AXPONA 2022 Show Report
Second Floor Spectacular At Audio Expo North America 2022 Show Report
Show Report By Rick Becker

  Coming around the corner the first door on the left was the third and last of the smaller rooms on the 2nd Floor of the Convention Center. As he was in 2019, Sunny Umrao, principal designer of the style and architecture of the Scaena, was there to greet me. The design and development of the Scaena is an evolution of the Pipedreams speaker designed by Mark Porzilli which was such a breakthrough design back in the mid-2000s. A team of audio luminaries has been involved in creating this "iso-linear array" design and it has rightfully become one of the most respected designs in the industry. Not only was the music enticing, but the architecture is unique and charismatic, suitable for the most elegant homes. While the architecture is fixed, the finish of the "bullet" housings can be specified to suit a wide variety of décor. Moreover, the wide dispersion allows easy placement and a relatively broad range of seating — both laterally and vertically. As I moved about in the room, the sound quality held up whether sitting or standing.

The front end was dCs digital gear but as good as it sounded, throwing around CDs like teenyboppers threw around LPs back in the 1950s? Really? Or perhaps this was their subtle way of promoting streaming? The power amplifiers used here, BTW, were a custom solid-state design that is not available.

It did not escape my eagle eye that once again, here was a top-sounding room using the copper/gold-looking ribbon speaker cables. I had seen them last November at Capital AudioFest and a month ago in Montreal in one of the best rooms I've ever heard at an audio show. As it turned out Jeffrey Smith of Silversmith Audio was there and I had an interesting chat with him. He retired from the US Navy and his tinkering with audio cables led to this breakthrough foil cable. If you're thinking "a guy with a battleship grey paint brush" you couldn't be further from the truth. Check out his career on his website.

In talking about cable design and electrical properties, he dropped me in the third or fourth sentence. He really knows his stuff but drew the line at revealing the metallurgy of his proprietary Fidelium cables. His two earlier generations utilized silver and palladium. I asked about the vulnerability of the foil design and he assured me that accidentally creasing the foil does not affect the sound quality. Moreover, while they are not inexpensive, they are far from the typical expensive cables used in systems of this quality. RCA and XLR interconnects are not available yet. I imagine that reliably fitting a foil conductor to those connectors is quite a challenge.

On Sunday, after listening to a room with another type of ribbon cable, I had to return to the Scaena room for a musical reset, the sound was so dramatically different. Granted, the entire systems were different, but there was something more dramatically 'right' here that suggests the Silversmith Fi cable is an affordable reference speaker cable. They received a rave review and Blue Note Award from Greg Weaver last year.

Many others have praised The Audio Company's presentation of VAC (Valve Amplification Company) electronics, Von Schweikert speakers, and Kronos turntable this year and at least one writer has lamented its redundancy, but each time there have been variations of the theme as new models have emerged. The commonality has been the consistency of excellence and it is hard to compare the sound with the previous year's presentation. About all you can do is compare the relevance of the size, power, and price and perhaps choose a color that works best for you. The sound has remained remarkably consistent. At Axpona we heard the Ultra 7 speaker that was on silent display at Captial AudioFest last November, driven by four of the VAC Statement 452 IQ monoblocks that I heard moments earlier driving the Acora speakers.

The digital front end was from Esoteric, who, as I said earlier, will be having new models released over the coming year. An Aurender Special Edition streamer was also in the mix. And that's the Kronos Pro turntable on top, equipped with a Hana Umami Red cartridge ($3950). On the back of the speaker you get a view of the bi-amp capability and the additional adjustability of the Ultra 7.

The complexity is further visualized with the MasterBuilt cables employed behind the wall of amplifiers and speakers. I noted a variety of wood and glass(?) cable risers.

As grand as the big system was at a million dollars or more, what I wanted to hear was the more approachable Endeavor SE speaker that sells in the neighborhood of $25k. This would surely be a more logical extension of the Von Schweikert models I reviewed in the early 2000s. As luck would have it, Leif Swanson, chief designer, told me they would be switching over to them, and to come back in a half-hour. When I returned, I was amazed at how little the Endeavor SE gave up to the Ultra 7. It had the same sonic signature with its rear-firing planar driver and acquitted itself very well in this large room. Most of what seemed to be missing were the more impressive styling and bright finish of the Ultra 7.

And as I said about the Acora speaker, you could drop the price of the rig dramatically in a smaller room with shorter cables, stepping down to lower-priced models of amplification, and restricting your front end to one or two sources. I'd call this one of the Best Rooms with either speaker, which begs the question: "Why doesn't Von Schweikert partner their lower-cost speakers with other manufacturers in smaller rooms at the shows?" Or do I just need to get around more?

Legacy Audio filled the next large room, Utopia A, by setting up multiple rigs in different areas of the room. This effectively allowed them to show most of their products, pairing their amps with appropriate speakers.

Bill Dudleston, founder and chief designer at Legacy gave me a tour of their new flagship amp, the i.V1 monoblock with ICEedge Class D technology. Bill took me right down to the circuit board to show me the ICEedge chip — The dark grey square between the two copper coils. I noticed, also, the use of white foam stuffed between capacitors to minimize vibrations. These amps deliver 610 Watts into 8 Ohms, 1000 into 4 Ohms, and run cool while doing it, approaching 80% efficiency at full output.

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