The AXPONA 2023 Chronicles: Part 2
Fine premium audio gear on the 15th floor.
Audio Expo North America 2023 Show Report By Rick Becker

ATC Loudspeakers And Lone Mountain Audio
Lone Mountain Audio had a pair of ATC front-ported three-way speakers mounted on tubular metal stands with spikes. The wood veneer cabinets were very attractive. The speaker looked to be their SCM50 SL (passive) speaker with 85dB/W/m sensitivity so you would expect to drive it with solid-state amps, which is exactly what they did, using their own P2 Dual Mono power amp. The speaker is also offered in an active version, SCM50ASL, with a power output of 50 Watts, 100 Watts, and 200 Watts going to the tweeter, midrange, and woofer, respectively.

Playing a recording that sounded like it was close-mic'ed, that's exactly what it sounded like with great transparency and resolution. I'd caution you to audition these with your favorite music for a good long while to be sure you can live with the studio-like accuracy they provide. It was a lot like live jazz when you're sitting close to the stage. ATC is unusual in that they frequently use a domed midrange driver.

Linkwitz
It was a pleasure to meet up with Dr. Frank Brenner again after awarding Linkwitz a Best Rooms commendation at last year's Axpona and Capital Audiofest. The room lived up to my expectations again with its high resolution, transparency, and airy, three-dimensional soundstage. Visually, the speaker was greatly improved with the grills that Frank had devised to conceal the two open-baffle woofers with two opposite facing 10" aluminum cone Seas woofers in each speaker.

The open-baffle unit on top featured a new custom designed 8" woofer with a magnesium cone. Unseen in the photo is a rear-facing identical tweeter that gives the presentation its holographic signature. As I've shown in the past, the wiring, unseen from the front, is very neatly laid out.

The box on the floor beside each speaker contains five Ncore amplifiers — one per driver, with the tweeters paired together. They are tailored to each driver and fed by a new precision analog phase compensated, cascaded active crossover. You need only feed this box an analog source with a volume control, meaning a preamp, phono stage, or streamer, as long as it has a volume-controlled output. The ensemble is basically the same as having speakers with monoblocks and as such, the amps could be placed off to the side with the rest of your analog and digital gear.

While the speaker is certainly distinctive in terms of its open baffle form factor — most open baffle designs have much larger baffles, the Linkwitz offers the possibility of custom wood finishes as well as panzerholz board and aluminum sandwiched panzerholz. My imagination runs wild as I delve back into the 20th-century art world.

The speakers ship directly from Germany at no extra charge and include import taxes. The complete package starts at $23,900 and runs up to $26,900 with panzerholz and aluminum. Other custom options are priced separately. The speaker is also priced alone at $17,900 if you wish to tackle the amplification, crossover, and speaker cables on your own.

The Kuzma turntable and tonearm were noted at the side of the room, along with that fancy orange shaving brush that was exceptionally soft and likely expensive.

Yamaha
Rooms 1542 and 1544 were listed for Yamaha. I only recall being in one Yamaha room (1544) so I might have missed something here, possibly their new NS2000A floorstander or F150 floorstander, one of which I thought sounded much better than the NS 5000 that I saw in Montreal.

Seawave Acoustic
I spoke with Kevin Min of Seaway who assured me that he was not sent here by Kim Jong Un. This was an exploratory trip to Axpona from South Korea and they used Ayre and Aurender electronics to power their speakers.

Seawave certainly gave their designers a free hand in creating these speakers with horns, swoopy lines, and high-gloss contrasting colors. I heard the large black floorstanders with a piece of music that didn't allow me to get a real feel for the speaker, especially as I was standing at the side of the room. The seats were all taken and no one was showing any inclination to leave.

Like the Bayz speakers when I first saw them years ago, I think I will appreciate the styling more the next time I see them. The fit and finish seemed exceptional as you would expect in this price range. The floorstanders were $150k. Aside from the contrasting primary color scheme, they looked every bit as well made as Estelon speakers. I hope I get another chance to hear them.

From the top of the stacked components were the Ayre CX-8 CD player, QX-5 streaming DAC, and KX-R Twenty preamp. Beneath that was the two-box Aurender N30SA (State of the Art) Network Transport with 8TB SSD and all the outputs and outputs you will ever need ($25k). And beside the drawer unit were a pair of Ayre MX-R Twenty monoblocks. I liked the wood footers that allowed the monoblocks to rest on their side, taking up much less floor space. Those amps have very generous openings on their tops to allow for cooling. They appear to have CNC machined chassis from billet aluminum which allows for better cooling from conduction and larger openings for greater airflow.

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