Capital Audio Fest (CAF) 2023

I went to CAF Saturday and Sunday.  Attendance was good but maybe a little less than expected.

notables to me:

- Geshelli labs has 2 new products an amp and a crazy 8 output DAC.  Really love what Geshelli can do for the price  there’s some videos on YouTube if you want to see

- Clayton Shaw showed his new open baffle speakers, Caladan, with Linear Tube Audio gear.  Sounded great.

- Linear Tube Audio is coming out with 2 new products: a Dac and a new entry headphone amp.  
- YG had some really nice new stuff.  The preamp was super cool.   Like what they are doing.

- heard Elacs new powered bookshelves.  Sounded really good for a small powered system and they have them for on significant intro sale for the next 2 days 
- there was a really cool prototype open baffle speaker made out of granite from a startup Maco (there’s some YouTube videos out there) .  They sounded really good.

so that’s my brief gear talk from only seeing 1/6 of the rooms! However, the best part about the show is talking to people. Getting to sit down and talk to people - the people who make all these cool things… being able to talk face to face with the speaker designer or Amp Designer is the best.  well worth the trip if you can make it.

Odd.

I purchased a pair of the Elac active monitors on sale.  These were just for comparison with my reference Omega BAM I use in nearfield. I was curious to see how close they would sound since they sounded so good at the show.

Initial sound was boxy and rolled off on top. Nothing like I remember at show.

now that’s with only a couple hours burn in… doing a full burn in and we’ll see.