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A little more about where we're headed: Ruminations about the Lone Star Audiofest
It's official! Lone Star Audiofest and T.H.E. Show Announce Groundbreaking Partnership Premiering T.H.E. Lone Star Audiofest in Austin, TX in Late Spring 2025 Austin, TX July 8, 2024 Lone Star Audiofest and T.H.E. Show, America's longest-running HiFi show, are excited to announce a landmark cooperative venture. This collaboration will culminate in the premiere of a new event, "T.H.E. Lone Star Audiofest, sponsored by T.H.E. Enterprises," set to take place in the vibrant city of Austin, Texas, in late spring 2025 (May 2-4). T.H.E. Lone Star Audiofest aims to create a brand new unparalleled experience for audiophiles, industry professionals (both budding and seasoned), amateur hobbyists, and music enthusiasts alike, focusing on introducing the industry and community to the very best in the next generation of new, bespoke HiFi designers, DIY-builders, artisans, and engineers. Combining the rich heritage and extensive network of T.H.E. Show with the dynamic and innovative spirit of Lone Star Audiofest, this event promises to be a major milestone in the HiFi industry. Bespoke and DIY exhibitors at the previous Lone Star Audiofests and T.H.E. Shows include JWM Acoustics, Raven Audio, J. Porter Studios, Black Ocean Audio, Infigo Audio, Pi Speakers, Austin Acoustic, AudioKinesis, GR-Research, Audio Crafter's Guild and more. T.H.E. Lone Star Audiofest 2025 looks forward to renewing exhibits with brands from previous years as well as bringing in brand new audio designers (so if that's you, get in touch). About the Event: Name: T.H.E. Lone Star Audiofest Date: May 2-4, 2025 Location: Austin, Texas (venue announcement forthcoming) This new venture will offer a unique opportunity for exhibitors and attendees to explore the latest in high-fidelity audio creation, discover groundbreaking products, and engage in insightful discussions with like-minded creators and attendees. With Austin's renowned music scene and vibrant cultural landscape, T.H.E. Lone Star Audiofest is poised to become a key destination for HiFi designers, creators, and enthusiasts from around the world. Quotes: "Lone Star Audiofest has always been a great place for everyone in the industry to get together, and it has specialized in introducing DIYers and start-up companies into the audio community. Our word-of-mouth 'show up and setup' approach has garnered us great local popularity. It's clear on the basis of exhibitor and attendee feedback that it is time for us to grow. This new show is a blending of approaches, which promises to get the word out to people that never knew we existed while allowing us to retain the laid-back intimacy that the Lone Star Audiofest has always been known for," says Wayne Parham, Owner of the Lone Star Audiofest "T.H.E. Show has a long-standing tradition of excellence in the HiFi industry, and we are excited to embark on this new journey with Lone Star Audiofest. Together, we will create an event that not only celebrates audio innovation but also fosters a sense of community among audio enthusiasts. And I want to be absolutely clear - this is not 'just another audio show.' This will be a totally different experience for exhibitors, attendees, and yes, even press who are hungry to cover new and never before heard of brands!" says Emiko E. Carlin, CEO of T.H.E. Enterprises and President of T.H.E. Show About Lone Star Audiofest: Lone Star Audiofest is described as the "Woodstock of high-end audio shows," because of its open-ended draw to anyone and everyone in audio. It has historically appealed to DIYers, passionate start-up companies and semi-retired industry experts that offer audio products and services. The Lone Star Audiofest has always had a laid-back feel, where the public can explore these companies, audition their products and interact directly with company owners and engineers. About T.H.E. Show: T.H.E. Show is America's longest-running HiFi show, dedicated to presenting the latest in high-fidelity audio, home theater, and consumer electronics. With a rich history and a strong commitment to excellence, T.H.E. Show has become a cornerstone of the HiFi industry. Lone Star Audiofest may be found at lonestaraudiofest.com T.H.E. Show may be found at theshownow.com Media Contacts: Sophie Assencoa Rose City Media Group Sophie@rosecitymediagroup.com
Press coverage: AudioXpress Positive-Feedback.com The Absolute Sound Enjoy the Music.com eCoustics.com Vinylphile Magazine AVcat.jp
We've picked the date and the venue! For more information, please email info@lonestaraudiofest.com. Guests: Buy tickets here Exhibitors: Contact Daryl Sansevero to make reservations.
