicago natives, who have played together for more than 30 years, came highly recommended. Caelan sent the music a fews days earlier, the three met an hour or so before showtime and off they went!

The audio isn't particularly good in these clips but Caelan's improv opening solo on the second video was a memorable show highlight. There's a recorded board mix and if it's good enough it might become a live album on Liam Records.

Honestly, there were not that many product debuts at the show—especially in the analog domain—or at least that I saw beyond the ones I'll mention here, the first being a brand new tonearm from Bob Graham (Graham Audio). The new Phantom Platinum doesn't discard Graham's core Unipivot construction ideas but rather further refines them.

The tungsten-carbide Swiss-manufactured bearing set features a microscopically small radius tip that sits within a slightly larger radius matching cup. It's Graham's familiar design taken to another precision-level. For the first time Graham is using carbon fiber for the Platinum's arm tube. There's new arm wiring and as you can see, a much larger diameter bearing structure. The exact price will be in the video but it's around $27,000.

The new SME Model 35 made its North American debut at AXPONA 2026 in the Monarch Distribution Room as did SME's new Model 8, which replaces the Model 6. Like the 6 the 8 is mostly resin-based, which in SME's hands has proven to be an excellent tonearm material as well as being useful for a turntable base. The 8 now features the SME 309 arm rather than the 6's Model M2 arm, which while a quite good design, is considered by some to be an SME "almost" arm. There are a series of design improvements you'll see in the video. Price is around $10,000.

SME 35

A full description of the 35 will be in one of the soon to post videos. The triple poster fits in between the Model 60 and Model 30.

SME Model 10

I believe the Primary Control Kinea direct drive turntable made its American debut at this year's AXPONA. The motor is an in-house design, manufactured in The Netherlands. The price will be in the video.

Many of the analog products shown this year that were new to me, were not new but recently introduced, like the Glanzlab MH-12 Katana arm ($39,975) imported by Axiss Audio. it debuted in 2024. Likewise, Phasemation's EA-1500 two chassis LCR phono preamplifier that began shipping late 2025.

VinnieRossi (now distributed by Monarch Distribution) announced a new yet to be named or priced phono preamplifier (name and price to be announced over the summer). It's a dual mono design featuring balanced and single-ended inputs and outputs. It uses a discrete JFET input stage using "unique transconductance /transimpedance topology.

Peter Madnick ran me through the new Mo-Fi electronics "stripped down" $2495 Ultraphono Pro phonostage (see video). The first run sold out almost immediately. I'll review when it's back and stock. It's the same basic circuit as the $5995 Masterphono phono stage, minus the meters transimpedance input and some flexibility features. But Madnick assured me the sound was close to identical.

Loudspeaker debuts of note include the Ø Audio YMIR from Norway ($65,000/pr. appx), which was introduced at an early Friday morning press conference hosted by the company's principals and its American distributor Harmonia Distribution.

I snagged a front row center seat and was dazzled by the clarity, purity and precision of the center image. What was to the sides was impressive as well. The sound was effortless and the blend between the cone woofer and the horn on top was seamless.

Magico's new S7 (priced from $137,000/pr.) made its North American debut at AXPONA 2026. Alon Wolf was there to play some music with the S7s driven by a combination of Plinium and CH Precision electronics. The sound was precise, finely resolved yet relaxed and notably transparent.

Bricasti, Design best known for its electronics, introduced a new loudspeaker, with input from our own John Marks. There will be video coverage so all I'll say is an all Bricasti system will please many listeners. The speakers will be a limited edition selling for $38,000/pr. I enjoyed my listen and was forced to leave due to time limits. I had to move on. It seemed to me to be a lot of loudspeaker for that price.

One of the much anticipated loudspeaker debuts was a new field coil base design from Andrew Jones for a new company in which he is a financial participant rather than being a hired hand (TAD, ELAC, Mo-Fi). Jones will remain at Mo-Fi but has re-engineered his relationship with that company to pursue this venture with brothers Jamie and Bill Cerreta, called Jones & Cerreta. The new Troubadour loudspeaker features dual concentric field coil drivers and will sell for $33,900/pr.

Associated equipment included a Thorens 124 DD turntable, EMT Tondose Phono cartridge, Lab 12 integre4 Mk2 tube integrated amp, Lab 12 Melto2 tube phono stage, and HiFi Rose RS151 Network Streamer.

How did it sound in a very small room? A+ for musical textures and attack purity and delicacy. The kind of sound you "melt into", but during my short stay the system sounded bright, but I don't attribute that to the loudspeakers. That's not what Andrew does. People who exited the room with me heard the same balance and none of them thought it was anything other than the overall room/system/musical selections. Would be a fun loudspeaker to audition at home.

ELAC debuted a new $50,000/pr. Concentro M807 loudspeaker with a new very interesting "tunable" feature you'll have to watch the video to grasp because I'm not explaining it here!

