The Capital Audiofest is an event more oriented around dealers than manufacturers. They take over a hotel in Rockville and set each of the hotel rooms up as listening rooms, and a person can wander from room to room listening to all of the different systems. Most of these systems are set up by dealers so in many cases you're auditioning a lot of different devices carried by the same dealer at the same time, and this can make it hard to isolate what you like and don't like to a single device. But it is an opportunity to hear a huge number of very different pieces of audio equipment at the same time and under similar listening conditions.
These rooms are never acoustically very good so there's a limit to how much actual information you can get about a given piece of gear. So other than a couple devices that I have auditioned more extensively, I am not going to give absolute recommendations or condemnations for anything that I have mentioned here. I only had a very short amount of time to listen to a huge number of systems and they were all under unfamiliar conditions so don't take any of this as gospel.
But, I do want to talk about a lot of the things that I saw at the show that interested me and that I wanted to listen to further, or that I thought other readers might want to listen to. And I want to thank the management of the Capital Audiofest for making it possible for me to listen to equipment that I never would have been able to hear otherwise. There are a few pieces of equipment that I was very interested in which I'd only heard about on the internet and now I'm able to say I have actually tried them.
Events like this are central to what makes the high end audio community work. I have written a lot in these pages about how much just plain bad-sounding stuff is being sold out there, sometimes at very high prices, and I don't think that is going to stop any time soon. The only way you can know about anything is by listening yourself, and there's no way to listen to everything. Events like the Audiofest make it possible to listen to a whole lot of things at one time in a way that would otherwise be impossible.
Loudspeakers
I saw Magnepans all over including their 30.7X system, a four-way arrangement with two panels on each side, each with two sections. The bass was much deeper and more solid than you'd expect from any planar, and although there was some midrange oddity that may well have been from the room and not the speakers. As a fan of Magnepan who uses an old pair of MG1.4s every day I am delighted to see new products still coming out from these folks.
I also heard one of the new electrostatic speakers from Popori Acoustics (WR2 Arrabona) and the demo sounded a little spitty which is not at all characteristic of typical electrostats so I had meant to come back and do a proper listen with my own material and never had to chance. I think these deserve a better listening than I was able to give them and I hope some readers can do that. I have heard their WR1 speakers elsewhere and they were good designs that deserve a good demo.
Also heard were the Sound Labs G5-4C electrostats with full-range panels, and they were also definitely worth giving more attention to in the future. I am a huge fan of planars on the whole and was so happy to see all of these newer planar systems showing up this year.
Classic Audio was once again showing off beautifully-made replicas of a number of old classic loudspeaker systems. They have long sold a new version of the JBL Hartsfield, but at this show they were also showing off the Studio Standard II, a speaker much like the Hartsfield on top with a similar horn and plate assembly, but with a ported woofer instead of a horn loaded woofer for deeper low end while still keeping very high efficiency.
Von Schweikert didn't have as large a presence at the show this year as they have had in the past, but their VR.30 compact speaker and their higher end UTRA.70 speaker were both available for audition. Both of these had the classic Von Schweikert sound and just sounded huge in the room. That hugeness is a thing that some people like and others don't but if you're a person that likes the large-scale presentation you should make every attempt to check these out.
I had a listen to the Fyne Audio F502P, a small floor-mounted speaker with a coaxial driver and an additional bass driver, which gave a very clean and understated sound with good definition and no top-end spittiness. This was one of the more interesting systems I have heard in a while and this is another thing I'd love to hear in the future under more controlled conditions.
Brad Lunde was with ATC showing their products, and this was a surprise to me since he's a pro audio distributor that I expect to see at conventions aimed at studio and mastering engineers. The thing about ATC is, though, that they basically make one line of speakers, all voiced the same way, and they make available variants for studio and home use with the variations all being cosmetic only. So the ATC home speaker is going to sound just like the ATC studio monitor and that is a huge deal, especially given how good the ATC studio monitors are. These guys deserve more attention in the high end world. I spent some time listening to the SCM20ASL active bookshelf speakers, and in the past I have spent plenty of time listening to the studio monitor version and I can recommend both.
Long-time readers will recall that I am in no way a fan of full-range driver based systems, as I think the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages of eliminating the crossover. But I did listen to the Charney Audio Lumaca IV speaker, a large conical device, and I was surprised at how it sounded. For readers who are fans of these designs I recommend checking them out.
There were a number of the Grimm Audio LS1 speakers around the show, which use an improved carbon fibre tweeter that reduces cone breakup. The LS1 isn't that new, but apparently the recent software upgrade for the internal DSP and control hardware makes such a dramatic difference that I'm going to call this almost like a new product.
