I’m writing this after coming back from Florida Audio Expo 2025 (and a few days off) on a drop-dead deadline, so my full report will have to wait until the next issue. But I wanted to fire off some first impressions of what was a fun and enlightening show.
This was my first Florida Audio Expo (FAE) so I didn’t know what to expect, other than the fact that many of the exhibitors were familiar names like Joseph Audio, VAC, VPI, Volti Audio, Triode Wire Labs, Wireworld, and Gershman Acoustics, many of whom I’d seen a few months previously at Capital Audiofest. But no one knew what the venue would be like, as it was the first time FAE had exhibited at the Sheraton Tampa Brandon hotel, having outgrown their previous location at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Tampa Airport.
It turned out that the new location is a good one. The exhibits took up four floors of a not-huge floor plan, with larger rooms on the first and fourth floors and the typical hotel room exhibits on floors 2, 3 and 4. Navigating the floors was easy, making it a breeze for this directionally-challenged editor and for attendees to find the rooms. The elevators worked and were mostly pretty fast, which is hardly a given at audio shows. There was a large lobby, a restaurant, a bar, and live music on Friday and Saturday night, and the solo guitar player – I’m working on getting his name (like I said, I’m writing with little time to get this issue out) – was one of the most incredible jazz guitar players I’ve ever heard, no fooling. There was even a car audio area outside, and some of the systems were as elaborate as any you’d see in a home.
This delightful kids' violin band provided some of the live music at the show.
You want high-end car audio? You got it!
As was the case with the last two shows I’ve attended, I thought the overall quality of the sound the exhibitors were getting was very high, although, as is the case with every venue, the rooms were the limiting factor. For example, Audio Group Denmark had a very large ballroom. You’d think there would be unlimited freedom for them to place their big Stenheim speakers wherever they wanted, but it turned out there were resonances caused by a ceiling “shelf” and other room anomalies. As a result, the speakers needed to be placed 17 feet apart from each other to attain the best sound. (It looked visually counterintuitive, but did result in a realistically large sound field when hearing a live version of the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” It really did sound like a band was playing in front of us.
The show guide even had a very helpful “what to listen for” outline titled, “What Moves You When You Are Listening?” It had some good advice:
Are you physically connected with the music (i.e, toes tapping)?
Dynamics/transients/attack
Good timbre/accurate tone/naturalness
Imaging/size width/depth
Bass/tightness/slam/chest thumping
extreme loudness capability/loud volume while listening. Does not fall apart.
Openness/ambience/envelopment/airy/transparent
Detailed/etched/snappy presence
The systems ranged from the modest, like the Chesky Audio LC1 stand-mounted speakers powered by Cambridge electronics – and once again, the LC1s sounded superb – to the gargantuan, like the Clarisys Audio room with a four-panel ribbon tweeter loudspeaker setup and something like 20 boxes of electronics that either cost $1 million, or two million depending on who I talked to – I’ll have to find out I guess! Admittedly, the system sounded stunning, with the ability to reproduce everything from intimate singer-with-guitar to an orchestra playing the Star Trek theme at planet-shaking volume.
You want to hear orchestral music with real-life scale and presence? You got it in the Clarisys Audio room.
Everyone was having a good time. It might have helped that Northerners like me had traveled from 20-degree weather to 63-degree sunny temperatures. A few of the natives were apologizing about the “bad” weather. I guess it’s all relative.
Well, I gotta have some more substance here, though my next show report will have plenty of additional detail. So briefly:
My favorite demo cut at FAE was “Thanks to You” by Boz Scaggs. I suppose I’m the last person on Earth to have heard this at an audio event, but this sounded great in the Innuos, mbl and other rooms. It’s a wonderful song, unlike some audiophile demo fare, and has great vocal presence, low end, depth, and…it’s a very cool song.
There were a few setups that were simply fantastic, like the Joseph Audio/Doshi Audio room, the House of Stereo/Viva Audio setup, the Gershman Acoustics room, Orchard Audio, Grandinote, and…I’m going to deliberately leave some out here so that the unnamed exhibitors don’t feel slighted. There will be more to come next issue.
I want to reiterate my Number One Show Rule yet again:
Never make definitive judgments about sound at shows. The rooms can be problematic. One thing that was really hammered home to me at FAE is that the bass response can change dramatically depending on which seat you’re listening in. In one exhibit room I thought the bass was almost nonexistent on a live Jeff Beck track, but when I moved one row back, the bass became powerful.
I heard at least a couple of speakers that sounded better at Florida Audio Expo than they did at Capital Audiofest and other shows. The only way to really know what a speaker is going to sound like in your room is to hear it in your room.
A corollary – the systems need time to settle in and warm up. It’s an old industry joke that you get the best sound right before the show is about to end. Sometimes it’s not a joke. There are those who think that component break-in and warm up are audiophile fantasies. I am not one of those people.
When you’re showing something like the $650,000 Oneiros Audio loudspeaker with Audio Research electronics and extremely high-quality ancillary equipment, stuff like this matters. By the way, I was highly impressed with the system, which I talk about in Harris Fogel’s article elsewhere in this issue. Then again, system warmup can also make a huge difference in a modest system, as I found out when I took some post-show vacation time at a friend’s house and his PS Audio Sprout100/Pioneer Elite disc player/Klipsch speaker system went from no bass to lots of bass in the space of an hour. By the way, and your taste may vary, and that’s fine, I thought the Oneiros speakers were a gorgeous example of utterly striking industrial design.
Oneiros Audio and a number of other exhibitors went all out at Florida Audio Expo 2025.
Here's another ambitious setup from Supreme Acoustic Systems, showcasing Western Electric amplifiers, YG Acoustics loudspeakers, and more.
As they have at previous shows, IsoAcoustics did a demo where they played two identical sets of speakers, one set resting upon their GAIA isolation feet, and another set on conventional spikes. The improvement with the GAIA footers was instantaneously obvious, especially when sitting in the sweet spot.
Hearing the Linn Klimax LP12 turntable in the Linn room was like hearing an old friend. It was my first good turntable and selling it to “upgrade” was a mistake. I thought their Klimax DSM streamer/preamp was equally musical.
A number of rooms had reel-to-reel tape decks as the source. There are those who think that open-reel is the ultimate music source. I heard no evidence to counter this opinion at Florida Audio Expo.
This is why we do it: there’s nothing like hearing your favorite music on a high-end audio system. It’s one thing to hear a great demo track. It’s another thing entirely to be moved to tears by hearing such good sound from the music you love that there’s a direct connection from the gear in front of you to your heart.
Oh yeah…there was an alligator in the lake outside the hotel. We’ll have to give it a name as the Florida Audio Expo show mascot. I didn’t get close enough to see if it was a he or a she.
Yes, there really was an alligator in the lake by the hotel. Forgive the image quality; Lone Mountain Audio's Leland Leard didn't want to get too close.
Who wouldn't want to take a few days off in Florida after the show, especially when you can enjoy a sunset like this at Clearwater Beach?
Header image: we certainly did have fun at Florida Audio Expo 2025. Here's the wonderful new Volti Audio Vittora loudspeaker, about which we'll have much more to say in the next issue.
All images courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.