Dutch & Dutch introduced an enormous new 15c speaker that was situated in the hotel's lobby area—not an ideal location. Still it drew large crowds. It features four 15 inch drivers: two rear firing subs (making it better to load a wall than free space), a midrange driver and a tweeter with 15 inch waveguide. It features the company's DSP room adaptive technology.

ATC debuted its EL50 Anniversary loudspeaker its most elegant looking powered loudspeaker powered by a 3 channel discrete "Amp-pack" MOSFET Class A-B power delivering 200W bass, 100W midrange and 50 W to the tweeter. These sounded really superb, if you don't mind the hyperbole.

And in the smaller, compact speaker category, Dynaudio introduced a new stand mount (or shelf-mount or however you wish to mount according to Dynaudio) Legend loudspeaker, finished in hand matched Rosewood cabinetry priced at $7000/pr. It uses Dynaudio's best Esotar 3 tweeter and other top quality parts. I was only able to spend a few minutes in the room but the speaker's immediacy in the best sense of that word, grabbed my ears and I wish I could have spent more time with them. The room wasn't large but I got the sense these small attractive speakers could have effortlessly filled a much bigger space.

I'm sure there were many more new loudspeakers at the show but how many could I cover by myself?

Dan D'Agostino Master Audio's new Momentum Z mono block amps made their debut at AXPONA 2026. I heard them at the factory on Dan's XVX speakers last February and they told the big woofers what to do without hesitation. At AXPONA they drove Sonus Faber Amati Supremes in conjunction with a brand new not yet priced C2Z Momentum preamplifier that's designed specifically for the low input impedance Momentum Z amps, though it can be used with any amplifiers. The combination's "direct electric coupling" delivers more current to the amplifiers and that, D'Agostino says, greatly improves bass control among other things. It's certainly what I heard.

This combination will be appearing soon in my room! Can't wait to hear it.

Saturday morning at show opening Caelan Cardello and I did a two person seminar that though not super-well attended was appreciated by those who were there. We talked about being a young musician on the road, playing jazz clubs, selling merch and making a living at it. The previous evening's show was part of the discussion. Most who were there in the morning had been there the previous evening.

Then it was off to the Quintessence room featuring the XVXes, the Audio Research Ref 20 and ARC amps, where Musical Surrounding's Garth Leerer was kind enough to play a side of Caelan's album Chapter One on the Döhmann Helix One turntable fitted with a Wilson-Benesch Graviton tonearm and Hana Umami Black cartridge. Half a box of record sold after the side ended. A good sign for a complete sell-out soon of the first pressing!

Saturday evening after hours I played records in the big Acora/VAC/SAT room. The speakers were not the big VRCs but rather a new smaller Acora MRC 5.2D speakers. You'll see more in the room video. It was well worth shlepping a heavy bag of records to the show to play them on that system! Those speakers easily filled the big room and everyone absolutely loved the sound as they should have! We had a full house for two and half plus hours. Of course I played the Tommy lacquer. One guy blurted out "I've never heard anything like that in my entire life!"

Tom "Grover" Biery sent me two One-Step test pressing of the soon to be released Pet Sounds. I played one, and gave away the second one to this guy, who won because of his birthday. Val Cora picked "the birthday method" choosing a winner. This guy won:

At that point I was so tired the left side of my do fell down. By the way, there are now TrackingAngle T-shirts. Big logo, no writing. Not sure how we'll sell them. Maybe on the Acoustic Sounds website.

After that I made my way up to Angie Lisi's American Sound room to celebrate Air-Tight's 40th anniversary with Air-Tight's Yutaka "Jack" Miura. He opened a great bottle of Sake he'd brought with him from Japan and we —by the time I got there close to 11:30 only a few people remained—all got a bit trashed. "We" were Jack, Angie, a few of her employees and Mo-Fi Distribution's Lionel Goodfield and Stereophile's GM Keith Pray. No faces shown to protect the inebriated. But I'll say these big Trios shouldn't have worked in that space sitting so close to them but they did....

One of the best moments occurred late Sunday as I made the final rounds and hit Jeff Catalano's High Water Sound room (you'll be glad you read this until the end). I'd already checked my luggage at the front desk. Three generations of a family had just entered. Jeff asked what they wanted to hear and the 8 year old (age approximate) said "Pet Sounds!". I couldn't believe it. I said to the kid, "You wait here, I've got the best sounding Pet Sounds you've ever heard downstairs checked at the front desk. I'll go down and get it."

I had to run down 5 flights of stairs, retrieve the record from the checked luggage and run back up 5 flights. The elevators were so crazy-crowded it would have taken a half hour. He was waiting. Jeff played "God Only Knows" and you'll see the kid in the video swinging and swaying to the music, finally throwing up his hands. It was so great!

When it was over I asked him, "So what did you hear?" And his answer nearly floored me. He looked up wide-eyed and said "I heard a symphony in every language!"

That was the awesome capper to AXPONA 2026. Videos coming up!