The Audiophile Foundation Debut at AXPONA 2024
Leslie Lundin | Published on 4/28/2024
The Audiophile Foundation Debut at AXPONA
AXPONA was bustling this year with over 9,000 reported attendees, proving that the audiophile world is alive and well in the Midwest. Always looking for an excuse to visit my birthplace, the Windy City, I, along with Larry D, Jim Hunton and John Hughes took Chicago (or to be more precise, Schaumburg) by storm extolling the virtues of the Audiophile Foundation. Yes, for a whirlwind weekend, we were Audiophile Foundation evangelists…our mission to spread the word to the greater community of our mere existence. Thank you, fellow evangelists!
Thank you, AXPONA, for donating to us an exhibit hall booth, a Master Class Session and a full-page advertisement in the on-site brochure. A big thanks also goes to Nelson Pass for donating a Pass Labs 1st Watt Amplifier for our on-site drawing. Thank you to Andrew Jones and Mofi for allowing us to use their room for our Audiophile Foundation pizza party. Thanks also goes to Jeff Kalina our Director of Marketing for orchestrating this entire event. Unfortunately, Jeff fell ill at the last minute and missed all of the fun. 😪
Some key takeaways from our on-site conversations:
- Most of the attendees had no club affiliation and no clear means of finding local audiophiles.
- Most of the attendees were from Chicago metro and adjacent states (Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan).
- Most attendees who knew about the Chicago club didn’t join because they were not close enough to where the events took place.
- Every attendee I spoke with, thought that having a tool to help them find local audiophiles, get non-biased advice from other audiophiles and meet audiophiles in other areas would be very useful.
- Dealers and manufacturers were supportive as a way of reaching the greater community at a more affordable price.
As a result, we signed up approximately 70 audiophiles wanting to get on our mailing list to receive the Muse. We are hopeful that they will want to join as well.
During our Pizza Party at the MoFi suite, we met with the leaders of the Chicago, Boston and Lexington audiophile groups and I subsequently met with the leader of a group from FL. We had a good discussion about how they ran their organizations vs what we are doing.
My key takeaways:
- Many organizations are not incorporated and if they are, they aren’t carrying the requisite insurance policies needed to protect those running the organizations from personal liability because they don’t collect enough funds to do so. These leaders are truly selfless and should be commended for their efforts.
- They voiced concerns about the amount of effort that it requires to maintain a website and digital presence.
- They were concerned that their membership was aging, and it was hard to find people to take on more responsibility to keep things running.
If other clubs throughout the country are interested in joining our group, we will have subsequent meetings to discuss best practices when running an organization and demonstrate the broad range of services we can provide to them and their membership.
I was able to squeeze in visits to just about every room and overall, found some pretty amazing sound and interesting new looks in speakers as always. Andrew’s new MoFi speakers are hard to beat and as usual, sounded fabulous. You will be seeing many images on our social media over the coming months. If you don’t follow us, you can find links to our social on our website and the Muse.
Congratulations to Roberto Valadez of Chicago for winning the Pass Labs Amplifier.
So welcome to all of you new to the Muse! We hope you stick around so we can get to know you better😊