Show Report: The Exciting Sounds of Audio Expo North America (AXPONA) 2016

In this show report for audioXpress, Oliver Masciarotte highlights some of new and notable products, from headphones and DACs to amplifiers and (some) speakers that caught his attention. “Held April 15–17, AXPONA 2016 was hopping, with attendance up 16% this year. The count settled at 5,934 attendees through the doors to see 400 exhibitors in Rosemont’s Westin O’Hare,” he starts. Read the full report now available online.

Here is the full show report from the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2015, which Oliver Masciarotte found to be less crowded, different, upbeat, and certainly younger. He returned so impressed with what he saw and heard that it took him 9 pages just to compile the highlights and impressions! Full article now available online.

Working in conjunction with the cross–platform PonoMusic World application, PonoRevealer enables real–time playback comparison of lossy and lossless versions transcoded from the same HRA parent. As I’ve said before; if you can’t hear a difference, it only means you are not able to hear a difference, your ancillary playback gear is subpar, or you’re refusing to admit that which you cannot explain.

It being my seventh trip to Denver’s mile-high Tech Center district, I thought I knew what to expect. An audio engineer friend and I decided to drive to Colorado from Minneapolis. The weather was unseasonably warm and the traffic sparse, enabling us to ignore the piloting and discuss the technology that would be unveiled during the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest’s 11th iteration.

As the owner of a standard yellow PonoPlayer, I was catching up on comments over at PonoMusic, and one in particular caught my attention, a note from Allen Farmelo at Farmelo Recording linking to a Tape Op blog entry. Farmelo’s dispatch, The Problem With A-B'ing And Why Neil Young Is Right About Sound Quality, makes several valid points, one of which is that A–B tests are not necessarily that meaningful…

The December 2014 edition of audioXpress featured a review of the Universal Audio Apollo Twin Thunderbolt-based audio interface. Oliver Masciarotte details how Universal Audio approached this design, leveraging the benefits of Thunderbolt technology and its own hardware-accelerated UAD Powered Plug-In architecture to implement a complete recording solution. Read the Complete Review.