Capital Audiofest Coming Up!

was there yesterday, a few rooms I recommend:

High Water Sound (room 323) - Cessaro speakers; expensive but Jeff Catalano always has a great room and plays good music.

Gestalt Audio (room 325) - very cool new speakers - Cinnamon Audio from Portugal; @lalitk Colin King says “hello”

American Sound of Canada (room 641) - Angie is running Rethm speakers with a Synthesis integrated and a cool new German turntable.  Great system for reasonable price.  

Fern & Roby (room 616) - Christopher Hildebrand is one of the nicest people in the biz, and Ivreally like his new amp.

Odeon Audio ( room 636) - Never heard their horns before, but impressive.

Rooms to avoid - any room Michael Fremer has taken over to play his lps; his ego has taken over his body, and his taste in music is meh.  I had to walk out of a Command Performance room where they were showing AudioVector speakers that sounded pretty good cuz his music was so bad

Had a full day there today.

There was a lot to like!

I need to go through my notes first to point out a few highlights.

The mbl room is one I can cite as candidate for best sound. They seemed to get it right in every way in their room this year even if not yet even close to what I know mbl can do with soundstage and imaging based on prior showroom demos. A class of their own!

There were many others that caught my ear as well yet in different ways.

@mdalton

Thanks for your impressions on CAF. I agree with you on HWS, Gestalt and F&R…always a pleasure to meet them in person and their choice of gear + sound is usually in my Top 10. I almost bought F&R TT before I decided to pursue Garrard. 301. If you go back to @gestalt, say my hello to Colin.

@mapman 

+1 on MBL, wish I could afford to buy one of their offerings.  My alternative to MBL’s are WVL. While not as pretty as MBL, WVL are really great sounding speakers. 

I had a great day there yesterday with a friend.  Highlights for me were MBL room (Twinbriok), Gestalt audio (with Colin playing a wonderful Johnny Hartman LP)(325), YG with Burmester (737), YG with Bel Canto (806), Margules Group (832), Vitus/Estelon (one of the Alma audio rooms I think).  I’m sort of shopping for an end game integrated amp (which I’ve loved for the last few years, but then got used to it and started taking it for granted).  The Vitus SIA 030 was amazing (which at 50k or so, it should be); sadly, no Gryphon 330, though there was a 120 which sounded great. 

Almost forgot — best “low-cost” sound for me was the local pairing of Eastern Bay Speakers with LTA electronics (644).  LTA was featured in several rooms.  The newish LTA DAC and other gear sounded great in each of the different systems I heard. 
 

Also, this seems the be the year of sound effects, eg, lots of rooms playing percussion or vocal oddities to show off PRAT.  At one point, we skipped several rooms with systems I would have liked to have heard had they been playing music, just to avoid being annoyed.  Did anyone else notice this?  Or maybe I’m just easily annoyed this weekend — I mean, more so than usual.