Capital Audiofest Coming Up!

@aldnorab - Midwest AudioFest was so much fun. Lots of really great attendees and vendors. Wish it was still going....

Mapman 

An to be there all day today, we'll try to hook up.

Not sure where I'll be, usually start with breakfest in the hotel restaurant, seem to be tradition for me now.

Wanted to be there yesterday but my furnace prevented that.

Hoping to find something special in the smaller rooms.

Take care.

Me

was there yesterday, a few rooms I recommend:

High Water Sound (room 323) - Cessaro speakers; expensive but Jeff Catalano always has a great room and plays good music.

Gestalt Audio (room 325) - very cool new speakers - Cinnamon Audio from Portugal; @lalitk Colin King says “hello”

American Sound of Canada (room 641) - Angie is running Rethm speakers with a Synthesis integrated and a cool new German turntable.  Great system for reasonable price.  

Fern & Roby (room 616) - Christopher Hildebrand is one of the nicest people in the biz, and Ivreally like his new amp.

Odeon Audio ( room 636) - Never heard their horns before, but impressive.

Rooms to avoid - any room Michael Fremer has taken over to play his lps; his ego has taken over his body, and his taste in music is meh.  I had to walk out of a Command Performance room where they were showing AudioVector speakers that sounded pretty good cuz his music was so bad

Had a full day there today.

There was a lot to like!

I need to go through my notes first to point out a few highlights.

The mbl room is one I can cite as candidate for best sound. They seemed to get it right in every way in their room this year even if not yet even close to what I know mbl can do with soundstage and imaging based on prior showroom demos. A class of their own!

There were many others that caught my ear as well yet in different ways.

@mdalton

Thanks for your impressions on CAF. I agree with you on HWS, Gestalt and F&R…always a pleasure to meet them in person and their choice of gear + sound is usually in my Top 10. I almost bought F&R TT before I decided to pursue Garrard. 301. If you go back to @gestalt, say my hello to Colin.

@mapman 

+1 on MBL, wish I could afford to buy one of their offerings.  My alternative to MBL’s are WVL. While not as pretty as MBL, WVL are really great sounding speakers. 

I had a great day there yesterday with a friend.  Highlights for me were MBL room (Twinbriok), Gestalt audio (with Colin playing a wonderful Johnny Hartman LP)(325), YG with Burmester (737), YG with Bel Canto (806), Margules Group (832), Vitus/Estelon (one of the Alma audio rooms I think).  I’m sort of shopping for an end game integrated amp (which I’ve loved for the last few years, but then got used to it and started taking it for granted).  The Vitus SIA 030 was amazing (which at 50k or so, it should be); sadly, no Gryphon 330, though there was a 120 which sounded great. 

Almost forgot — best “low-cost” sound for me was the local pairing of Eastern Bay Speakers with LTA electronics (644).  LTA was featured in several rooms.  The newish LTA DAC and other gear sounded great in each of the different systems I heard. 
 

Also, this seems the be the year of sound effects, eg, lots of rooms playing percussion or vocal oddities to show off PRAT.  At one point, we skipped several rooms with systems I would have liked to have heard had they been playing music, just to avoid being annoyed.  Did anyone else notice this?  Or maybe I’m just easily annoyed this weekend — I mean, more so than usual. 

@disc  what system was being used by Burmester?

anyone else see/hear anything from Burmester or accuphase?

Standouts a CAF:

Odyssey Audio top of the line floor standers driven by Stratos mono blocks

MBL room

Focal Grand Utopia Evo

9 ft tall Soundlabs driven by LTA amps

@ckr1969 Burmester 232 Integrated Amp.  It sounded great.  Reminded me of my Boulder 866 — very clean and engaging, great soundstage and accurately conveyed instrumental and vocal timbres.  

I also heard the Accuphase E-800 and E-5000 integrated amps.  Also impressive.  
 

