The Only Complete Coverage Of Cutting-Edge Audio At AXPONA 2025
Rick's first floor coverage features top-level audiophile gear & innovations!
Audio Expo North America (AXPONA) 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker 

Schaumburg C
Rutherford Audio, 432evo, Acoustic Arts, Acoustic Signature, Antipodes Audio Ltd., MA Recordings, Revox, And Solid Tech
Rutherford Audio is an importer/distributor, and like the previous MoFi Distribution room, they created a bazaar atmosphere with a lot of products on silent display. The Acoustic Signature Double X Neo turntable from Germany, one up from the bottom of the Neo series, felt very approachable with its straightforward elegance.

This edgy Vertere DG X turntable from Englewood, Colorado, with its flat Groove Runner X tonearm and its tectonic plinth with colored lights shining through a clear layer of Plexiglas, seems destined for the Gen X crowd. It also seems to be a good candidate for a wall-mounted shelf to improve its performance even further. It's available in other color combinations as well.

I've always associated Solid Tech from Sweden with their Rack of Silence rack in all aluminum, but this poster informed me they have other variations with wood shelves and black anodized pillars. The pillars have had spring-loaded vibration-absorbing footers since... forever, way before the aftermarket trend that has become commonplace.

This interesting speaker from Stratton Acoustics in Great Britain was the Element 12 model made from plyboo and included the integral stand. It featured a 12" mid/bass driver crossed over at 1700Hz to a 1.2" domed tweeter. With 94dB/W/m mid-band sensitivity and 6 Ohm minimum impedance from 100Hz to 10kHz it is rated at 8 Ohm impedance. It is said to be flat from 50Hz to 18kHz, extending down to 38Hz at –6dB with twin ports. They had been playing it earlier in the show, presumably with the Burmester electronics from Germany that Rutherford also imports, though it should also play well with tube electronics. The lattice-work stand is an intriguing high-tech design, and the entire ensemble looked very high-quality.

They didn't have it on display for me to report on Enjoy the Musc.com's AXPONA 2025 high-end audio show, but Rutherford has just picked up distribution of the Gold Note line from Italy. Perhaps we will get a chance to see it at Capital Audiofest 2025.

As I was leaving the room a voice called out from the corner. I didn't recognize him at first, but then I noticed the table full of CDs and LPs. It was Todd Garfinkle of MA Recordings, cleverly disguised to look 20 years younger in a backward-facing baseball cap. Todd is famous for his artisanal recording technique and his unique recordings from all over the world. He also sells exclusive, high-quality record inner sleeves made in Japan.

Schaumburg D
Luxury Audio Group, Crystal Cable, Estelon, Vitus Audio, And Scott Walker Audio
Aldo Filipelli is another of the few American distributors who have raised the visual presentation to the high standards seen at Munich and the Far East shows. He even went to great lengths to install wood baffles against the front wall to liven up the sound in this room.

I've heard this flagship Estelon Extreme speaker (now, Mk II) in this room before (aligned on the wall to the right), but it was immediately apparent this system was one of the very best, if not the best, at the show. BB King and Eric Clapton trading verses on 3 O'clock Blues was like standing in front of the stage at a live concert. It was also apparent that this was a remixed version, as they were both center stage, rather than Eric farther to the left and BB somewhat to the right of center, as on my CD from 2000.

A big factor here was the Vitus Audio amplification. It's been my favorite solid-state brand since I first heard it years ago at Rocky Mountain. The Crystal Cable is also known to be an outstanding brand, though priced at the upper echelon like everything else in this room. Those were Sonorus tape decks at the front end of the system and a Taiko Audio Olympus Music Server below the deck on the right.

The Secret Sauce in this room was the inconspicuous black squares that looked like small laptops at the rear of the Vitus monoblocks and on the Taiko server. Zooming in on my original high-rez digital photos, I can also see them on top of the DAC and Line Stage, too. These were from Audio Realignment Technologies (A.R.T.) here in the US. The very short story is that these pads, plus possibly a variation of them around the cables and power cords, work their magic on the electronic noise in the environment, resulting in a very transparent and dynamic presentation.

I had read up about them, and Aldo and I had a long conversation in the hall. They are very expensive and require careful setup, both in placement and quantity, to achieve maximum performance without overdoing it. I'd say he had it properly maximized in his room, as the buzz Enjoy the Music.com heard from others in the industry agreed that this room was clearly outstanding. That's all I can say about it for now.

Schaumburg West
Ear Gear Experience
Doubling back across the front of the Schaumburg Ballroom just past the Exhibitor, Trade & Press Registration table, I ducked into the Ear Gear Experience. I'm not really a headphone geek, although I've been using my trusty Grado cans for decades as I work and play on my computer. Only on rare occasions do I try out any exceptional or exotic headphones at shows. Even then, it is just for a minute.

The Ear Gear Experience is the largest concentrated area of headphone gear of the shows I've covered: Montreal, Toronto, Capital, and Rocky Mountain. The Stereophile shows in NY (1996, et. al.) were way before headphones became a thing. I'm aware of specialty shows just for headphone geeks, but I haven't been to one. At Axpona, like other shows, many vendors will opt to present their headphone wares in a sleeping room, rather than duke it out with the competition in one large room such as this.

I'm not covering this room in detail as I'm sure other ezines and reviewers specialize in this category.

As I've written, time and again, Sunday is the best day to audition headphone gear because traffic is way down, and anything that was brand new at the start of the show has now had a chance to break in a little.

This was the AC feed coming from the wall at the back of the room. The lines coming from the distribution box were taped to the floor and ran down the center of the room to supply the tables in the middle.

At the Montreal show a few years ago, one of the Best Rooms used an iFi Diablo DAC, hot-rodded with a special power supply and custom cables with excellent results. When I saw this new iFi DAC/amp, I stopped for a closer look with similar thoughts in mind.

Having published the first review of the Manley Mahi monoblocks back in 2003 (and still the proud user of the review samples), I had to stop and pay homage to the Manley Labs headphone amp, complete with remote control and HiFiMan HE1000 headphones. Alas, EveAnna has sold the company, so our next encounter will likely be on motorcycles out on the highway, by some coincidence.

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