If you weren’t in Raleigh the weekend of August 7th through 9th, I have some bad news. You missed the best consumer home entertainment event in the country. Period.
Audio Advice Live 2026 just wrapped its fifth year at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel. More than 60 experience rooms. Over ten full Dolby Atmos theaters. Multiple floors of the best gear on the planet, all under one roof. I was working the show and only there for one day, and I still walked away with enough to talk about for the next year. Let me tell you what I saw.
The action actually started Thursday, the day before the doors opened to the public. Audio Advice hosted a press event featuring brand launch events, and each one would have been a headline on its own. Klipsch used the show to debut its new Reference Premiere III lineup, nine models celebrating the brand’s 80th anniversary. Focal brought the North American debut of the Diva Alta Utopia, a $210,000 active wireless flagship that has the whole industry talking. Bowers & Wilkins showcased the new 800 Series Diamond D5, giving attendees one of the only chances in the country to hear the range before it ships to dealers in September. World-class brands, major launches, all in one night.
Thursday evening, we held our leadership dinner, where the conversation centered on the future of AI and how Audio Advice is actively positioning itself to be a leading retailer in the audio space. The technology in our industry is moving fast, and the retailers who win will be the ones who embrace AI without losing the human expertise and service that clients actually pay for. That’s exactly where Audio Advice is planting its flag.
We also hosted a press dinner, where accredited members of the press connected with one another, compared notes, and planned out their coverage for the weekend ahead. When you watch the biggest names in AV journalism map out their attack plan for a show like this, you understand just how much ground there is to cover.
Heading to the Show Floor
Down on the basement level, the Trinnov and ASCENDO theater was one of the most incredible home cinema demonstrations I’ve ever experienced. No exaggeration.
The setup was a 9.7.4 system with Trinnov’s flagship AltitudeCI processor running the show. ASCENDO subwoofers lined the front and rear walls, and a 32-inch infrasub handled the frequencies you don’t hear. You feel those in your chest.
The star of the room was Trinnov’s Cylindrical WaveForming technology. Most systems try to fix bass problems after they happen. WaveForming stops them from happening at all, so every seat in the room gets the same tight, controlled, seismic bass. No dead spots. No boomy corners. Pair that with Christie laser projection on a 135-inch Stewart Filmscreen, and this one room was worth the trip to Raleigh all by itself.
Right down the hall, the Anthem and Paradigm theater delivered reference-level performance with remarkable value. Anthem’s award-winning room correction and amplification drove Paradigm loudspeakers with precision, and the demo was dynamic, detailed, and fully immersive. The standout moment came when they played an amazing song from A Star Is Born, performed by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. The track is a demo-room favorite for a reason: it opens intimate and quiet, builds through layered vocals and acoustic guitar, then erupts into that soaring final chorus. The system handled every step of that dynamic climb effortlessly, reproducing the raw emotion in both voices with a realism that stopped people in the doorway. It’s the kind of theater that makes attendees stop asking “how much?” and start asking “how soon can you install this?”
Interactive racing simulators ran all weekend with lines of people grinning ear to ear. A Foresight golf simulator let guests dial in their swing on a launch monitor accurate enough for tour pros. Coastal Source built a full outdoor living environment that showed exactly what landscape audio and lighting can do. A fully loaded gaming PC setup pulled a steady crowd. Lutron showed why lighting control is the fastest-growing conversation in the smart home right now. And anchoring the whole floor was the DreamWall, a jaw-dropping, wall-sized direct-view LED video wall. Once you see it in person, even a flagship TV starts to feel small.
Sonos was in the mix too, showing off the new Amp Multi. This is a big deal for whole-house audio distribution: an 8-channel, 4-zone streaming amplifier built specifically for integrators, with 125 watts per channel and per-channel EQ, delay, and gain tuning. One rack-mounted box, four zones of audio, all controlled from the Sonos app. It starts shipping August 25, and it’s going to change how a lot of multi-room projects get designed.
Harman Luxury Audio came in force. The full JBL Synthesis cinema line, the iconic JBL K2 loudspeakers, the Enchant soundbar, and Arcam electronics rounded out the room. Hearing the heritage K2s in the same space as a modern Synthesis system is a masterclass in how far JBL engineering has come without losing what made it legendary.
I spent my afternoon in the Bowers & Wilkins corner, and I’m going to make a bold claim. I live in Las Vegas. Tiesto plays here basically every week. This system sounded better than any club I’ve ever set foot in.
The centerpiece was an immersive audio experience running native 7.4.4 Dolby Atmos mixes, and the effect was staggering. One track had a clockwork and corkscrew effect that spiraled through the mix, and you could track it moving around the room and up through the height channels with pinpoint precision. Reading about object-based audio is one thing. Feeling a sound twist over your head is something else entirely. Add the McLaren racing simulator parked in the corner, a nod to B&W’s Formula 1 partnership, and this became one of the stickiest spaces at the show. People did not want to leave. I get it. I didn’t either.
Sony brought serious firepower with their True RGB display technology. Independently driven red, green, and blue LEDs producing color and brightness you have to see in person to believe. Right next to it, a massive 115-inch display that redefines what “big screen” even means.
And that’s before you get to the 14th, 15th, and 16th floors, where dozens more brands turned hotel suites into world-class listening rooms. Two-channel rigs, turntables, headphones, and electronics from the biggest names in high-performance audio, one door after another.
The FOMO Is Justified
Here’s the thing about Audio Advice Live: this is not a trade show. No industry gatekeeping. It’s the rare event where any music lover or movie fanatic can sit in the money seat of a cost-is-no-object theater, feel WaveForming bass in their chest, stand in front of a True RGB display, and talk directly with the engineers and executives who built it all.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what this event is really about. Not the price tags. Not the spec sheets. It’s about that moment when a track builds, the room disappears, and someone experiences what world-class audio and video actually feel like for the first time. I watched it happen over and over all day long, and it never got old.
So if you missed it this year, do yourself a favor and put next August on the calendar right now. Bring a friend who thinks their soundbar is good enough. Block out all three days, because one is not enough. Trust me on that. I’ll see you in Raleigh.
