Capital Audio Fest 2016

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.

The smaller room with the Voxativ speakers (the other room had Gary Gill's horns built around Voxativ drivers) was one of my favorite rooms to sit in, and Holger was great to talk to. That room (309) had a great custom David Berning amp that had switches on the front for class A or class AB as well as for feedback (labels hand-engraved on the spare aluminum chassis), and a Linear Tube Audio MicroZOTL2 preamp. The digital end was processed by the fairly new, proprietary R-2R DAC the Metrum Pavane, which Holger seemed to enjoy as much as the vinyl played on the Fern & Roby turntable. We've been using NOS DACs (Metrum, Wavelength, Augio-gd) whenever we can–they seem to be a perfect match with our tube gear. Hard to judge a DAC at an audio show, though, unless there's another source in the room to compare it with. 

berning/voxitive custom horns

To add more info, that room had Linear Tube Audio amps (the boards designed for us by David Berning) and Gary Gill built the horns. That was one room playing CDs, through a modified Icon Audio tube-output CD player, as well as playing vinyl on a Fern & Roby turntable. 

Another interesting experience was hearing the new Volti Rival speaker which uses the same drivers as the Vittora but with a smaller bass reflex cabinet (and smaller price).  I hope this new speaker gives Greg Roberts the commercial success he deserves.

I came in when they were playing Buddy Guy's "Done Got Old" and the room was packed - rightfully so, it sounded incredible. After that, someone requested classical and a selection from the Firebird Suite literally blew into us at the back of the room. Those were the $11k model with the external crossover. I'd love to hear the basic $4k model. 

There should be rooms featuring Bluetooth source enabled complete systems for easy entry at various price points for people with smart phones and tablets who like what they hear at the show and aspire to good sound at home. 

That's a good idea. At the table we had one setup using the Jriver app that lets you connect wirelessly to a tablet, which led to a few conversations with people who wanted to get their system connected. A/V installation companies and dealers could definitely capitalize on this. I know the Daedelus Audio/Border Patrol room was also using a wireless system for playing music, and probably some others, but I don't know how much that was talked about. At the SoCal CanJam a few months ago, Riva had a very successful showing with their new bluetooth speaker. 

We both noted that the analogue setup in the room with the Brinkman table/cartridge was defective; it sounded out of phase. I asked the vendor about this and he acknowledged that somewhere in transit, it appears that the cartridge went bad (not wired out of phase).

We had a turntable that was supposed to be shown fail to keep speed; a very generous Fern & Roby had a spare and lent us theirs, and we also used a modified tube-output CD player that the cable vendor happened to bring. This is the second show we've had last minute substitutions in sources. For audio shows: test a million times and always bring a backup!