AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) 2026 was, without question, Rhythm's most significant AXPONA to date. To hear so many visitors name our rooms their “favorite of the show” was humbling.
In the Prosperity room, Luxman showed its new Centennial components: the pure Class A L-100 Centennial integrated amplifier, the D-100 Centennial SACD (Super Audio CD) player and DAC (digital-to-analog converter), and a first look at the B-100 Centennial monoblock amplifier. Hifi Pig called it “a great sounding room, with snappy transients, crisp sound, and great body when required.”
In the same room, Ken Micallef of Stereophile sat down with the Luxman system playing through Marten's Parker Quintet loudspeakers and Jorma cables. He wrote that it “played big and deep, carving cavernous space between notes with excellent attack.” Pat Metheny's cover of “And I Love Her” “arrived at enormous scale,” and the tone was “rich, saturated, and luminous, conjuring chocolate and ice cream at exactly the moment AXPONA demanded both.”
Out in the Utopia Lounge, an open, comfortably furnished space between the conference rooms, we set up what Marc Phillips of Part-Time Audiophile called “a very ambitious and expensive system.” Goldmund's new Telos 8800 monoblocks, each rated at 1,400 watts, and the Mimesis Reference preamplifier drove Marten's Coltrane Quintet Extreme loudspeakers, which Marten builds by hand in a limited run of ten pairs. Jorma's new flagship Paragon cables connected everything.
Phillips admitted the open setting felt counter-intuitive at first. Then he kept coming back: “that Goldmund and Marten and Jorma system sounded fantastic all out in the open like that. It was my go-to location for putting my feet up and going over my notes.”
To hear Goldmund, Luxman, Marten or Jorma for yourself, find a Rhythm dealer near you.
