Capital Audio Fest (CAF) 2023

@b2colchagoff Thanks for letting me know about the Caladan. I wasn't aware he had even put them out. I just had a LTA Z40+ integrated on my floor, too, as a customer traded it in for a different component. I wonder how the Caladan compares to the Spatial speakers?

@tubes4good AER is really good stuff. I saw these speakers that Victor put together at AXPONA earlier this year, but he was in the next booth to us in the trade show portion, so it wasn't great for acoustics. Did VK have a room this time around?

Attended Friday and today.  My favorite room was High Water Sound, who paired the Cessaro Wagner II horns with TW-Acustic tt and electronics.  Just beautiful music playing.  Agree with prior post that Heretics were bang-for-the buck champs.  Would also note that Fern & Roby room with his Raven IIs sounded great.  Chris H swapped out the Raven IIIs cuz he was having room integration issues; the result with his new JFET amp was pretty magical.  Lots of other good rooms though. 

@blisshifi Victor did have a room on the 8th floor. 

For the first time in many years, I attended the Capital Audiofest and had high expectations. Have to admit. all but one or two rooms I visited sounded good - great dynamics, top to bottom balance, and good detail. But, I was disappointed by one overall experience - most of the rooms sounded the same to me. I did not find what I was looking for: a system that sounded alive, a system with presence. Even the Audio Note room disappointed. Don't understand how an elevated mid base passes for good bottom end, how 300B amplifiers sound like solid state. Admittedly I did not have a chance to hear the Heretics or the horns mentioned in other posts. Better luck next year.

Here's to Herb Reichert for opening my eyes and ears.

Odd.

I purchased a pair of the Elac active monitors on sale.  These were just for comparison with my reference Omega BAM I use in nearfield. I was curious to see how close they would sound since they sounded so good at the show.

Initial sound was boxy and rolled off on top. Nothing like I remember at show.

now that’s with only a couple hours burn in… doing a full burn in and we’ll see.