Florida International Audio Expo 2026 - Tampa, USA

Details

Written by: Doug Schneider

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 22 February 2026

I’ve always had a soft spot for products from Margules. This Mexican company produces beautiful tubed amps and preamps, and elegant, stylish speakers. They’re physical works of art, and the sound is always superb—well-balanced and tuneful.

Read more …

Details

Written by: Jason Thorpe

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 22 February 2026

Doug Schneider and I found ourselves transfixed by the large TV in the hotel bar as we walked in from breakfast midway through the third period of the Canada-USA gold-medal hockey game. Neither of us is a sports fan, but here we were, in deep-red Florida, watching our Canadian team play our national sport. As you probably know, they lost in overtime. It stung a bit, but oh well, so long as everybody had fun.

Read more …

Details

Written by: Doug Schneider

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 22 February 2026

Over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly vocal about the fact that the hi‑fi industry has too many companies for the market being served. I’ve often said that if we cut the number of speaker companies in half, we’d probably still have four times too many. You could apply that logic to other product categories as well.

Read more …

Details

Written by: Jason Thorpe

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 22 February 2026

Last year at the Florida International Audio Expo, I noted with a feeling of wistfulness that the entire parking lot was packed with cars featuring extremely high-end audio systems. I did a quick walk-around that year, but I didn’t have time to really investigate the goings-on. I’ve always had a love of car audio, but when we had our daughter, I pivoted away from the hobby because I rarely had the opportunity to crank it up, so the urge to keep modifying new vehicles quickly faded. But this was something I really wanted to check out.

Read more …

Details

Written by: Jason Thorpe

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 21 February 2026

The older I get, the more I value my comfort. Used to be I’d go camping without a tent and just stand for a long weekend. Beer and psychedelics kept me upright. But I was in my early 20s, and I had the stamina to power through lack of sleep and survive on baloney sandwiches.

Read more …

Details

Written by: Doug Schneider

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 21 February 2026

Focal’s new Mu‑so Hekla is a cleverly named, great-sounding, and well-priced all-in-one home sound system. But there are a couple of odd aspects to it, which I’ll get to later.

Read more …

Details

Written by: Jason Thorpe

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 21 February 2026

I feel like I’m a skipping record. This will be the third time we’ve written about a room featuring Aretai speakers. First time was at Audio Video Show 2022 in Warsaw, Poland, where Doug Schneider was extremely impressed by this Latvian company we’d never heard of. Three years later, at Audio Video Show 2025, I was smitten by the room shared by Aretai and Reed. Not only does Aretai produce excellent-sounding speakers at reasonable prices, it gets them to sound fantastic under show conditions.

Read more …

Details

Written by: Jason Thorpe

Category: Florida International Audio Expo 2026

Created: 20 February 2026

On day one of Florida International Audio Expo 2026, Doug Schneider and I walked into the fourth-floor room occupied by Front Row Theater, a big Florida-based custom integrator. My eyes immediately glommed onto the beautiful Linn LP12 turntable. “You know, that thing has a built-in phono stage that digitizes the signal,” Doug said as an aside. “They’ve been doing that for a while,” he continued.

Read more …