A Capital Audiofest 2012 thread

Trel,

I'm not sure our assessments are all that different. I was very pressed for time and attempted to hit all the rooms. Other than the ones I mentioned, which for various reasons I spent more time with, I was mostly just assessing pass/fail. If the sound was OK and had promise, it passed. THere were only three rooms I heard that I would say failed. Most of the rest had potential. I only had 4 hours so there was more than enough to keep me interested and engaged especially since I do not normally frequent these shows. It was a special treat for me!

Is it possible that some vendors had their sound tweaked better by Sunday? What days were you there?

I did get the impression that the vendors were disappointed with the turnout.

My main critique with this show was there was no apparent entry path for the uninitiated. In this economy, high end audio should do a better job of providing clear stepping stones rather than presenting the image that you have to spend $10s of thousands to really be in the club. Few young people have the money or desire with all the decent options out there today to join that club. It's exclusiveness is its main defining characteristic and probably it s biggest barrier to growth.

One thing I look for in these shows is value in addition to reference level sound. That is a big factor in my assessment.

I notice in the comments by Mr. Atkinson from Stereophile a focus also on what sounded good or right to him. That is normal for most, but for a representative of a publication that seeks a somewhat broad audience, I would have liked to gotten a sense that he was more open to new or different things than I did.

I did not see or notice the pipe speakers on SUnday. Not sure if they were still there? That would have been cool!

I guess its a matter of perspective. THe more hardcore full time audiophile that attends many shows might be unimpressed. How many of those are there really? If you can't get their interest, whose interest can you get?

The answer might be everyone else maybe, but you have to make something like this digestible to the uninitiated somehow.

THe DIY demo of the simple full range driver on large open baffles running of the small Class A amp was the show stealer for me. What these guys did with a little knowledge, creativity and just a few dollars really put almost everything else to shame. It also happened to be the most crowded small room I saw at the show on Sunday (GT was second, at least with the right music playing).

One other observation I had in regards to attracting young people was the music selection. Can you say old codger music? At least mostly. I love most of it but the music that most people listen to these days was totally absent. What's up with that?

The DIY room really livened up for a few minutes when the exhibitor cued up some Green Day and I suspect most listening heard something of interest then that they had never heard before! Like when I heard Fleetwood Mac years ago on a pair of Klipschorns and Tympanis for the first time and officially became an "audiophile". Except no audiophile will say Green Day sounds good except once heard on a good "high end" system. Then it sounds like it should, not like a bunch of random noise. After Green Day, they then switched to a classical concerto with similarly excellent results. That's the way to do it IMHO.

I attended Saturday afternoon. I thought that the number of exhibitors was about right for the number of attendees that, admittedly, was rather disappointing. As others have noted and as I had expected, most of the attendees were middle aged men (and older) with very few women; however, I was also pleasantly surprised by the number of younger guys. To be fair and using speakers to illustrate my point, the median price of a pair of speakers was about 10k and many of the speakers were huge or required a lot of space to breath; I do not know many men in their 20s and 30s who have that amount of disposable income and the necessary space - I certainly did not at that age.

Also and maybe it is just me, I find it almost impossible to judge equipment in the environment of an audio show. The rooms are small and bear no resemblance to the space where I live either aesthetically or acoustically, and systems are often too loud for my taste. After a while, most rooms tended to become one giant acoustical blur.

To me, CAF (and other shows) was an opportunity to say hello to friends and individuals in the industry and, perhaps, to target one or two products that I wanted to hear. In that regard CAF was a success; and I hope it will continue next year.

The most interesting aspect of the show was how many exhibitors used some form of full range/extended range driver (Lowther, Feastrix, Tangband) in either single driver or multiple driver systems. The sound of MANY of these systems was quite good.

In one room Oasis Audio, showed various systems using Tangband drivers (single-driver, full-range). I particularly liked the system with a 5" driver and a round, clear, acrylic enclosure. The enclosure supported bass while allowing much of the midrange from the backwave to still be emitted into the room. The sound had the liveliness characteristic of full range drivers, but was not as peaky and tizzy sounding as such systems sounded in the past.

One of the Volti rooms used a 5" Feastrix driver in a beautifully made boat-tail cabinet. That was a terrific sounding use of a single driver--full and rich sounding and dynamic. The low-powered electronics from Deja Vu Audio probably had a lot to do with the great sound too. The other Volti room had a more traditional three-way horn system that, to me, was too polite and lacking in dynamics in the midrange to be my choice for a horn-based system, though it was, overall, a nice sounding system.

