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Greg Weaver's 2025 Florida International Audio Expo Show Report
While I have been trying to attend the Florida International Audio Expo annual show for several years now, I've been repeatedly checked by bad weather conditions canceling my flights, making it impractical to reschedule, or scheduling conflicts with needed surgical procedures. So I was quite excited that I was finally able to make it for the 2025 edition of this event. The previous five shows had been hosted at the Hilton Tampa Airport Westshore Hotel, but the growing pains associated with an ever-expanding contingent of exhibitors had prompted the move to the larger Sheraton Tampa Brandon Hotel, located near the Florida State Fairgrounds and Hard Rock Cafe area. Somewhat surprisingly, most of the Floridians I spoke with over the four days I was there were apologetically complaining about the weather. When I left my home in the Midwest, it was 7 degrees, or -4 with the wind chill. When my flight touched down at the Tampa International Airport just before 4:00 PM the day before the show opened, I was greeted by what I found to be a lovely 62 degrees. While it did drop to as low as 41 degrees overnight Thursday, over the next three days, we dealt with overcast skies, some occasional rain, and temps in the mid-60s for most of my stay. It did get into the mid-70s occasionally, but for the most part, many of the locals were only too happy to apologize for the poor weather we had to deal with.
This Sheraton opened in 1987 and saw a recent refresh in 2017, just after the 2016 acquisition of the 444-property Sheraton chain by Marriott International. Large, spacious, and with an expansive layout and convenient access to all its amenities and features, including its large meeting and conference rooms, the restaurant and bar, aside from the consequence that the hospitality staff seemed woefully unprepared for, and unable to adequately cope with the mass onslaught that the substantially large group of audiophile attendees, exhibitors, and journalists who had descended upon them, the event itself was run remarkably smoothly and without incident. While I saw their announcement that they had experienced an 18 percent increase in attendance over the 2024 event, no total attendance figures were available to me at the time of this report.
As indicated, this was my first visit to this annual show. And though it was being held at a new venue for the first time, I've attended other well-established shows that did not have this level of organization, as comfortable and inviting an overall vibe, or had proceeded or been run as smoothly and efficiently. A hearty well done to Bart Andeer, Sue Toscano, and all the other staff who made this event possible and so enjoyable. Over its three days, with something on the order of sixty exhibitor rooms and twenty vendor booths, across four floors, it was just the right size to be possible to experience everything one cared to see and hear. This variety of exhibits and gear presented here spanned the entire gamut, ranging from an over two million dollar system, highlighting the statement six-panel, $785,000 a pair Clarisys Audio Atrium loudspeakers, driven with four of the Valve Amplification Company's latest flagship amplifiers that were making their world premiere at this show, the two chassis Statement 455iQ's, to the stir and excitement generated by a $1000 pair of monitor loudspeakers designed by a 17-year-old teenager. Let's start with a rundown of some of the more engaging rooms I found at this event.
Room 415 – Chesky Audio The LC1 uses a 10-inch tall, 8-inch wide, and 10-inch-deep multi-layer high-mass non-resonant cabinet. They feature a one-inch dome tweeter with surrounding diffraction control, and a 6.5" mid-bass driver mounted on its small front baffle, with a pair of inertially balanced, 8-inch, fluid-coupled, passive radiating subwoofers mounted on the left and right-side baffles. Its crossover is hardwired using silver-solder, featuring Solen film capacitors, and internal wiring from Kimber. Recommended power is a minimum of 30 Watts at 8 Ohms, and the LC1s are sold singly, at $498 each, or $996 a pair. Driven by only the affordable Cambridge Audio EXA100, a 100 WPC integrated amplifier that includes a Roon endpoint and built-in high-performance ESS Sabre ES9018K2M based DAC, the whole system was hitched together using AudioQuest's entry-level Rocket cables. While no price was given for the speaker stands, this whole system comes in at well under four grand, all-in. Sources: Electronics: Loudspeakers: Ancillaries And Cables
Affordable, yes. But this system was surprisingly dynamic, with punchy, impactful bass down into what sounded to be somewhere in the mid to upper 40 Hz region. Staging was, well, remarkably well defined, with good depth, and width, and with a nicely layered sense of space and very realistic instrumental sizing. Tonality was surprisingly well-balanced and richly rendered, with a reasonable degree of texture, though it was somewhat limited in its overall resolving abilities, which also limited its ultimate transparency. But damned if the sonic envelope that this modest system generated in that small room wasn't engagingly MUSICAL... and an outright FUN listen! For going on decades now, I've been struggling with discovering and supporting ways to engage younger listeners, to instill the love of proactive listening, that of listening to music for the sake of its beauty and power, not as some background soundtrack for other activities, and to help to reinvigorate this hobby. Most of the teenagers I've run across have shown absolutely zero interest in such listening... And of course, typically, none of them have the disposable income to spend on the kind of gear that I'm really drawn to. But along comes Lucca Chesky, with his creative and remarkably affordable solution which allows him to share the power, joy, and excitement that the best music has to offer. What an exciting, sensible, and engaging new loudspeaker... I wish we had a few dozen more Lucca's out there, bringing their passion to this hobby to rekindle and engage the musical interests of today's youth, much as my enormous musical appetites were stirred some five decades ago!
Room 455 – Next Level HiFi
Sourced entirely from their least costly All-In-One Streamer/DAC/Integrated Stereo Amplifier, the Axxess Forté 1, driving their most affordable Børresen Acoustics Axxess L1 monitor on its included stands, there is simply no way you would have guessed that what you were hearing could be done for under $40,000 or even $45,000. But, this whole rig comes in at just about $25,000! Sources And Electronics: Loudspeakers: Ancillaries And Cables:
This rig delivered solid, punchy bass and midbass, a level of resolution and transparency well beyond its class, with remarkable scaling, and a nice sense of space and texture. As remarkable as all the flagship Audio Group Denmark products are, I have to say that I may be even more taken by the level of accomplishment and remarkably engaging performance they achieve with their most affordable and accessible efforts. This is one fine example of technology trickle-down... I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the Forté 1/L1 combo soon, so stay tuned!
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