Mission was selling an updated version of their old Mission 700 speaker, and it still had the same understated feel to it as the original. Very British, with a good low end for the size but without bloat. Not a powerful sounding speaker but a pleasant and recessed one.
Spendor also was showing their line of speakers which had a similar general sense to them. Not much top end detail, but no exaggerated top end either, and again very understated and very British.
Alcons was there but again they didn't have speakers set up the day that I was at the show. I'd really love to hear the new monitors that were introduced recently, but they didn't have them at the AES show (they did a demo in LA right after the end of the show) and I missed them then as well. I have liked their larger sound reinforcement and cinema speakers and am very interested in their M-series monitors. I may attempt to prod Dreamscapes AV for a pair for testing.
Acora was showing off their VRC loudspeakers made with high mass super-rigid pyramidal stone cabinets, using a unique finish that made them a one-off item. They sounded great and my friend who was coming along with us was incredibly impressed with them. If you're looking for a big sounding presentation for a big room and you have a big budget, these should be on your list to try out.
And Audio Note was demonstrating a system that used their AN-E-SOGON loudspeakers. These use electromagnetic field coils instead of permanent magnets and actually sounded very good. This was one of the very few rooms that actually seemed to be doing a good job of vinyl playback too.
Headphones
There were a lot of headphone vendors at the show because headphones are such a good introduction to the high end world for younger people who may not have a full-sized room or the ability to play music without bothering neighbors. I didn't get a chance to hear many of them but what made me so happy is to see that Stax was back again and selling both the SR-LS500 Mk2 which is similar to their original earspeakers, as well as some more affordable entry level electrostatic headphones like the SR-X1 and some higher end ones that are more like the headphone designs that people expect today rather than the square open designs of yesteryear. It's so good to see a company with this tradition still continuing to push the technology.
Electronics
Geshelli Labs has been known for a few years for their headphone amplifiers and they are expanding into making some larger power amplifiers for loudspeaker use. Their new Z-Blok series look interesting (although I am curious about their power ratings which don't appear to use FTC method).
Atma-Sphere, which has a long history beginning with OTL tube amplifiers, is still at the forefront of technology with a GaN-based class D amplifier which they simply call the "Class D." The dealers didn't have a lot of detailed information on these, not surprisingly because they are so new, but this is another sign that this technology is finally ready for high end use.
Boulder Amplification has been making great-sounding solid-state amplifiers for decades, and their 1151 monoblock showed up in a demo that made me very interested in their new products.
Digital
The Benchmark DAC3 was showing up in a lot of rooms including in rooms by dealers that didn't even sell the DAC3 but liked it so much that they used it to demo the equipment that they did sell. This is the highest recommendation that they could make for this product. John Saiu from Benchmark gave a good talk on their product and on intersample overload issues which have become severe in recent years as more CD are being cut louder and louder, but this is only one of the things that go into the Benchmark converters being good.
It seemed like everyone was showing off audio streamers this year, to allow direct playback from digital archive files without having to fiddle with computers or with physical media. I can't say anything good or bad about these as someone who doesn't use them, but the Grimm Audio MU2 looked quite interesting as it uses the same basic DAC as some of the other Grimm hardware.
Another company with a longstanding reputation in the converter world is Meitner Audio, and they were also showing off an audio streamer, the MA3i. They also were showing a CD transport, one of the few new ones at the show, the TXi. There are a lot of people who like physical digital media both because of the playback process itself, the metadata in the booklet provided with the disc, and the fact that it's a physical item that is directly under your control and physical proof that you have a right to play that material. Everybody should have a physical CD transport in their system and the TXi looks like a good one that can integrate well with Meitner's fine converters.
Danville Signal Processing makes a little box with a DSP system built into it, along with a development package that runs on a PC that allows users to design a signal processing chain graphically like a Simulink diagram, and then have it compile down into code that runs directly into the DSP engine. They were demonstrating a multi-way speaker system with their device being used as the crossover, but what was interesting wasn't the speaker or the crossover but how they were implementing it. Al Clark, the company founder, said that "Change scares people and it's also fun. But change is opportunity." Flexible easily-configured DSP that manufacturers and even home users can integrate into systems is change that we should all welcome.
Tape
There were a number of rooms featuring 1/4" tape playback and while I don't want to overlook some of the vendors like the United Home Audio folks who make a very popular recorder, and who were incredibly helpful at teaching me about the current market for recorded tapes, even so I think that Revox had the news of the show.
Revox is now selling a new version of the B77 recorder. They have made a few changes both for manufacturability and for better performance, but it is a complete and original B77 machine at its heart. There were some serious capstan motor upgrades (and the servomotor doesn't whine audibly any more). There are still some of the things about the original machine that I didn't like which haven't been changed but they kept all of the things that we did like.