I've added some information to Barry's "LSAF 101" thread that describes the changes that guests and exhibitors will see at the 2025 show. Check it out: Changes for THELSAF
We'll have a list of exhibitors and their rooms posted soon. And a list of events and seminars, dates and times. So keep a watch here in this thread, or on the LoneStarAudiofest.com website. Info will be posted in both places. In the meantime, I wanted to pass this information along. If you don't already have tickets to the show, don't sweat it. Pricing at the door is more than reasonable. Especially when you consider that parking costs $15 but the ticket makes parking free. So it's literally no extra cost. Here are the rates at the door: LSAF 2025 Admission Prices $15.00 at the door Use this code [ATX5] to get 5 bucks off Over 14, high school and college students with ID get 5 bucks off 14 and under free, with an adult Military service people are free with proof of service.
T.H.E. Lone Star Audiofest 2025 Exhibitor List First floor: MarketPlace Booth 1 - Bob's Devices MarketPlace Booth 2 - Miller Audio MarketPlace Booth 3 - Wizard Sounds MarketPlace Booth 4 - Longboard Luv Audio MarketPlace Booth 5 - Pilot Radio MarketPlace Booth 6 - Audio Foundations MarketPlace Booth 7 - Audio Foundations MarketPlace Booth 8 - Pyramid Audio MarketPlace Booth 9 - Audiophile Directory Bluebell Room - Audio Mirror Bluebell Room - Sadurni Acoustics Bluebonnet Room - PBN Audio Lantana Room - Sound Sanctuary LongHorn Room - Origin HiFi Verbena Room - Innovo Audio Designs Highlands Room - T.H.E. Film Festival Outdoors - IASCA Sound Quality Competition Second floor: Room 204 - JPorter Studios Room 206 - Joey G’s Audio Channel Room 213 - Van Zyl Audio Room 216 - Raven Audio Room 217 - Audio Crafters Guild and PureArtFi Room 220 - Origin HiFi Room 223 - Uilleam Audio Room 226 - Brane Audio Room 227 - Toby Speakers Room 228 - Audio Geeks Room 229 - Pi Speakers Room 230 - Canvas HiFi Room 233 - JWM Acoustics
Pi Speakers is in-room and setup and running. I had to click off a few shots to show you the room. three π mains with three π flanking subs at LSAF 2025 Left Speaker Right Speaker The rooms are a little smaller than past shows, and I was concerned, to tell the truth. The speakers are so close to the listeners that it looks like you've basically got really large headphones. Photo showing Kelly decorating the room. You can really get a feel for the size of the room from the photo above. Truth is though, speakers like these work in just about any room. This room demonstrates that better than anywhere I've been. It's just so small. But I was still able to setup as they're designed to be - with the left and right mains toed-in 45° and forward axes crossed in front of the listeners. There's a couch for the listeners that's about six feet wide. The speakers are also six feet apart. The couch is set about five feet back. So the forward-axes thing works here, even in this tiny room. The "sweet spot" is the entire couch. Listeners sitting anywhere on the couch are treated to the same quality sound, with a nice wide stereo image. Kind of amazing in a room this small. But the couch is right back against the wall. We usually have a few feet behind the couch, between the couch and the wall. The reflections from the rear wall are attenuated by distance. So I've never used room treatments, even in the hotel rooms. This time I did. I have absorbent wedges on the wall behind the listeners. They work pretty well, and the room sounds great. Acoustic damping wedges behind listeners
Photos from the show
It's the night before THE LSAF 2025 opens, here is one of the second floor exhibit suites loaded in and ready. Visit room 217 to hear the introduction of PureArtFi's FF-1 speaker driven by Miller Audio's Dyna-70.
