AXPONA 2022: Back To Business
Audio Expo North America 2022 Show Report
Show Report By Greg Weaver

ONE – Wandering into the Euphoria Suite, where I held two LP Spin sessions for showgoers, both Friday and Saturday evenings, Keith Sequeira and Gordon Waters of The Audio Company of Marietta, GA, greeted me, as did Damon Von Schweikert, CEO of Von Schweikert Audio, and Leif Swanson, Vice President and Lead Designer of VSA. The room looked – and sounded – fabulous.

The LP playback chain starts, again, with a KRONOS Pro Turntable ($51,000), this time with the Black Beauty tonearm ($10,000), and the SCPS-1 Super Capacitor Power Supply ($15,000), fitted with a Hana Umami Red MC cartridge ($3,995). Now, save for the upgrade to the NEW Discovery RS (Resonance Suppression) tonearm ($24,000) that I now use, along with the Etsuro Gold MC cartridge ($20,995), this is my current reference LP transcription system. However, here, the phonostage is the superlative, two-box VAC Statement Phono Preamplifier ($80,000).

Ones and zeros were streamed over the stunning Esoteric gear, featuring the Esoteric N-01XD streamer/renderer/DAC ($20,000), the Esoteric K1 Grandioso CD/SACD player ($31,000), retimed using the Esoteric G-01 Clock ($20,000).

Electronics included the VAC Statement Line Preamplifier ($80,000), and four of the sublimely magical VAC Statement 452 iQ Musicbloc amps($75,000). I am excited to report that I will be getting this entire VAC chain of Statement gear, the Phonostage, Linestage, and a pair of the 452 iQ Musicbloc amps, to drop into my system for a full review in the fall of this year! All equipment sat on Critical Mass Maxxum equipment racks at $6,150/space, with nine spaces necessary for this system ($55,350), and cabling was all MasterBuilt ULTRA series throughout (~$300,000).

While those four VAC Statement 452 iQMusicbloc monos were used to biamplify each of the newly launched Von Schweikert Ultra 7 speakers ($180,000/pr.), the room also employed a pair of the Von Schweikert Audio Shockwave 12 subwoofers ($15,000each), deployed critically to manage active room correction.

Like the entire ULTRA Lineup, the new ULTRA 7 delivers extremely low distortion, class-defining clarity, superbly realized and uniquely dimensional imaging, staging, and focus, and that engaging, full-bodied harmonic structure so effortlessly realized by all the award-winning ULTRA loudspeakers. The ULTRA 7 is unique in the ULTRA lineup, as it currently is the first, and only, ULTRA speaker that does NOT employ any internal amplifiers to power its woofers or subwoofers, as the case may be. Although, it may be ordered with an internal 525-Watt amplifier to power the woofers.

The first thing you notice about these new ULTRA 7's is their beautifully fashioned and finished enclosures, employing their Version 2.0 Aktive Cabinet Vibration Control, in its spectacular Electric Storm blue. Each ULTRA 7 incorporates an exotic driver array, both front and rear. The front baffle holds three nine-inch reinforced ceramic woofers, one seven-inch reinforced ceramic midrange, one Beryllium tweeter, and one Dual Ribbon Super Tweeter. The back baffle holds the Rear Ambient Array near its top, employing one ribbon super tweeter and one magnesium horn-loaded tweeter.

Immediately beneath the ambient array on the rear baffle, you will find VSA's revolutionary room adjustment control suite. By utilizing this control suite, consisting of autoformers with induvial signal paths for each level selection, users can adjust the main tweeter, the super tweeter, and rear ambient array independently, in 1/2 dB increments. This unparalleled adaptability allows listeners to achieve much more synergistic room integration, with much more versatile room placement than any other analog loudspeakers available.

VSA's proprietary network topologies, unique circuit designs that have undergone ensuing advancement over more than four decades of development, known as G.A.I.N., for Global Axis Integration Network, and A.I.R., for Acoustic Inverse Replication, are all hand-assembled, use point-to-point wiring, and employ isolated architecture. The ULTRA 7 design achieves full-range response from 18Hz to 60kHz with 94dB/W/m sensitivity.

So, how did it sound?

This system's ability to render such stark transparency to the recordings, to reveal nuance in detail or scale, to uncover minute inflection, to render such a sophisticated degree of musical relevance, all speak to the higher level of resolution and transparency that this current iteration of the system featuring the new ULTRA 7 loudspeakers can accomplish.

