Show Reports

Welcome to Part 4 of my Florida International Audio Expo 2025 show report! If you’re a fan of reel-to-reel tape decks as much as we are, you’ll definitely enjoy this installment. In fact, exhibitors at FLAX 2025 showed more open-reel tape decks than in past years of the show, this time from makers such as Sonorus, Revox, and United Home Audio — and at least one vintage Studer deck too (as seen in my colleague Ken Micallef’s FLAX 2025 video report, which you can check out here).

In fact, some exhibit rooms had open-reel tape decks playing in their demo systems instead of turntables. I asked a few exhibitors why they were deploying decks instead of tables to serve as their analog sources — especially in high-end systems — and some said that, for them, the decks were more durable and comparatively easier to set-up than dialing in turntables, tonearms, and cartridges.

UNITED HOME AUDIO / MBL
For those of us who couldn’t get enough listening done during official show hours, tape-deck maker United Home Audio (a.k.a. UHA) and German speaker and electronics manufacturer MBL had us covered with their afterhours listening sessions. Their collaborative demo in the Brandon 5 Room featured a UHA Ultima Apollo open-reel tape deck with an outboard power supply. UHA founder/maker Greg Beron told me that this two-chassis model is as close as you can get to the company’s SuperDeck flagship model, without having the three chassis needed for that deck.

The Ultima Apollo deck’s newly upgraded parts involved more design changes and challenges in assembly than expected. The main challenge was to fit all the upgraded components inside the existing chassis dimensions — to avoid the need, cost, and complexity of that third chassis. The additional chassis is important for isolation, of course, but it also became necessary to power the unit’s big gain stages. It contains all new circuit boards to accommodate the new, larger gain stages in the head amps.

“They’re the biggest gain stages that would fit in there, so we had to redesign the boards for that,” Beron continued. “Then, when we were redesigning the boards, we found out that to run these bigger gain stages, you have to have bigger voltage regulators, so we had to create a board just for those voltage regulators.”

The Ultima Apollo uses two scrape flutter rollers to flatten and smooth out the tape to make sure it hits the head just right for playback. UHA devised a new metal can that goes around the tape head that’s said to circumvent EMI. UHA also made a few changes to the outboard power supply, such as using new toroidal power transformers and some larger AC-to-DC conversion devices.

The UHA Apollo tape deck, which was released a year ago, has an SRP of $55,000, including the outboard power supply. Consumers can select whatever color finish they want on the deck, along with United Home Audio’s Celtic-inspired design icon.

The balance of the demo system in the Brandon 5 Room also included MBL 101 E MKII loudspeakers ($91,000/pr), a pair of MBL 9011 mono power amps ($64,100/ea), an MBL 6010 D preamp, and MBL’s new C41 network player ($11,100), along with some Shun Mook passive acoustic accessories. Wireworld Platinum Eclipse cabling connected the system’s components.

Playing back various 15ips mixtapes (said to be dubs of safety masters) on the Ultima Apollo deck across a range of styles and eras demonstrated the United Home Audio and MBL system’s cross-genre capabilities, from pipe organ and choral pieces to Beethoven, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, and Nirvana.

Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (culled from September 1991’s forever iconic Nevermind) rocked out with height-of-grunge gusto. Its loud and soft dynamic swings were captured with air and space, as appropriate. Kurt Cobain’s raw vocal urgency gripped listeners in the room as Dave Grohl’s kickdrums kicked ass, hitting hard. Excuse the cliché, but it was like hearing “Teen Spirit” — which isn’t even really a favorite of mine — as I’d never heard it before. Big grins all around.

Listening in the Brandon 5 Room was less about purist, left-right, lock-step accuracy than letting yourself enter an open-throttle sonic experience. It was easy to get lost in the MBL Radialstrahler drivers’ immersive omnidirectional sound. MBL North America’s Jeremy Bryan, his wife Tara, and their entire team consistently pull out all the stops in this setup — and it clearly showed during the demos.

And that’s it for today. Part 5 will be coming soon!

Author bio: Julie Mullins, a lifelong music lover and audiophile by osmosis who grew up listening to her father’s hi-fi gear, is also a contributing editor and reviewer on our sister site, Stereophile, for whom she also writes the monthly Re-Tales column. A former fulltime staffer at Cincinnati’s long-running alt-weekly CityBeat, she hosts a weekly radio show on WAIF called On the Pulse.

For Part 1 of Julie’s FLAX 2025 show report, go here.

For Part 2 of Julie’s FLAX 2025 show report, go here.

For Part 3 of Julie’s FLAX 2025 show report, go here.

For Ken Micallef’s 15-minute video showing all sorts of great turntables and other cool analog gear at FLAX 2025, go here.

For even more FLAX 2025 coverage, go here on our sister site Stereophile.