The Best Loudspeakers We Heard at AXPONA 2025

North America’s largest hi-fi audio show, AXPONA (an acronym which stands for Audio Expo North America) opened 2025’s show on a chilly Friday morning in mid-April in Schaumburg, IL, an upscale northwestern suburb of Chicago. As it had been for the last few years, the venue was the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center, a large facility, but despite the building’s size, it was still a crowded event. The sheer bustling of the attendees was a hopeful sign for this industry which faces an uncertain future in these volatile economic times. 

As Audioholics' main loudspeaker reviewer, I was naturally most interested in the loudspeakers being exhibited at AXPONA. It’s a huge show with over 200 rooms, so I have no hope of covering everything there, and instead, I will just cover a few of the highlights I found at the show. Even as highlights go, this will be an abridged edition since there were so many interesting and impressive loudspeakers. Without further ado, let’s get to the speakers…

SVS SB-5000 Subwoofer

SB-5000 Product Page

At the SVS exhibit, I tried to hear their brand new SB-5000 that was only announced days before. The SB-5000 was playing in a two-channel setup, but unfortunately that room was packed on the occasions that I tried to listen to them. SVS did have a surround sound system featuring a pair of SB 17-Ultras which I did get to hear. SVS played a clip from ‘Top Gun: Maverick” which nicely demoe’d this sub’s abilities, although I am sure it couldn’t be run anywhere near its full capabilities in order for SVS to not get evicted from the show. It rumbled the room as the in-movie jets soared past enemy defenses. SVS needed to have reserved a large conference room to let it flex some muscle, because the hotel room it was situated in was a piece of cake for such a powerful subwoofer.

The new 5000 series looks to be a replacement for the 4000 series. The driver uses a 15” cone as opposed to the 13.5” cone of the 4000 series, a very significant increase in surface area. The amplifier can put out 2kW continuous power as compared to the 1.2kW watts continuous of the 4000 series. Its size and weight is very much in line with the 4000 series. It has all the latest tech from the 17-Ultra series but in a somewhat smaller and less expensive form factor (at $2k/unit, but with a discount for buying multiples). It’s good news for someone who was looking for something a bit beefier than the 4000 series but not as colossal as the 17-Ultra subs. It is most definitely a welcome addition to SVS’s offerings and I hope to give them some real listening time soon.

Focal Utopia Cinema LCR and Cinema SUB

Utopia Cinema LCS and Cinema SUB Product Page

Focal went all out in home theater at this year’s Axpona and dazzled listeners with a full-blown 7.4.4 system powered by their Astral 16 AVR. They wanted to show off their new custom install high-performance home theater speakers, the Utopia Cinema LCR and Utopia Cinema SUB. These are a step up from the tremendous 1000 Utopia IWLCR and IWSUB system that was recently reviewed here at Audioholics. The 1000 Utopia in-walls were such powerful speakers that it poses the question how much more can be achieved with in-wall home theater speakers; the Cinema LCR and Cinema SUB answers that question with a resounding bang. These speakers are intended for large home theater installations (or perhaps modest sized rooms for people who like extreme overkill audio setups). And bang it went when Focal demoe’d a scene from “No Time to Die” where a startling explosion at Vesper Lynn’s tomb blows James Bond off his feet. This sequence jolted the audience that I viewed the demo with as well as myself.

The Utopia Cinema LCR is a 3-way speaker with a 1.5” beryllium tweeter, a 5” midrange, and a 13” bass driver. It has a large flared port tuned at 35Hz for some series output, and it leaves deep bass to subs, as any wide dynamic in-wall should do. These drivers are all geared for high-output as the 93 dB sensitivity would indicate. Each driver can be electrically adjusted to swing the response up or down by a couple of decibels via some knobs mounted on the front of the speaker. The Utopia Cinema SUB uses two 13” woofers in a large cabinet tuned to 19Hz. It’s a passive design with a recommended amp power of 400 watts at 8 ohms (or 800 watts at 4 ohms). What is interesting is its deep tuning point yet high-sensitivity at 93 dB. A large enclosure is needed to accomplish this, and Focal does give these drivers room to breath. As with the Cinema LCR, the Cinema SUB uses a heavily flared port which is probably a good idea in an in-wall subwoofer. The combination of the Cinema LCR and Cinema SUB add up to a powerful system, but of course, such a system is not inexpensive, and the Cinema LCRs go for $12k each with the Cinema SUBs going for $6k each. That is a lot of scratch, but these speakers are designed to handle 200 cubic meter home theaters (7,000 cubic feet), and that is very reasonable pricing for such an enormous task.