The big room where VPI exhibited their new low end table had another system using Tangband drivers. This implementation used a stack of woofers underneath the full range driver in a two-way system. The sound was very dynamic and exciting and showed off the VPI/Grado frontend in the best possible light (great sound from a low priced analogue source).

David Slagle's room with the huge round plastic horn surrounding a field coil Lowther driver, and two 15" woofers was a whole lot of fun to listen to, although the sound was a bit peaked in the upper midrange and more "colored" than the other full/extended range driver systems that I heard at the show. As hosts for an exhibit, those working the room could not have been nicer (it certainly was a big plus that they had kegs of Black Doc and Yellow Dog brew).

The Highwater room delivered perhaps the best sound I heard at the show--plenty of dynamics, great clarity, full and rich harmonic structure, and large and realistic soundstage. The frequency balanced wa tipped up a bit in the upper midrange and treble, but, in a way that was thrilling to hear (bright, but amazingly free of sibilance or harshness). The Horning speakers use a modified full-range Lowther driver as a midrange in a three way system. My only minor reservation would be the slight "plastic" coloration in the midrange, but, it was really only a minor quibble with what was a fantastic sounding system. The vinyl sources had to be impeccably set up to deliver the kind of high frequency energy without harshness that I heard. I was amazed at how well mono cartridges performed--the sound with well recorded mono records made a lack of a stereo soundstage a truly minor issue.

I liked the sound of several other systems that did not use full/extended range drivers. The system using the Soundfield speaker system sounded very good. I believe this used a coaxial 12" BMS driver firing forward, and a different driver on the back providing a dipole midrange/treble dispersion pattern, coupled two two bass drivers in a separate enclosure also providing dipole dispersion. This was another very lively sounding system.

Robert Lighton Audio had another lively and engaging system that coupled his two-way speaker to Audionote (uk) electronics. The sound was a touch bright and forward, but, this can be accounted for by the small room. There is something special, to me, about the sound of well implemented high efficiency systems, and this was a very good example of such systems.

The monster sized Classic Audio system using field coil woofers and midrange was one of the best sounding systems at the show--another example of how good high efficiency systems can sound. This system delivered weight and richness without sacrificing speed and dynamics. Like a lot of other high efficiency systems, it really sounded good at LOWER volumes as well as when playing loudly.

The Deja Vu Audio room with the big horn system sounded very good, though I actually have heard that system at Deja Vu's shop sounding much better. This system, built around old Western Electric drivers in a newly built cabinet, is something special. The electronics was also interesting--recently built amp and preamp that uses a lot of vintage parts (e.g., Western Electric transformers) and vintge circuits. The preamp and amp are meant to work together--the preamp has transformer outputs and the amp has transformer inputs.

For more conventional, modern speakers, I thought the DeVore Orangutans sounded very good in the Command Audio room. That was a reasonably affordable setup (Line Magnetics amp) that delivered much of the liveliness and special musical qualities of good high efficiency systems and was free of the colorations that detract from some such systems.

The best bargain sound at the show, to me, was the Tyler Acoutic speaker system. I was amazed at how good a system can sound that costs only $2400 (including delivery--it is a direct sales item). The main downside is that the system is somewhat large in size and the cabinet finish was not that great (the side panels were finished with two pieces of veneer that did not match seamlessly). Still, one of the most pleasing surprises at the show.

I liked the way Woo Audio set up their room for demonstrating their headphone amplifiers. They had plenty of different computer music servers and a huge range of high end headphones so a lot of people could just try out things on their own, including selecting the music for the audition. I got to hear the new 009 Stax phone this way. I heard a bunch of young guys enthusiastically defending their preference between the 009 and 007 model. Two of the three preferred the 007 (the 009 sounded a touch too bright) while one preferred the larger soundstage of the 009. I only listened to the 009 myself and found it promising (I own an older 007 and a Blue Hawaii SE headphone amp).

Overall, I found the show very entertaining and worthwhile. The overall sound quality of all of the exhibitors was quite high (no really bad rooms). I was a bit dismayed by the small turnout; I hope this does not preclude a show next year.

I was there 2 days and I also thought it was worthwile. I was particuarly impressed by the Command Performance room with Devores Orangatan driven by Leben integrated amp, Auditorium 23 cabling and VPI table with Ortofon cart.

I thought it was easily best sound at the show. The tonality of that set-up, esp the speakers was very nice.