Incredible Hi-Fi Gear & Best Sound Demos from T.H.E. Show 2026

T.H.E. Show SoCal 2026 was significantly smaller than it has been in recent years, but there was still plenty to see and hear — more than I had the stamina to take in properly, if I’m being honest. The powers that be have asked for more condensed coverage this time around, so I will try not to wax poetic. With the usual apologies to any rooms I may have missed, the following were my favorite systems at the show.

Zesto Audio and YG Acoustics

California’s Zesto Audio was back this year with the same superb collection of tube-based electronics we’ve seen at previous shows. The star of the system was the Athena DAC ($15,000), which decodes files up to 32-bit/384kHz and DSD256, and includes AES, USB, I²S, optical, and coaxial inputs, plus a ground-lift switch, and both balanced and single-ended outputs. At its core is a state-of-the-art ROHM chip, which feeds a custom analog output stage. As I learned at last year’s show, the Athena’s tube circuits don’t need filtering, so this DAC can eschew the digital filters required by solid-state DACs. All filtering is done through the tube output circuitry with minimal phase shift, creating a better stereo image and black levels, according to Zesto. The DAC fed the Zesto Leto Ultra II preamp ($11,900), followed by a pair of Zesto’s Eros 500 Select Monoblocks ($35K/pair), which deliver 250 watts of Class A power. (As another show attendee cautiously held his hand above one of the amps, Zesto’s George Counnas said, “Yes, they run hot!”) This year, the Zesto stack was driving the YG Acoustics Sonja 3.2 loudspeakers ($106,800/pair). These 320-pound beauties made it clear that the Zesto electronics are capable of tremendous power and soundstage scale, without sacrificing an ounce of focus, detail, or tonal color. Cabling throughout the system was provided by Cardas; isolation and room treatment products were provided by Stillpoints.

Mr. Counnas played a variety of locally-stored DSD files, starting with Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther Theme,” which sounded pristine and vibrant. Norah Jones’s “Don’t Know Why” was louder than I would have preferred, but the apparently-low distortion and balanced tonality of the system allowed it to play at high volumes without inducing fatigue. Jones’s smoky, fine-grained vocal textures came through in all their breathy glory. The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five” sounded as good as I’ve ever heard it (and I’ve heard it a lot). Joe Morello’s cymbals were rendered with lifelike attack and decay, and I especially appreciated those moments when the kick drum excited the snare wires on the bottom of the snare drum, causing the bottom drum head to resonate in turn. Sympathetic snare buzz can be annoying, but as a lifelong drummer, I enjoyed the delicate and true-to-life sound of this aspect of the recording.

Thanks to skilled setup and the judicious application of room treatments, the Zesto system sounded well-controlled, with clean bass on most tracks. Patricia Barber’s take on “A Taste of Honey” excited some room modes, but the shaker on the track sounded absolutely like a real instrument in the room. The Ray Brown Trio’s “Teach Me Tonight” impressed with the system’s effortless dynamics on piano, and the upright bass solo was reproduced with the instrument’s harmonics in natural balance. The system also demonstrated excellent layer separation in Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” which features a harmonized melody played by tenor sax and trumpet. Over all, the system was easy to listen to despite delivering heaps of information, and I lingered longer in the Zesto room than in most others, simply because I was enjoying the music and the sound.

REL, Acora Acoustics, and VAC

Another room in which I spent an irresponsibly long time was home to a stylish system comprising the marble-clad Acora Acoustics MRC-3 loudspeakers ($20,990 and up, depending on finish), supported by a six-pack of REL Carbon Special Black Label subwoofers ($4,999 each). Amplification included the VAC Master Preamplifier ($35,000) and 202 iQ amplifiers ($50K/pair), while the digital sources were the Berkeley Alpha DAC Series 3P ($16,995) with Alpha Reference USB ($5,995) and a Soulution 541 CD player (discontinued, I think). The electronics sat on Artesanía Audio Exoteryc racks, and there were some room treatments in play, including ASC Tube Traps.

This was my first time hearing a system using a six-pack of RELs, and although I am a longtime fan of the brand’s subwoofers, I must admit that I have been somewhat skeptical of the six-pack approach, which sees a stack of 3 identical subwoofers situated near each of the two speakers in a stereo setup. Surely, it can’t make financial sense to spend more on the subwoofers than on the main speakers, right? And yet, after this demo, which was hosted in part by REL’s owner and chief designer John Hunter, I just might be a believer. The Acora Acoustics MRC-3 speakers are relatively small 2 ½-way towers with a 1-inch ultra-hard ceramic dome tweeter and a trio of 7-inch ceramic cone drivers. Supported by the RELs, these small speakers sounded positively enormous. I was hearing all the sonic scope of a towering multiway flagship speaker without the visual dominance in the room. The RELs were integrated seamlessly, never once announcing their presence except in the almost magical way that they extended the Acora speakers’ best attributes — clarity, detail, and finesse — all the way into the lowest octaves.