Bass performance was extended, fast, tight, powerful, yet highly pitch defined. Midrange was pure, with indisputably authentic timbre, full-bodied texture, and rife with an immediacy and intimacy that was infectious. The uppermost frequencies were transparent, detailed, and extended, revealing that final degree of effortlessness, air, and shimmer as naturally as if the system were merely breathing.

This system so convincingly transports you into the recorded event with its comprehensive and effectual fabricated deception and allows you to witness the sensations, feelings, and emotions that the artist/s in play were sharing in that recorded moment, more so than with any other system I experienced at AXPONA 2022, period. In this room, in terms of creating the illusion of living, breathing musicians, populating a real space, of having that inexplicable ability to foster the complete suspension of disbelief, of permitting me to completely forget that I was listening to a recreation, a total deception, a reconstructed sonic event, this system would appear to have no equal - save for when it may be populated with the ULTRA 9 (my current reference), or the mighty ULTRA 11.

Its ability to deceive, to permit me to forget that the time and space of the events unfolding before me were merely auditory illusions generated by a complex reconstruction engine, a conglomeration of electro-mechanical devices is, in my experience, unparalleled at this time. It more effortlessly and emotionally engaged me, and most any listener in general, with the message of the musical spell the system is casting than any other system I've yet experienced.

Okay, so yes, it is The Audio Company, the Valve Amplification Company, and Von Schweikert Audio pulling down yet another "Best of Show" award. Using Excel functions to search the listings of awards at the Von Schweikert Audio website revealed some 97 "Finest" or "Best of Show" awards, from more than a dozen sources, and over 71 other award accolades. I mean, how can it be that the same team of industry members, showing the same brands of flagship gear, in various iterations, over every venue they set up in, for every audio show over the year, for the past half decade-plus, have earned more "Best of Show" awards, from more magazines and outlets, than any other exhibitor?

You should know that we, the audio industry press as an entity, are aware of this conspicuous accomplishment. I have personally spoken with several other publishers, editors, and senior writers about this very concern... and on several occasions. Inevitably, such discussions have us rhetorically and pensively asking how can we award that same team of industry specialists "Best of Show" again, and again, and again? Well, it all comes down to the reality of what they accomplish. Let's visit that reality for a moment, shall we?

When you examine the strategic combination of some of the best minds in the industry today (look at the list of partners involved with this touring system) with the most advanced and successful implementation of technologies, you have no problem understanding such an accomplishment, one that they have managed to repeat, show after show, virtually without exception, for going on over half a decade now.

Think about it. If you look at the achievements in any field where state-of-the-art technologies are applied to human endeavors. One of the most analogous endeavors is that of Formula One automobile racing. Look at the successes of Ferrari under Ross Brawn, with the most successful driver in the history of the sport, Michael Schumacher, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Schumacher earned seven World Championships, five of them consecutively! Or those of Red Bull Racing under Adrian Newey and Christian Horner, with Sebastian Vettel in the driver's seat during his three consecutive Championships in the early 2010s.

It should be seen as almost inevitable that when you combine the most advanced technologies, be that an inherently faster and more dependable race-winning automotive chassis and motor synergy, or bleeding-edge loudspeaker technologies driven by heroic valve-based electronics capable of turning in a more realistic recreation of a musical performance, with hard-working, inspired, and dedicated professionals in their field, you achieve astonishing, repeatable successes.

And while a "Best of Show" designation may seem to be a more subjective form of winning "First Place" in a clearly different kind of race, it is no less a first-place finish, crossing the sonic finish line ahead of the competition, and is every bit as real and distinguished an accomplishment.

To that end, when you look at the repeated recognition conferred upon this traveling collection of gear and partners, by so many different journalists, from so many different media outlets, it becomes clear that this team is simply having one championship season after another!

I must urge you to go out of your way to hear this remarkable traveling experience. While you likely cannot understand the monumental effort it requires in terms of time, manpower, and resources, to accomplish the musical magic that they regularly deliver to audiences around the world, you will nonetheless revel in the musical experience. I hope I may be able to share a track or two with YOU there some time!

Okay, now I can turn my system volume back up. Till next time, keep the music playing, won't you!

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