There were a lot of nice sounding rooms at the latest Capital Audiofest. As in past shows in this location, the smaller hotel rooms tended to sound better than the larger conference rooms. I am in agreement with a number of postings above. I too, thought the Deja Vu vintage room and the MyEmia room were outstanding, the best rooms at the show to me.
There is so much hype in this forum about Tekton speakers I wanted to hear them. I came away impressed with how good they sound relative to the price quoted on them. The only commercial shortcoming would be the size of the system.
Volti had their best room at this show. I was not that impressed with their setups in the past, probably because the room and accompanying electronics did not show them at their best, but, this year, with a physically smaller system, their room sounded quite nice (warm and harmonically dense, without sounding mushy).
The Shindo/Auditorium room was pretty good sounding. I am familiar with WE 755 single driver systems which tend to be very clear, dynamic and exciting sounding, but, they also tend to be peaky, thin in bass/midbass, and extremely colored. The Auditorium speakers did a decent job of taming these negative tendencies with only a modest loss in dynamics and immediacy of the Western Electric originals. But, they only rated, to me, number three in the single driver category at this show. I was really surprised by how good the Charney single driver system sounded (Voxactiv driver) and it delivered the goods dressed in a reasonably nice looking and compact cabinet. I heard decent bass and sound that did not become strained at fairly high volume and I did not hear as prominent an upper midrange/treble peak as I've heard with most single driver systems (surprisingly, I thought it was a bit too soft in the upper range). The other system that impressed me was the Rethm Bhaava; it was not as well rounded as the Charney, but, it was about a third of the price.
The German Physics omnidirectional speakers sounded pretty good, they managed to deliver the expansive soundstage you expect from such speakers while having a bit more solid and grounded center image than I've heard with other similar designs. The bass sounded well integrated and balanced.
I am not a fan of most modern dynamic speakers featuring space age cabinets and exotic material drivers. Most sound harmonically bleached, brittle, and, while they can deliver high volume levels and sound "fast,"
they tend to be lifeless sounding at modest volume levels. That was not the case with the YG Carmel 2's I heard at this show. While not being quite as warm as I like my speakers, they sounded very good otherwise.
One of the bigger rooms, running a Channel D music server also sounded very good. If I recall correctly, the speakers were Vandersteens.
The Deja-Vu room with "non-vintage" and more modestly priced gear sounded very good for the money. The system is modern, but old school (hence non-vintage), with tube electronics. The new Harbeth 30.2s were in the system. It is hard to tell under show conditions, but, compared to what I've heard of the 30.1s, these sounded better: a touch less obvious that the speakers are boxes, and the slightly annoying sibilant peak in the upper midrange was not evident (I like the 30.1s; I like the 30.2s a little bit more).