Hunter and his co-host played a nice variety of music to let the system shine. In the audiophile exotica category, the ethereal-sounding “Fading Sun” by the Norwegian percussionist and composer Terje Isungset was used as an aural palate cleanser between female vocal tracks. I was excited to hear Kina Grannis’s cover of “Can’t Help Falling In Love” from the movie Crazy Rich Asians (I’ve been a Kina fan since I happened to see one of her early YouTube videos nearly two decades ago), and I enjoyed Lianne La Havas’s live performance of “Say a Little Prayer,” but it was Daisy Gray’s cover of “Wicked Game” that totally blew me away. The system created a panoramic, 3D soundstage that was completely immersive, with a  clean and impactful mid-bass punch that must have been coming from the RELs, but sounded as if it were coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Gray’s lead vocal was about 12 feet tall. This was definitely one of my favorite musical moments of the whole show. The system also excelled on radio hits like Post Malone’s “Circles,” and hard-hitting EDM like “BOBA” by Sofi Tukker, which gave the RELs the opportunity to kick my chest with all the weight and authority I could ask for.

The Audio Association and Grimm Audio

The Audio Association had multiple systems on display, and my favorite was the clean and simple Grimm Audio setup, which delivered megabuck sound quality without a huge stack of gear. This tidy system would work unusually well in a small or medium-sized room — a useful feature if you don’t happen to have a spare ballroom in your house. It comprised the Grimm Audio LS1c Active Loudspeaker with SB1 Motion Feedback Subwoofers ($50,490 total), the Grimm Audio MU1 Music Player ($14,400), some Viablue cables ($1,800 total), and a Matrix Audio SI-1 Audio Grade Network Isolator ($699). My friend Aaron, who has attended T.H.E. Show with me three times now but is not yet a card-carrying audiophile, was astonished at the level of detail in “Fever” by Malia and Boris Blank. “Hey Now” by London Grammar was another show highlight for me, thanks to the smooth subtlety of the sound; it was simultaneously relaxed and totally controlled — not a common combination. 

I requested “The Sea” by the Nashville-based singer-songwriter Sierra Ferrell, whose music is in heavy rotation at my place these days. The Grimm system presented a musically-complete picture of this superb recording. Ferrell’s voice, which has just a touch of gravelly grit to it, seemed to pop out in three dimensions from a truly silent background. I was glad to hear that “Some Velvet Morning” by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood sounded lovely, with plenty of resolution and zero harshness, despite not being an “audiophile” recording. Ditto for “Summer Wine.” 

This Grimm system delivers a sound that seems transparent to the source material, yet somehow makes everything sound good, like some kind of enchanted mirror that makes everyone just a little bit nicer to look at. The sound is impeccably clean, but might be more flattering than reality. As someone who enjoys countless less-than-stellar recordings across many genres of music, I am a big fan of this Grimm system for its sound alone. The fact that it is small, simple, and classically handsome is just icing on the cake.

Sunny Components: CH Precision and Rockport

At last year’s show, Upscale Audio had two rooms, and Common Wave HiFi had half a dozen. This year, both of these local dealers, which are pillars of the SoCal audio community, were missing in action. So I was pleased to see that Sunny Components (a.k.a. Sunny’s Audio Video) was still representing with a pair of rooms, both of which offered excellent sound. In fact, the room featuring CH Precision electronics and Rockport loudspeakers delivered what was arguably the best sound at T.H.E. Show. It was also one of the most expensive systems at the show, but sometimes you get what you pay for. CH Precision’s Kevin Wolff presented a system that included an Aurender N50 music server ($37,995) and NH10 ethernet switch ($4,750), but Wolff mostly spun discs via the CH Precision D10 Reference Transport ($105,000), paired with the C10 Reference DAC ($105,000) and T10 Time Reference Clock ($27,500). This mega-expensive digital front end fed the CH Precision L10 Reference Line Preamplifier (contact Sunny Components for pricing). 

The CH Precision M1.1 Stereo Power Amplifier ($57,000) then provided the juice for a pair of Rockport Technologies Lynx loudspeakers ($83,000/pair and up, depending on finish). The Lynx reportedly features trickle-down technology from Rockport’s flagship Lyra speaker (like the incredibly inert DAMSTIF3 enclosure), but will fit in smaller spaces. It uses a 10-inch carbon fiber sandwich composite woofer, a 6-inch carbon fiber sandwich composite midrange driver, and a waveguide-mounted 1-inch beryllium dome tweeter. Each speaker stands 48 inches tall and weighs 305 pounds. The system used Quadraspire equipment supports and enough expensive Shunyata Research cables to send Chief Audioholic Gene DellaSala into an apoplectic fit. Even before the cost of the cables, this system easily cleared the half-million-dollar mark. Unfortunately for most of us, it also sounded like a million bucks.

