Budapest Audio Expo 2025

October 7, 2025

Last year’s Budapest Audio Expo was the first hifi event I had truly enjoyed in years. Needless to say, I spent a day this weekend at the Audio Expo again :-) Building on last year’s experience, I chose to visit the expo on Sunday. There were fewer people and better-sounding systems.

TL;DR:

If I had to sum up the expo in a one statement: Made in Hungary audio rivals the rest of the world in quality, while often being available at a much more affordable price. My top three favorite sounds came from systems with components mostly made in Hungary: Dorn / Heed, NCS Audio / Qualiton, and Popori / 72 Audio (in alphabetical order :-) ). I have listened to quite a few systems costing a lot more. However, these were the systems that I enjoyed listening to the most.

Dorn / Heed

Dorn / Heed Audio holds a special place in my heart. Not just there: I listen to a full Heed system at home. I was very happy to see them at the event. You could listen there to their latest speaker, connected to an Elixir (amplifier) and an Abacus (DAC). I listened to the exact same setup just a few weeks ago in their show room. Here they sounded even better. As you can see on the photos, “just” a pair of bookshelf speakers, still they could fill the room with clean sound. No matter their size, bass was also detailed and loud enough (disclaimer: there was no Metallica in the playlist, which might have changed this opinion ;-) ). Probably one of the cheapest systems on display at the Expo (not counting DIY), but still one of the best sounding. Natural, life-like sound, a joy to listen to. I went back there to rest, when I was tired from all the artificially sounding systems.

Dorn (speakers): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093087444699
Heed (everything else): https://heedaudio.com/

NCS Audio / PRAUDIO / Qualiton

I first wrote about NCS Audio three years ago. Last year I called Reference One Premium the best value speaker at the expo, as it sounded equally good or sometimes even better than speakers costing an order of magnitude more. Well, nothing has changed from this point of view.

This year NCS Audio shared a room with PRAUDIO and Qualiton. I had a chance to participate in a quick demo, where we learned more about the various digital and analog sources and the speakers, and then listened to them. It was a kind of stereotypical hifi event: songs I listened many times in various rooms during the day. Still, it was good, as it was a wide selection of music, and they sounded just as good as I expected them :-)

Popori / 72 Audio

While most rooms featured devices, which are in production and available on the market, the room of 72 Audio was different. Everything we listened to, except for the electrostatic speakers from Popori Acoustics, were hand built long time ago. I was rude, as I responded to a text message while sitting in the back row and listening to the music in the room. While I was typing, the music stopped. A new song started, and suddenly I looked up confused: for a moment I was looking for the lady singing. Of course, she was not in the room, just the recording :-) Well, my ears are very difficult to trick, and it only works, when my mind is somewhere else. This was just the third time happening to me.

Popori Acoustics: https://poporiacoustics.com/
72 Audio: https://www.72audio.com/

Audio Expo 2025: Popori Acoustics / 72 Audio

Disappointments

Of course, not everything was perfect. I do not want to say names here, just a few experiences.

I have seen ads about a pair of streaming speakers multiple times a day for the past few months. Finally I had a chance to listen to them. Well. Extreme amount of details. Extreme amount of bass, my weakness. Still, everything sounded too much processed, too artificial. Not my world.

Recently I learned about a speaker brand, developed and manufactured in the city of a close friend. Of course I became curious, how it sounds. Well, practically it’s a high-end home theater speaker. My immediate reaction was that I was looking around where can I watch the film. The exact same song, which was perfectly life-like on the NCS Reference One speakers, sounded like a background music of a movie on this lot more expensive system.

The hosts in most rooms were really kind, helpful, smiling. Not everywhere. When someone blocks the exit and tries to push a catalog in my hands without much communication, that’s a guarantee that I do not want to return there. Luckily this mentality was not typical at all at this event.

Others

Of course I cannot describe everything from a large expo in a single blog. But other than my top 3 favorites, there were a few more I definitely have to mention.

Allegro Audio was good, as always. They also had a Made in Hungary component, the Flow amplifier.
Hobby Audio was playing music from a tape using a self-built amplifier and pair of speakers. They looked DIY, and they were actually DIY, but had a much more natural sound than some of the much more expensive systems at the expo.

Natural Distortion demonstrated a prototype DAC and amplifier. Some of the features are still under development, none-the-less what already worked that sounded really nice and natural. A story definitely worth to follow!
Sound Mania had a nice sounding pair of speakers from Odeon Audio. Well, they look a kind of strange, but sound surprisingly good :-)

Disclaimers

I did not listen to everything. I skipped rooms with headphones, and probably two rooms at the end of a corridor which were always full when I tried to get in. Nobody asked me to shut up about stuff I did not like, I just do not like to be negative on things what are mostly subjective. Neither did anybody promise me money or any kind of audio equipment to write nice things, even if I would not mind receiving a new pair of speakers, an amplifier and a DAC :-)

Closing words

I borrow my closing words from my blog last year: I really hope that next year we will have a similarly good Audio Expo in Budapest!