That really is a small room but it looks like you're setup and ready to make music. Have a great show! Tell all the regulars I said hi. Tell the irregulars, too. Barry
We're missing you, Barry! Did you know you're on the LoneStarAudiofest.com website? Watch the photos at the top of the page. They change every few minutes. There's a photo of you in there.
Those 3's are bound to please. They're the kind of headphones I'd wear. Really beautiful curly maple it looks like for the front baffle.
Wish you were here, Rusty! We might need to start a little audio show in Kansas City!
Wayne Parham wrote on Fri, 02 May 2025 10:27 Did you know you're on the LoneStarAudiofest.com website? Not sure why there's a photo of me but it's nice you have some photos of John in the mix. Miss having him around causing trouble. Was kinda hoping there would be more show photos posted by now. For all of us that aren't there it's time to look at all the toys! Hoping the delay in posting photos is because of all the interested folks keeping you guys busy.
You're right that I've been super-busy, and that's why I've been slow to update the photos on the LoneStarAudiofest.com website. Kelly has taken hundreds of photos, so watch the LSAF 2025 Photos link for updates. I have scaled about a hundred more of 'em today, and will upload them within the hour. Several more will be coming tomorrow.
Thanks for the link! There sure are a lot of neat gadgets at the show. Lots of new vendors with a nice showing of regulars. Mike's room has turntables and Norm's has tubes, too. Excellent!
There are a few more photos uploaded and available on the LSAF 2025 Photos link. It's just a collection of raw photos, but you can see what fun we've all been having. I'll make time to post three or four photos of each exhibitor in the next few days here in this thread. Before I comment further on THELSAF 2025, I want to give a big shout-out to Emiko Carlin and her intrepid crew at T.H.E. They have brought some things that LSAF would not have done on its own. In particular is T.H.E. film festival and the IASCA sound quality competition. Other things T.H.E. staff has done include interviewing all exhibitors and tirelessly promoting the show using various flavors of social media platforms. So downstairs on the first floor, there were some “big show” activities that are unique to T.H.E show events. In addition to their film festival and the high-end quality car exhibits, there were large rooms for high-end exhibitors that wanted the extra show space and there was a large marketplace area with booths. For those of us upstairs in the suites, the show retained its traditional Lone Star Audiofest vibe. We have a mix of high-end vendors with kit manufacturers and other types of product offerings. My impression of the 2025 show is very much like all the years before. Traffic was a little higher, I think. Maybe 20% more. But other than that, the “feel” of the show this year was very much the same. To tell the truth, I love that. Exhibitor rooms were packed all day Saturday. Friday was thinner, as it always is. What was most surprising was Sunday. It was almost as packed as Saturday. That’s not been the case in years past. And everyone else told me they had a very positive experience too. So much so that we have already committed to doing it again here next year. Sweet! I would be remiss if I failed to give a respectful nod to my fellow LSAF exhibitors. Our show may be small and relaxed, but that’s largely because we are a group that appeals to a niche segment. Not only are we audiophiles, but we are passionate technical hobbyists. We are a niche within a niche. Most Lone Star Audiofest exhibitors are craftsmen and engineers making the best products they can make. We all “geek out” here and gush about our pet projects. Our intensity shows, and you can tell we’re perfectionists. But there’s a camaraderie evident – we’re all kindred spirits. To use a hot-rod car analogy, exhibitors at LSAF are like guys building eight-second street cars. You can’t just go buy a car that runs an eight-second quarter mile. You have to know what you’re doing, and you have to do it yourself or have an engineering staff to design performance upgrades. The equivalent of that in audio is who exhibits at the Lone Star Audiofest. You can buy plenty of ten-second cars. You can spend millions buying a Koenigsegg Jesko or a Rimac Nevera. Or you can buy a high-end McLaren, Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche. You can spend even more adding custom features, styling or aesthetics. But none of those will get you south of nine seconds in the quarter mile. Some audio shows cater to the super-expensive high-end audio crowd. There’s really cool drool-worthy stuff at shows like that. If you want a really nice and attractive sound system and are willing to spend several hundred thousand or even millions, you can see some examples of sound systems that might suit you there. But to go back to the car analogy, those won’t do eight-second quarter mile times. One could argue that great cars don’t have to be fast enough to do a standing quarter-mile in eight seconds. One could even argue that a good car won’t launch that hard. I would suggest that is true for some, but not for everyone. Different strokes for different folks. Anyway, I think my point is I like the Lone Star Audiofest and its exhibitors and participants better than any of the other audio shows. It’s just so cool. Now I gotta pack up and get ready for the trip home. I'll post pics for each room over the next few days. In the meantime, look over the photos on the LSAF 2025 Photos page.