My one complaint about this room was that Wolff played some of the same music that we heard at last year’s show, but it’s hard to argue with either the sound quality or the performance quality of those tracks by the likes of Elvis Presley and Etta James. We also heard two of Glenn Gould’s masterful interpretations of Bach’s The Goldberg Variations, one from 1956 and another from 1981. It was fascinating to hear how Gould’s musical perspective had changed with maturity, and the system seemed to convey every microscopic rhythmic flicker of his fingertips. One thing that I always enjoy about Wolff’s presentations is that he is clearly passionate about the music he plays. It’s not just a selection of demo tracks with high wow-factor; it’s music that he loves. “Sicilienne, Op. 78 for Cello and Piano” by Anastasia Kobekina & Vincent Boccadoro was new to me, and the CH Precision / Rockport system delivered this piece with a free-flowing ease that I could really get used to if I had hundreds of thousands of dollars burning a hole in my wallet.

Lone Mountain Audio and ATC 

I had been looking forward to an opportunity to hear the new ATC EL50 Anniversary Active Loudspeakers ($99,999/pair), and they did not disappoint. These active, 3-way towers incorporate a new, proprietary 3-channel active “Amp-Pack” featuring balanced inputs, user controls, active crossovers, and three power amp channels with discrete MOSFET class A/B output stages delivering 200 watts, 100 watts, and 50 watts continuous power to the bass, midrange, and high-frequency channels, respectively. ATC has a long history of making active speakers. Without naming names, ATC seems to suggest that the quality of amplification in active speakers isn’t always as great as you’d find in high-end separates. The British brand got its start making pro studio gear (and still makes some of the world’s best), but has also been making audiophile consumer electronics since the mid 1990s. Here’s a blurb about the amplification inside the EL50 Anniversary Active Loudspeakers:

Within the first line-level stages, new discrete gain blocks have been developed and implemented within a balanced instrumentation input and the fourth-order active crossovers to achieve a lower noise floor and reduce distortion. In addition, the power supply has been comprehensively re-designed and upgraded with individual toroidal transformers for each power amplifier channel, plus a separate transformer serving the low voltage supply. This topology improves headroom under demanding use and reduces intermodulation distortion between the channels to deliver greater clarity to the listener.

— ATC

The rest of the system included the ATC SCA2 Preamplifier ($12,999), the Innuos ZENith NG Server ($24,800 as configured), the Playback Designs MPD-8 DAC ($26,000), and a SonoruS ATR10 mkll Reel to Reel tape player ($35,000), which sadly was not in use during my visit to the room. I wasn’t able to spend long in this room, but it only took a few bars of “Tin Pan Alley” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble to make it clear that these speakers play very big, with immensely powerful and seemingly-effortless bass coming from just one 9-inch woofer. I was sitting close to the speakers, but they completely disappeared into a wide soundstage. There wasn’t a lot of soundstage depth, and that might have been a result of the speakers’ close proximity to the front wall (I would estimate that there was no more than a foot of breathing room). Surprisingly though, these speakers seemed to play comfortably in the relatively tight quarters. “Birds” by Dominique Fils-Aimé has become something of an audio show cliche in recent years, but this 88.2kHz file sounded intimate and graceful, proving that the EL50 Anniversary Active Loudspeakers aren’t just about power and punch.

Final Thoughts

I was somewhat discouraged by the smaller size of the show this year, especially on Friday when the halls were relatively empty. But the crowds showed up on Saturday, and the vibe among show-goers was one of enthusiastic engagement. There was no shortage of great sound on display, and plenty of audio eye-candy too. In years past, however, there has been a healthy presence from the headphone community, often occupying its own corner of the show, and that was conspicuous in its absence this time around. (I did see one or two tables with headphones.) There has also been a large vinyl marketplace in previous years; this year I spotted a single guy selling vinyl out of one hotel room. Over the last few years, T.H.E. Show has attempted to diversify the audio show experience by adding a music festival, a film festival, and other ancillary events alongside the meat and potatoes of the audio show experience, but I am not entirely convinced that these are adding value for the average show attendee. I also think the venue leaves much to be desired. The layout of the Hilton Orange County/Costa Mesa works well enough, but it’s a crumby hotel in desperate need of a renovation (or, frankly, a wrecking ball). Nevertheless, I hope that this year’s smaller show was an outlier, rather than a sign of things to come. Despite the reduction in magnitude, I had a great time taking in the sights and sounds of high-end audio, alongside my fellow audiophiles.