Another standout for me was Songer Audio. In addition to one of my favorite sounds I heard, they did it with a beefy yet supposed 4 watt SET amp driving their modest-in-size custom full range field coil driver in a somewhat pricey yet performant design. Hats off! How did he do that?

Yes, I liked the Accuphase integrated amps I heard very much. Definitely made the cut for my short list for an upcoming integrated amp upgrade I have in mind.

Also kudos to Odyssey for showing probably the best overall sound value I heard at the show. 

The Maco open baffle quartz cabinet speakers impressed me as well and  were another nice find.

Worth noting I only had time to cover about half the rooms that I would have liked to so I did not have a chance to hear it all.

Didn’t get to hear this year but from prior experience LTA amps never fail to sound top notch.   One of the few tube amps out there I would seriously love to own. 

I didn't see anyone with a name tag or label. I was there Saturday and Sunday. Even the name tags of the vendors were difficult to read. It would be nice to meet a few people from here. Let's make something happen next year. Joe

Mapman, if there's no statute of limitations on an answer; I got a good listening session on the MBL set up. I was in there while a reviewer occupied the sweet spot. I thought it was the best at the show. It sounded like it would not fatigue at any level. It was easy to discern every note and vocal. Sadly, I'll never own it 

I went back late Sunday and tried to buy the MBL C41 streamer at a demo discount.  No dice.  It was already spoken for.  “But we’d be happy to find you a brand new one.”  I don’t mean to sound snarky.   They were actually quite nice to speak with. 

My first audioshow so failed to write down things that were sounding good:

Have read about Planar speakers and Horn speakers but finally got to hear both, the Planars were 9 feet high, they were playing Louie Armstrong and he imaged like he was 15 feet tall.

The realistic saxaphone on the horn speakers was amazing.

Paradigm Persona 9H were intoxicating, considering them as my next speaker, the built in amps for the woofers and room correction features added alot.

Wish I could have gone this year---was Luxman there to show their new 'Z' integrated amps? If so, any thoughts?

@bluorion i had an eye out for them, but didn’t see any.  That said, I missed a dozen or so rooms. 

I thought that the CAF was really fabulous. Going over all three days made the show far more relaxing. Most valuable to me were the many pleasant and informative discussions that I had with manufacturers and attendees. I really enjoyed an extensive conversation that I had with Valeria Cora and his wonderful wife Sheree about the materials used in their speakers as well as buying (and saving!) Audio Research. Truly great people and a truly great speaker company.
 

I really enjoyed the sound in the Gershman Acoustics room. Most of the top end systems had an unnatural hardness and brightness to them. This room did not! The Command Performance room had a demonstration that really bore this phenomena out. Playing background music from her last album, a lovely Canadian jazz singer (whose name I am struggling to remember) sang without amplification 10 feet in front of me, providing a useful reference for how the human voice actually sounds. Not hard or bright, like so many systems that I heard. I will add that the Command Performance room, like the room I mentioned above, featured a lovely coherence, combining great spatiality and dynamics with an accurate and natural sound. Ie, not bright and hard!

With a nod to an earlier comment, the singer sang immediately after Mikey taking over the room to play his music. How he uses his musical choices to evaluate sound left me wondering, but he is quite the entertainment!

Finally, I wanted to give a shout out to the speakers and discussion sessions. I attended a really interesting one on DAC design, learning much. The Border Patrol, Lampizator, and LTA designers and reps were all interesting to listen to, and their products all very natural sounding. Thanks to them and to Herb Reichert who presided!

@jallan

You may have heard Anne Bisson. She often comes to Audio shows. I have heard ‘Live’ at AXPONA and RMAF. Beautiful voice and amazing Pianist from Montreal.

@lalitk I think you are correct!

Any show goers hear a new (to North America) Italian speaker by a company named Albedo? They were in one of the Supreme Acoustic Systems rooms. They were introducing a new speaker called Achema, rather modest in size but quite impressive using ceramic drivers. I heard them briefly however when I went back on Sunday they were playing a much larger model which was too big and inappropriate for my listening space. Anyone with any impressions of these?