LSAF Marketplace (Hostein room) Let's start our walkthrough at the Marketplace. Vendors loading in and setting up before the show Marketplace open for business
Bob's Devices Look at all this cool stuff!
Miller Audio Bryan Miller makes an amplifier based on the Dynaco 70 design. He refers to it as a sort of a "resto-mod." Looks like a Dynaco but updated with all-new parts, better capacitors and other secret sauce.
Wizard Sounds Meet the Wizard, who is happy to repair or upgrade your electronics. True story: He was working through the show, so you could actually see your service being done while you were at the Lone Star Audiofest this year.
Longboard Luv This table had a little bit of everything. It's like a treasure hunt here. Imagine pouring through a thousand audiophile estate sales and bringing the goodies here. Now blink your eyes and realize you didn't have to imagine it: It's here!
Pilot Radio These guys make an incredible phono preamp. What makes it really cool, is that it's a vintage design made with modern parts. Best of both worlds. And it looks sooooo groovy! Even more, the current company owners actually have family ties to the original Pilot Electric Manufacturing Company. Pilot Electric was founded over 100 years ago in 1919, and made amplifiers and radio receivers through the years. The current owners - Robert and Barak Epstein - are the grandson and great-grandson, respectively, of the founder of Pilot.
Audio Foundations These guys had a full setup in their booths. I expect to see them in a demo room by themselves next year 'cause they definitely have the systems for it.
Pyramid Audio It's really great we had service companies at LSAF this year. We're all so used to seeing manufacturers and dealers at trade shows, it's easy to forget about service 'til something breaks. And then you have to worry about whether the service shop you choose will adjust and align your equipment to perfection. Pyramid Audio does.
Audiophile Directory The Audiophile Directory is an interesting showing in that they do not manufacture or support audio equipment at all. What they provide is a service for audio companies. The Audiophile Directory is to audio companies like Zillow is to real estate companies. It's not just an online directory - They're a full service analytics provider. They'll help you learn who your customers are, what they are looking for and what they want next.
Audio Mirror and Sadurni Acoustics (Bluebell Room) Horns and Tubes. What a combination. Such beauty. Need I say more?
PBN Audio (Bluebonnet Room) Peter Bichel Noerbaek is the proprietor of PBN Audio, and his design approach is to use the highest quality components to create uncompromising systems. All of his equipment is visually stunning as well as acoustically dynamic.
Sound Sanctuary (Lantana Room) Sound Sanctuary is Austin's Wilson Audio and Transparent dealer. They also represent many other high-end brands, such as Dan D’Agostino, Luxman, VPI and Sonus Faber. Totally droolworthy.
Origin HiFi (Longhorn Room) Origin HiFi specializes in both multi-channel home theater and stereo high-fidelity systems. They are dealers for Focal, Naim, McIntosh and Dynaudio, as well as many other excellent brands. Absolutely incredible room.
Innovo Audio Designs (Verbena Room) Innovo Audio Designs is a high-end loudspeaker manufacturer. Their flagship product is the Luxe 1, which they proudly displayed here at LSAF. It's an excellent product that sounds incredible and looks fantastic!
