The AXPONA 2023 Chronicles: Part 4
The 12th floor was filled with glorious sounds.
Audio Expo North America 2023 Show Report By Rick Becker

Geshelli Labs
Business seemed to be booming for Geshelli Labs as I've noted in previous years. They target a younger audience with affordable gear and that bodes well for the industry. Their banner across the window at the end of the hall was a real attention grabber.

In one of their two adjacent darkened rooms, they had headphone listening opportunities with a variety of headphones.

A display case housed numerous versions of their products clad in Plexiglas.

And for the more playful among us, they had a DAC in a wood chassis with a colorful confetti finish. Listening to music can be fun, right?

Geshelli Labs Room Two
In their other room, they harbored a working rig a prototype of the integrated amplifier I had seen last year at Capital Audiofest. It was pumping out tunes through a pair of stand-mounted monitors and people were listening.

This is a young company with growing pains, but they seem to be doing it right by not trying to grow too fast. Based in Florida, I hear they had a very successful show in Tampa earlier this year.

I was hoping to have a review sample of this integrated amp with its carved wood chassis sculpted by the owner's father. They are setting up a new production line for this amp, so as not to disturb the product flow of their proven DACs and headphone amps. With patience, they will have it up and running by this fall. I'm looking forward to this unique and attractive amplifier. It is bound to attract new people to high-end audio.

VANA Distribution, Grimm Audio, And Kyomi Audio (Marten)
The program listed Grimm Audio in Vana's room, but the speaker was actually from Marten in Sweden. The Marten Mingus Quintet 2 is roughly in the middle of their lineup, priced at $75k. You can spend much more or much less on this premium line.

There is a choice of solid zebrano, walnut, or oak, shown here, for the tops and bottoms. It features a diamond tweeter, ceramic midrange, and aluminum sandwich woofers with a first-order crossover and a downward firing port. There is a dial near the speaker binding posts that electronically adjusts the bass through the crossover.

Marten was an early adapter of isolation footers rather than a spike connection with the floor. The footer extenders are polished stainless steel. The spike versus floating footer debate continues. This is the finest-sounding Marten speaker I've had the pleasure to hear and while there were lots of new upgrades to this model, I'd have to say this speaker scores a point for the floating footer team.

That's the EAT Fortissimo S turntable with F-Note tonearm fitted with a Jo No.8 MC cartridge, which seems to be a real value at $13,799 (w/o cartridge) for such a gorgeous turntable. Below that was the EAT E-Glo tube phono stage with lots of adjustments right up front at your fingertips. And below that — ah, there's the Grimm, a server, it seems.

On the left half of the rack was the new Ferrum Wandla The DAC ($2795) next to the Ferrum Hypsos power supply that can serve many different components. Below the Wandla was a Jadis preamp with a gold faceplate and its power supply further down.

Jadis monoblocks with their separate power supply were on either side of the rack, with KT88 tubes that may or may not have been sourced from Russia. Too hot to touch.

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