Perlisten In-Wall/On-Wall D3 Subwoofer, In-Wall/On-Wall/Free-Standing D8is Subwoofer, and Free-Standing D8 Subwoofer

D8is Subwoofer Press Release

Perlisten Audio had three new subs on hand at Axpona, and they were all centered around a pretty insane 8” bass driver. This driver, an in-house design from Perlisten, has an incredible 32mm of Xmax, or to put it less technically, it has 1 ¼” of one-way linear throw. That would be a lot for an 18” driver, but for an 8” driver, it’s an engineering marvel. There are a lot of long-throw 8” subwoofer drivers around, but not many are high-fidelity units like what Perlisten has designed. Many long-throw 8”s are intended for car audio SPL drag races. They can get loud, but they tend to have a very non-linear response as well as lots of distortion outside of a narrow frequency band. The driver designed by Perlisten somehow manages this tremendous level of movement without sacrificing sound quality.

Perlisten has deployed this new 8” driver in a small free-standing sub called the D8 powered by a 500-watt RMS amp and given the spread of features used on their larger subs. That has to make it the most advanced small sub on the planet. They also use this driver in a triple-woofer front-firing array in an in-wall/on-wall subwoofer called the D3. Its dimensions make it a perfect solution for typical construction depths and stud spacing in most homes. That should pack a lot of punch for a relatively small space. However, for those hardcore bass heads, Perlisten has also deployed this driver into an 8-woofer push-pull configuration that can be used as an in-wall, on-wall, or free-standing subwoofer called the D8is. It is powered by an outboard 3,000 watt continously rated power amp armed with Perlisten’s state-of-the-art DSP technology. At 45” tall, 20” wide, and 9” deep, it’s not a small sub, but considering the firepower it is boasts, the SPL per litre potential of such a design is pretty tremendous. Eight 8” woofers have the same surface area as a 24” cone, and when coupled with a 32mm Xmax, the D8is seems very capable of moving a huge amount of air. It should be able to do it very cleanly as well, since the push pull-configuration does a lot to reduce even-order harmonic distortion. The driver arrangement cancels out its own momentum as well, making for an extremely inert cabinet - perfect for an in-wall subwoofer since vibrations are not transmitted to the home’s structure. The D8is is an extreme sub for the most demanding applications, and its expected pricing reflects this as well at $20k.

Magico M9 Floorstanding Speaker

M9 Product Page

Magico brought their big guns this year, their flagship M9 speakers. These behemoths stand 80” tall and have a unique panel construction that sandwiches an aluminum honeycomb structure with sections of carbon-fiber. This is done to make a very tough and inert cabinet but also doesn’t weigh a ton. However, the speakers are so huge that they end up weighing a ton anyway, quite literally; at 1,000 lbs each, a pair weighs in at 2,000 lbs. I suppose solid aluminum paneling would have weighed so much more that the speakers become unmanageable. The rounded, organic shape serves two important purposes of reducing baffle reflections and diffraction as well as giving the interior soundwaves no flat surfaces with which to form panel resonances. The tweeter is a 1.1” beryllium dome that is coated with a vapor-deposited diamond layer. The woofers use an aluminum honeycomb structure sandwiched by layers of carbon-fiber and graphene. They also use neodymium magnets in all motors, even the bass drivers, a very expensive design decision, but possibly a necessity since neodymium motors weigh a fraction of what typical iron motors weigh.

The M9 is a four-way system that uses an active crossover, although this active crossover is different from what we normally see. Each speaker’s crossover is housed into two different enclosures, with one just dealing with power supply components and the other dealing with filter components. It’s an analog crossover so it still uses traditional components to create filters such as inductors, capacitors, and resistors. What is unique about it is that the crossover stage occurs before the amplification stage, although this system does require bi-amplification. The advantage of placing the crossover before the amplifier is that the components do not have to be massive in order to handle huge power levels, because massive crossover components have their own set of compromises, specifically the insertion losses that occur with large inductors. The bass section of each speaker features two 15” bass drivers, and that would require some pretty massive inductors as a passive circuit. The midbass section is no joke either with two 11” drivers for each speaker. The midrange driver is a single 6” driver. Altogether, that adds up to a lot of firepower - but also a very high price tag. The pricing per pair is a hefty sum at $750k which makes it merely a fantasy system for the vast majority of audiophiles. Ah well, I still enjoyed hearing it during the time I spent in Magico’s room.

RBH Sound Unrivaled 81/AX Active Monitor

Unrivaled 81/AX Product Page | Buy From Dreamedia AV

RBH Sound brought out three speaker sets and were rotating them for active display throughout the show. I was lucky enough to spend time with all three systems. Audioholics has extensive experience with two of these systems: the Unrivaled SFTR/AX and the 61-SFM/R. The third speaker set interested me the most, a new product from RBH Sound called the Unrivaled 81/AX. This interested me, because of all the speakers I have reviewed, one of my lasting favorites was RBH Sound’s PM-8. 

The 81/AX is in many ways the spiritual successor to the PM-8s. As an active system, it’s using the same plate amplifier, and it’s also using the same 8” bass driver. Furthermore, it has similarly distinctive epoxy side panels (there are a variety of different stone patterns to choose from), a nice stylistic touch as well as a way to ensure the side panels have zero resonances. 

