Who is excited about Capital Audiofest 2023?

to my ears, the best rooms were (in no particular order): Kroma speakers/Aavik gear; YG Carmel 3/Vinnie Rossi gear; Vivid Giya 4/Mola Mola gear; Gershamn Acoustics/Infigo gear; Margules monitors/Margules gear (unfortunately the ppl that ran that room weren't on par with the gear - i won't go into details). Besides these 5 rooms, there few others with decent sound: Magico/Gryphon new int amp and Qln flagship monitor. Plenty of influencers that interfered with good listening session - too much talking and acting like they owned the rooms.

Did anyone make it to the Philharmonic Audio Room...the sign on the door said "speakers you can actually afford to buy"?

I did go to the Philharmonic Audio Room on Saturday. The smaller models (Ceramic Mini and the True Mini) were actually very impressive. I wanted to buy the demo units for both models, but those were sold on Friday. For $850 (Ceramic Mini with ceramic driver) and $380 (True Mini) those are probably the best bargains under $1k monitors. Sound was punchy with a very smooth midrange.

I attended both Friday and Saturday. My focus was on speakers below $20k. Reading the observations here makes me wonder if my aged ears have declined more than I thought.

While I found most speaker systems on display to provide good hi-fi sound, few provided the sense of real in-room performance that I’ve been blessed to hear for the past 25+ years with my seemingly end-game speakers. My long discontinued Platinum One Reference stand mounts remain unchallenged at their $9,500 price in today’s dollars for producing precise imaging, realistic soundstage, and most important to me accurate reproduction of percussion instruments, including piano.

Perhaps most revealing was the VAC room. The beautiful and "very real" live voice of Anne Bisson created a sharp contrast with the high-end ($$$) reproduction of instruments and backing vocals. The distance between the real and unreal was palpable.

FWIW, I came away impressed by two nearly-equal best of show rooms, one delightfully surprising best value room, and one quite disappointing premier. Best of show (first place): 30th Anniversary Grand Avant Garde ($18k/pair). Runner up: Rosso Fiorentino Volterra ($17.5k/pair). Best Value: Q Acoustics 5050 ($2k/pair). Most disappointing: McIntosh’s ML1 MKII ($12k/pair) -- perhaps due to inadequate burn-in prior to the premier.

Best of show (by far) for me was the Highwater Sound room, with the Cessaro Wagner II horns with TW-Akustic TT and electronics.  Had everything, but started with natural, warm tonality.  Thumb-plucked strings by Wes Montgomery in the room.  I also found that I had visceral, positive reactions to alot of the crossover—less speakers out there (e.g., Rethm, Songer, Fern & Roby, etc.).  I find myself moving inexorably to the “less is more” end of the spectrum.  Don’t get me wrong, the Magicos, Echelons, Borresens, etc. are so impressive, but they don’t connect me to the music the same way.  It’s like watching the Big Apple Circus vs Barnum & Bailey.  I guess I’m just a small-circus guy…