T.H.E. Film Festival (Highlands Room) The T.H.E. Film festival is one of Emiko Carlin's babies. It's so cool, and is one of the unique extra things that she and her crew bring to T.H.E. events. There were short films created by independent film producers running during the entire show. Not only do they have interesting visual content, but they were produced using high-fidelity sound recording techniques and were presented to the audience using high-end audio equipment from SVS Sound. How cool is that?!!
IASCA Sound Quality Competition This is something else new for LSAF this year - Car audio. IASCA held an automobile sound quality competition in the parking lot. The sound systems weren't rated for SPL at this event. They were measured and judged for sound quality.
JPorter Studios (Room 204) This is JPorter Studios second year at LSAF. Their introduction of their Waterloo speaker last year was a big hit, but they outdid themselves this year with beautiful new finishes, a new model called the Wellington and a smaller model, the Waterloo Micro.
Joey G's Audio Channel (Room 206) Joey G. brought us LAB12 and ArentPur amplifiers, Chesky Audio and Falcon speakers and Orchard DACs and streaming devices. Really good stuff!
Van Zyl Audio (Room 213) Johan van Zyl is a regular exhibitor at the Lone Star Audiofest, and his rooms always sound terrific. He is a life-long full-range horn enthusiast, and produces loudspeakers that are horn-loaded throughout the audio range. This year's model is a three-way horn loudspeaker, and it sounds great, as always!
Raven Audio (Room 216) Raven Audio is another long-time regular exhibitor at the Lone Star Audiofest. They produce stunning tube amplifiers that are not only exquisite as physical artwork, but they truly sound great. And they also have begun to offer loudspeakers, which are also of excellent quality. Raven never fails to be a top-notch room that you absolutely must see.
Audio Crafters Guild and PureArtFi (Room 217) Norman Tracy of Audio Crafters Guild is another LSAF alumni, having been at every show since 2005. His electronics are always excellent. One thing I've noticed about ACG equipment is the aesthetics are getting really good. The sound and build quality have always been great, but the equipment is more attractive than it used to be. And with the addition of PureArtFi speakers, the total package now is just stunning!
Uilleam Audio (Room 223) Mike Lundy at Uilleam Audio has transformed over the last ten years or so. He has always been a fantastic woodworker, but early on, he built GR Research designs almost exclusively. Over the years, he began to take on builds of other brands and now I think he is overrun with work from almost everyone. He has also branched out into other things besides just loudspeakers. Look at these amazing samples of his work!
Brane Audio (Room 226) Brane Audio produces a small system, which is about the size of a table radio but is designed to receive streaming digital content. It contains a subwoofer that uses a technology called a repel-attract driver, which is fairly complicated compared to conventional single voice coil drivers. Specifically, it uses a pair of voice coils and an external air pump to bias the suspension. This allows a very small cabinet volume to be used than other subwoofers. Bottom line is this thing rocks!
Toby Speakers (Room 227) Toby Speakers has been known for its speakers for some time, mostly using direct-radiators and waveguides. But they introduced a loudspeaker with an electrostatic element at this year's show, which they call the Narwhal ESL. They brought a pair of their standard Narwhals too. Super cool and so attractive!
Audio Geeks (Room 228) Audio Geeks is a high-end audio dealer in San Antonio. They offer many fine brands, including Fyne Speakers and Cambridge Audio source and amplifiers which they displayed at this year's show.
Pi Speakers (Room 229) Pi Speakers is a founding member of the Lone Star Audiofest. Displayed this year is the three Pi mains with flanking subs.
Canvas HiFi (Room 230) Canvas makes an interesting and attractively simple panel that incorporates a complete sound system for home theater. Actually, it can be used purely for high-fidelity sound without a television monitor, but it was designed to be placed underneath a television. This is a product that isn't best captured with photography alone. It looks like a simple panel, and that's it. Which is why it's so cool. And it sounds great.
JWM Acoustics (Room 233) Joshua Miles JWM Acoustics room always looks like a super-stylish art exhibit. His loudspeakers and turntables really are pieces of art. And they sound so good too. De toute beauté.
We're about a month past LSAF 2025, so check out the show coverage: LSAF 2025 Media Coverage