AXPONA 2026: Best In Show -- The T10 Bespoke

Well, AXPONA 2026 is in the books, and while I plan to do a recap of the shw in general—which normally would include my thoughts and feelings on the “best in show”—one product I auditioned was so far above the rest, not only in terms of musicality (which it certainly was), but also in form, function, build quality, and game‑changing capabilities, that I feel compelled to review this product on its own.

The subject of this review is the T10 Bespoke Comput‑Ear, which, for the purpose of this review, I will refer to simply as the T10.

I want to start this off by saying I have been to many an audio show and have heard many, many pieces of high‑end audio equipment in countless configurations—and have owned quite a few myself over the 50 years that I have considered myself a quote‑unquote “audiophile.”

And I will tell you two things that I discovered this past weekend:

1) I had never heard anything in all those years reproduce music with the clarity and harmonic accuracy that I experienced with the T10s in my ears, and

2) I was completely wrong in believing I would never consider a headphone or in‑ear monitor as something that could truly recreate live music, regardless of cost.

That being said, prior to my auditioning of the T10, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Bear Clark—the owner, fanatical designer, and builder (let’s just say the Chief, Cook, and Bottle Washer) of the T10 Bespoke—to explain to me beforehand how these little gems are capable of such amazing musicality, as well as some of the other truly remarkable, and in some cases life‑changing, capabilities they possess.

Bear himself, besides all those other attributes, is a multi‑talented lifelong musician in his own right with a music‑forward belief. He knows what live music does and what it should sound like.

First, though, I want to talk about the music they produce. After all, this is (and was) a high‑end audio show. How do they sound compared not just to other headphones or in‑ear monitors, but to all the mega‑buck systems I had the pleasure of listening to on display at AXPONA?

Right off the bat, before playing any music, Bear fit me with the proper size ear cushions. This took a little doing, since Bear and I both found out—after careful inspection—that my ears are not the same size. Bear could have just made do with his initial thoughts as to the size of my ears, but not Bear. I learned quite quickly that this gentleman is quite the fanatic in wanting things to be not just right, but perfect—and who can blame him, right?

Once I was fitted, I was ready to listen.

Let me preface this first by saying that up until this demonstration, I was never able to wear in‑ear monitors for more than five minutes. After a very short amount of time, they hurt my ears by pressing on nerves, and then came the inevitable dizziness whenever I moved my head or tried to walk around with them. Couple that with the loudness levels I had to play them at so that the outside world wouldn’t creep in and overpower my listening experience, and it wasn’t long before I was suffering from listening fatigue and would just pluck them out and be done with them.

I am also not a headphone guy—sorry, I’m just not—because no matter how comfortable or how good they sounded, just having these things wrapped around my head was not a pleasurable experience and took away from the music, and certainly not normal‑looking enough to want to be seen walking outside or riding in a plane or car (sorry, if you wear over‑ear headphones and think you look cool or people envy you… they don’t—you just look like Princess Leia). And try wearing a hat with them!

So, as you can imagine, having all those demons running rampant inside my head before hearing the first note, I was a tad skeptical when Bear asked me to name a couple of my reference recordings that I always use when reviewing speakers and other system components.

Right away I called off “Hey Big Spender” from Sweet Charity (with Gwen Verdon from the Columbia Records original cast recording) and “In The Lap Of The Gods” from Pyramid by The Alan Parsons Project—two pieces of music that I not only know (or thought I knew) exceedingly well from first note to last.

When Bear started “Hey Big Spender,” I was instantly wide‑eyed and captivated. What was going on in my head? Firstly, there was no outside noise interfering with the signal I was receiving—there was just music. Glorious music with not only depth and clarity, but detail that seemed to reach deeper into the recording than I had ever heard before. As much as I thought I knew about this song, I was hearing more—perhaps because I was hearing less. Again: less noise, more signal.

Moving on to Alan Parsons, I knew this song with its wide transient swings would be a real challenge—not for the T10s to play them, I was confident they could handle them—but more so for my ears. Would they be able to handle it? Would the crescendo blow my eardrums out? Once more, I was not prepared for what I heard. It was as if I was hearing them in a top‑tier, full‑range two‑channel system—and again, no discomfort or worry about them being too loud. I believe it’s simply that since it didn’t have to compete with outside noise, it never had to reach that decibel level.

It didn’t take long either for me to discover I had no pain in my ears from the monitors—total comfort—and I could move my head around, talk, and do anything, and the dizziness I mentioned earlier was nonexistent.

Now, to be fair, I will say that with the monitors in my ears, when I talked, there was that slight echo you hear of your own voice in your head that you get with any headphone or in‑ear monitor, but gosh, what a small price to pay for such musical pleasure. Besides, when I listen to music, I rarely talk to anyone anyway.

Later on, over the course of the rest of Saturday and Sunday, I had the opportunity to play these same songs on some traditional big‑buck systems—some costing ten to twenty times more than the T10s just for the speakers alone—and every time, my mind kept telling me the T10s were superior. I heard more depth, a wider soundstage, more clarity, more definition, more dynamic contrast, and more realism through the T10s than on any of the other systems on display.

I hope I have been able to separate you from thinking of these as just some sort of luxury earbuds designed for extravagant looks more than music—that couldn’t be further from the truth. These are music‑forward, true high‑end music transducers.

Bear has said, “When you buy the very best, you only scream once.”

To that I will add my two cents: Nobody ever complained about paying more for the best, whereas people complain about paying the least for less.

In my view, here you really do get what you pay for—and then some—making this small in‑ear bespoke high‑fidelity instrument a bargain in the audiophile world.

As he says, “These are a labor of love—for the love of sound.”

And I have to say, I agree completely.