Capital Audio Fest 2016

I had a good time at the show, although I really did not see anything "new" that piqued my interest.  Overall, most of the rooms delivered decent sound, which is unlike many shows where some rooms sound truly awful.  I think this is probably the case because it was the second year at this venue and most of the exhibitors were there for the second time.

The best sound at the show, to me, was delivered by the Deja Vu room with the "new" open baffle speaker system with vintage drivers and a newly built crossover made with vintage parts (it looked like a sealed system but it was open baffle).  The system had two speakers, but, was configured as a mono system because the amplifier used is a one-of-a-kind prototype (uses WE 271 output tubes and mercury vapor rectifiers).  This system provided an amazing demonstration of mono delivering a big, open, soundstage.

I was also impressed by the monitor speaker being shown in the Gershman room.  It delivered an incredibly layered and deep soundstage when playing a phono source (I did not know the music).  When the demonstration followed with Richard Thompson's "Quality Shoe" from a digital source, the sound was less terrific (I own the vinyl and it is a good recording, but, I don't know how well it was mastered in digital).  Still, this is a very promising speaker.

The Audio Note room was again doing its stealth thing--the system was very musical and enjoyable without having those aggressive qualities that a lot of people seem to like at shows (but I am guessing that kind of sound would grow tiresome in the long run).

I say two rooms with Voxactiv speakers in them and I liked what I heard--very clear and dynamic sound, minus the shrill and peaky quality that is often heard with wide-range drivers.  The big Voxactiv speaker at the show had to be listened to at quite some distance to not sound shrill and peaky, but, when thus accommodated, it was very nice sounding. 

Salectric,

The Deja Vu speaker IS an open baffle speaker.  The back, which looks solid, allows sound to pass with some damping of higher frequencies.  I thought it was solid also, but, I got that explanation from Vu.  I did not know that the horn itself was also from Japan and built in the 1960s.  That would make the horn and the compression driver coming from Japan and from around the same time period.  The Yoshimura Labs compression driver in the system is something new to me.  I understand it has a diaphragm that is very much like that on a WE 555 driver. 

Jond,

I agree that the smaller Voxactiv sounded particularly good; the big system was bright, but, if you sat WAY back they were quite good and not so bright.  The big horns need to be in a big room that allows one to be quite far away from the speaker.  In this respect, that system is unlike vintage horns which, although large in size, sound terrific in smaller rooms (which accounts for the crazy-looking Japanese setups with monster horns in tiny apartments).

vrao81,

I thought the Joseph Audio Pulsars and LKV electronics sounded quite good too, something I was surprised to hear because I have never liked Joseph Audio speakers when I've heard them in other setups.  The Spendor SP100R2s did sound nice; as for the bass, all of those bigger rooms seemed to have bass problems, mostly boomy sounding but with severe bass suckouts in certain spots in the room.

Tom Hankins,

we are petty much in agreement.  The Odyssey room sounded really good with reasonably priced gear.  I did not stop to hear the Legacy Aeris because I have never liked the sound of that speaker, but, as often is the case, the right setup probably made a huge difference.  The other room with decent sound and not too pricey stuff was the Fern and Roby room with gear made by a furniture maker/blacksmith (great looking table with cast iron legs in the room too).

Thanks for the explanation of what happened with the Brinkmann setup.  I would not have guessed that this was a misalignment issue and I can see how this was quite vexing until you figured things out.  I once got a loner turntable from a dealer while they were repairing mine.  That loner had the same kind of phase problem that could not be cured by just switching the wires to one channel.  I chalked it up to a problem with the cartridge, but, it appears that this might have been a case of misalignment too. 

One learns something new every day.