Also, they said that Brian Tucker at Pro Audio Ltd near Chicago was able to order Revox repair parts which are otherwise unavailable in the US, and this is good news for people with B77 machines out there. For a long time I recommended people avoid the B77 and PR99 machines because the button assembly plastic became brittle and failed, but now they are saying that replacement assemblies are available which totally changes out the outlook for those older machines.
Analog Audio Supplies
Leslie Brooks from Analog Audio Inc. in Florida was showing off a good line of tape accessories from blue splicing tape and reels on up to new bulk RMGI tape. He's not listed on the Audiofest website or in the booklet but he was there! Also was showing off some fine and useful decals!
Vinyl
It seemed like everyone had a turntable in their room and of course that meant they were all showing cartridges. Something I thought was very interesting was the Ebi Khumar, a new moving coil cartridge being made in India, and one of the very few MC cartridges out there with a narrow Shibata-type stylus for better tracking (especially on worn records). Wood-bodied and timbrally pretty neutral (although it was hard to tell precisely on unfamiliar speakers in an unfamiliar room). These are not cheap cartridges but by the standards of the high end world they seem like a good deal for something almost unique.
SAT was showing their XD-1 turntable, which looked like a a nicely engineered and well-machined little device. I don't know much about this company and their website was a bit light on contact information and product details, but this is something I'd love to know a bit more about. I should have spent more time talking to their distributor.
VPI had a whole room there and I did not get any chance to actually audition anything there unfortunately. They had the Forever Model One which was introduced at last year's show and they were apparently giving out promotional LPs as well, but I missed all of that. My fault and they deserve better.
Wally Tools had an interesting assortment of useful turntable setup devices, gadgets for tonearm setup and anti-skate setup. Gadgets to make sure that your azimuth angle remains correct as you adjust your VTA. Gadgets that turn cartridge and tonearm alignment into a 20 minute job.
The Keith Monks record cleaners are back, in a somewhat scaled-down open frame design rather than in the big sealed cabinets of yesteryear. These are the most delicate cleaners and they are the only vacuum machines that are capable of cleaning acetate recordings without damage. They are slower to operate than many of the other vacuum machines, but at the same time they are quieter so you can clean one record while listening to another. They were showing their smaller model, the Prodigy Plus, and a slightly larger model, the Monarch. We have been hearing rumors about these cleaners being reissued for the past couple years and are pleased to see they are now actually offered for sale.
Other Stuff
This year there was a booth from the Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio club, which is primarily interested in classic radio but also has a great deal of attention being paid to hi-fi systems as well. It's kind of disturbing to see stuff that I remember as being new when I was a kid is now considered antique, but at least people are still interested in it! They have monthly meetings, a magazine, and a website at https://maarc.org too.
Mosart is a company that doesn't make audio gear but makes beautiful custom furniture for you to put audio gear into and on top of. They know about audio and know what is important in an audio rack. They were displaying their Quieten Audiophile Cabinets, solid wood cabinets made from exotic woods with shelves that were adjustable while still being rigid and mass'y enough to deal with vibrations. If you have ever had any worries about the so-called "Wife Acceptance Factor" you should talk to these guys.
AnTek was showing a balanced power box. These devices have isolation transformers for rejecting high frequency junk on the power line and to some extent on the building ground. They also have a balanced output, with each leg of the power line being symmetric around ground rather than one leg being bonded to ground. This means reduced hum in equipment that has issues with chassis-to-line leakage, which comes as a free bonus along with the isolation. There also is a more aggressive low-pass filter on the input. Now, a couple decades ago you could get inexpensive isolation transformers on the surplus market, but those are all gone and the competition for the AnTek is all pretty expensive. They had three models from 600 to 1300 watts, called the BP-600, BP-1000, and BP-1300 at surprisingly reasonable prices. I won't tell everybody to go out and buy an isolation device like this, but if you're in a place where there is a lot of line noise (like downtown LA or NYC), these can be a legitimate solution to a real and measurable problem.
And of course there were many, many vendors selling records, CDs, and SACDs for you to listen to on your equipment. I can't even list all of the different vendors, from audiophile labels like M-A recordings to record retailers specializing in rare and vintage classical recordings, to vendors who brought their cutout bins out with them. So much to listen to and so little time to go through it all.
Conclusion
You should have been there. I wish I'd had more time to slow down and take it leisurely. I wish I'd had more time to listen to some of the musical events they'd sponsored. I wish I'd been able to hear the Alcons monitors. You could have done these things and the Audiofest will be back at the same location next fall and you will have an opportunity to do them then. Make plans now because it's likely to be just as good as it was this year. Thanks also to my friend Tom Dings who came along with me in my rush, pointing out things I was missing.
