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Capital Audio Fest 2016

Just got back.   Did not see a thread for this yet so here it is.  

For me  lots of very good sound this year.    The best as a whole I have heard.   Very few disappointments.   Some old favorites enjoyed once again and a few new finds.   Will report more when I get a chance to digest it all a bit.  

I'm of course very interested to hear about what others thought and may have discovered?




128x128mapman
mapman's avatar
mapman OP
22,590 posts
 
Were the Studio Electric speakers in the Benchmark room the ones that show as discontinued now on teh SE web site?

That site references the Benchmark site for the newer version. Benchmark site shows their monitors, which were at the show but not playing when I was in the room. The other monitors which I think were referred to as the Studio Electric monitors were. There were no grills on the ones playing.

Benchmark was also offering a show special 10% off on their electronics which was a nice bonus for going to the show.  

willsw
22 posts
 
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. 
mapman's avatar
mapman OP
22,590 posts
 
I noticed many rooms streaming from laptops as a source.

I noticed at least one headphone setup streaming from a tablet.

I did not see anyone streaming from a smartphone.

I had my Iphone 6s that I run Plex app on with me. It can connect to my music server at home. I’ve used it at some dealer shops for listening to gear with very impressive results even from analog out.

I asked a couple vendors  if I could connect to their system DACs and try but no takers on that. Understandable at a show environment.  But I would have loved to play some of my stuff on some of those systems though.
larryi
4,169 posts
 

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. 

salectric
757 posts
 
Larry,

Thanks for clarifying the open baffle design.  The second time I visited the room Aldo was demonstrating the system to Art Dudley and he had removed one of the speaker grilles.  That's how I saw the drivers on the front panel.  It has a horn tweeter mounted in the middle that appears to be a Jensen RP-302.  The 15" woofer looks like an Altec but that is just a guess.  The three drivers blended extremely well.
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