The giant big-box stores, and insurance company headquarters were planted bleakly all around my horizon, and slid past the car windows like Soviet-era monoliths under the grey sky as the Uber I was taking from Chicago’s O’Hare airport rolled into the suburbs for AXPONA 2018. The nondescript hotel I was booked into for the show was also hosting a PonyCon event (My Pretty Pony for those so inclined), with about a dozen people dressed in strange, stuffed-toy-pony themed costumes laughing loudly in the lobby as I passed by to the front desk, standing out in stark contrast to a hardened group of serial travellers huddled around the bar nursing highballs across from them. So began my 2018 hifi trade-show circuit – markedly different from last year where by this time I had already hit CES, and Montreal. The new venue for Chicago this year is the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Centre, which is without a doubt an improvement on previous years for style, and space, albeit with its own set of unique issues which I found out a number of exhibitors were contending with. After dropping off my luggage, and freshening up (slightly) I hit the new digs [...]
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