It improves on the PM-8 speakers by having a much beefier tweeter. The 81/AX tweeter triples the surface area of the PM-8. This helps RBH use a lower crossover frequency for an easier integration between the woofer and tweeter. The 81/AX also rearranges the enclosure to put the port on the back panel. Placing the port on the rear panel helps the acoustic loading on front walls which can increase bass output, and it also helps to mask any port artifacts. The 81/AX improves on the finish of the PM-8 by having a real satin paint finish instead of the flexible faux-leather laminate that the PM-8s had (but if I am honest, I prefer the vinyl finish since it was very durable and users didn’t need to worry about getting fingerprints on it or scuffing it easily). 

The 81/AX carries forward the FIR filters of the crossover network of the PM-8, so it has a world class blending of the woofer and tweeter. FIR filters are able to adjust acoustic phase independent of frequency response, so they have major time domain advantages over traditional crossover networks. This also gives them an unexpectedly good vertical window as we say in the PM-8 review, so you don’t need your head held in a vice to be in an optimal listening position. At $5.5k/pair, the 81/AX speakers aren’t cheap, but from a design standpoint, they are doing a whole lot right, and I think they rank as one the better values and most sensible speakers at the show.

Monitor Audio Hyphn Floorstanding Speaker

Hyphn Product Page

One loudspeaker I had been curious to hear since its introduction on account of its strange appearance was Monitor Audio’s Hyphn. This loudspeaker looked to be as much an abstract art installation piece as much as it was a loudspeaker. Luckily for me, it made an appearance at Axpona and I finally had a chance to hear it in action. I have to say that as odd as it looks, it sounded quite good, at least in the compromised acoustic environment of a trade show. In my time in the Monitor Audio room, they had played a jazz piece that I unfortunately did not get the name of, but imaging and tonality were spot on as far as I could tell. They had an unexpected potency in bass which surprised me seeing as how the enclosure is bisected down the middle.

The design is fascinating. It uses an AMT tweeter in the center of its ‘eye,’ and the AMT is surrounded by six 2” midrange drivers. That effectively makes it behave like a coaxial driver but one with a tremendous motor section. This tweeter/midrange assembly is mounted between a bisected cabinet which is held together by bolts that run through the bass driver frames. Each inner side of the enclosure has two 8” bass drivers facing each other and mechanically linked. This will cancel out rocking motion from the bass driver’s motion. The Hyphn is a ported design, but the ports are down-firing and are hidden under the ‘legs’ of the cabinet. The cabinet itself is constructed of thermoformed mineral and acrylic stone, and this is why it is so heavy despite not being terribly large with each speaker weighing in at 235 lbs. Naturally, a statement piece like this isn’t going to be cheap; the Hyphn speakers are priced at $95k/pair. It’s a very cool speaker, but I will have to wait until I win the lottery to get one.  

Parts Express: Upcoming Loudspeaker Kits

Parts Express Website

The Parts Express room had a few finished speaker kits that all looked intriguing. There was a compact bookshelf speaker that used some fairly premium components, a larger 3-way standmount speaker with 8” passive radiators, and a 3-way tower speaker. I spent a little time listening to the tower speaker and three-way bookshelf speaker, and both sounded quite good to my ears. The flat pack speaker kits at Parts Express allow people to get fairly high-end loudspeakers for a very low price, and it occurred to me that should the 145% tariffs on Chinese imported goods (as of this writing) last for awhile, that is going to make these kits a lot more relevant for people who are looking forward to great audio for an affordable price.

As a reviewer, almost all of the loudspeakers that I get that are inexpensive are made in China (there are a few exceptions). Like it or not, China is the world’s factory for inexpensive loudspeakers and pretty much all low-cost consumer electronics. They are basically what allows the middle class to have good audio systems without blasting a huge hole in their pocket book. There was a lot of stuff that wasn’t made in China at this year’s Axpona, but almost all of that stuff was relatively expensive, as in five figures or above. Should these present tariffs last, it largely prices the middle class out of hi-fi audio except for maybe the most determined audiophiles. DIY audio could be a solution to this potential problem. Flat pack kits like what Parts Express offers make it easy to build your own speaker of comparable quality to loudspeakers that cost thousands of dollars. Yet none of the speaker kits offered by Parts Express costs over a thousand dollars (they do have one subwoofer kit that costs just over a grand, but it’s a pretty extensive 15” kit that includes a thousand-watt amp and two passive radiators). The kits at Parts Express were a great entry into getting high-performing audio at a modest price, and that may be a big deal going forward into 2025. We do have plans to explore what can be done in the DIY space in upcoming reviews, so stay tuned to Audioholics to see what kits like these can yield for hi-fi sound without a hi-fi cost.

AXPONA 2025 Conclusion

The bustling crowds and lively atmosphere of Axpona 2025 was a rebuke to anyone who says high-end audio is dying. This year had many great exhibits, and I didn't have nearly the time or space to see them all, so I had to narrow what I covered to just a handful which is not an easy task in itself. The current trade wars are not going to help this hobby grow, however, there is far too much passion for high-end audio for an adverse economic climate to kill it. Whatever happens, I look forward to next year’s show; I am sure it will be just as impressive and exciting no matter what the tariffs bring.