Capital Audio Fest 2016

My favorite rooms in no order were.

The odyssey room

Deja Vu room with the Nolas

Classic audio when playing tape

Vac/Gershman

The Legacy Aeris, first time I've heard Legacys sound really good

All in all most the rooms were sounding pretty good.

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).

I really only heard the big Voxativ custom speakers briefly, enough to determine they were doing some very good and unique things and that I liked them and thought they had potential.

Very cool and impressive but too big for anything I am ever likely to seriously consider owning. So given limited time I moved on quicker than I would probably have liked to as I had to do with many of the larger more "cutting edge" setups. I always like to hear what is possible to help establish what a reference standard for sound should be in my head. Then I move on trying to approach that within my means as best as possible.