https://youtu.be/K2a1Lfoa1Ec

Nice summary by Thomas—17 min, he finally shows the Lii Audio room, which was apparently a show favorite.  Besides the OB speakers, the two amps on display were Thomas’ own push pull amp (The Galion) and the Decware Torii Jr.

Btw, I bought a one day ticket for the Capital Audio Fest near D.C (on Nov 12).  It’s about 3 hours and change from my place and the hotel where the audio fest is happening is sold out.  Initially, I was thinking of staying overnight, but I may just come back the same day. If anyone is planning to be there, let’s meet up!

John, it would be awesome if you can make it!

This slipped my mind Kamran. Going to work on my speaker connections today. Also have a cousin visiting this afternoon.
Have a good day! Looking forward to your thoughts and experiences. Lend an ear to Dan Wright.

John

Kamran, if you are the man in green, then what you have depicted is a classic short loop lighting of a facial close up portrait. It is one of the most desirable glamour shot type of lighting schemes that we as photographers do for our best, most desirable and appealing subjects.

Unfortunately, it also looks as if you have had a falling out with your pillow of late and you need some rest, pal.
(take the joke)

Anyway, looking forward to some more pics and such from your travels!!

Sneek peak of what was accomplished yesterday while you were at the show, Kamran. Don't want to hijack this thread so more to come on a different thread under the DIY topic. Need to change speaker connectors on the SE84 and do some listening before posting.







John

One of the biggest and the swankiest room at the Capital AudioFest was the one using VAC gear— Valve Amplication Company. I’ll be honest—wasn’t too familiar with the brand, but they had these monstrous push/pull KT88 amps in glass enclosures in a crazy bi-amped monoblocks (quadroblocks?) configuration.  They were using a Kronos TT as a demo and Nordost cables.  It was literally the first room I had entered and we were already off to the races! Don’t recall what speakers they were using, but the music reproduction wasn’t mind bending as you’d expect with this setup.  I was also wondering about heat dissipation with the tubes enclosed like that?




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John,

I really appreciate what you have done with the connection right at the driver. That is a lot of work to get right. I have done something similar in the past with a driver, but it wasn't as elegant as this. Is there a way to make sure that the binding posts keep their compression/tightness?

Ah, this was one was special.

VPI TT, Audio Research Pre and Amp and Mac Room Correction in the chain connected to Tannoys.  Great sounding room. That said, I had a love hate relationship with the speakers.  On slower sounding passages, they sounded exquisite, whereas on fast pacing elements, the drivers didn’t seem to keep up.  Again, this is a quick and dirty impression. Not necessarily a big fan of the antique look, but some folks will really dig it.  

However, the most WTF moment of the entire show was when one of the VPI guys picked up a noisy ass record on purpose (the sleeve was marked with the word ‘Noisy’) and put it on.  Ok, then…getting my ears ready to accept pops and crackles with reckless abandon but nothing? What the heck?  And then the dude flipped a switch on this device right underneath the TT (called a Suger Cube?) which apparently removes noise from records and then all we heard was all the noise isolated.  As in the music was muted and the noise was de-muted.  Dude, was like—this is what you aren’t hearing.  

Jaw on the floor.  

I looked it up. It’s made by a company called SweetVinyl and looks like they are sold out for most of their units.  Here’s the link:

https://sweetvinyl.com/

If you’re invested in your TT setup, I’d seriously check this out.

Ok, time for my favorite room.  As I was entering, even without laying eyes on the gear, I was smitten.  So I sat down for a longer time compared to other rooms (but not long enough).  Here’s the chain:

Border Patrol SE-I R2R-Chip Non Over Sampling (NOS) DAC with tube/solid-state hybrid choke input filter power supply featuring an EZ80 tube rectifier.

Border Patrol SE20 Parallel Single Ended 300b amp with 4 WE tubes giving off 18 wpc of Class A goodness.  This is approx. $25K, making Dennis’ $8000 PSE price point, the deal of the century!

Innous Zenith MkIII Streamer—I have been eying this brand closely.  Interestingly, the dudes at Border Patrol Labs weren’t big fans of using it as a Roon core, which is one of it’s selling points.  They feel that it degrades the sound quality and makes it laggy.  Much better to keep the roon server seperate and just it as a renderer.  That said, they weren’t using the Innous’s in house app to stream.

Innous USB Reclocker.

Two Monster (in size) Power Linear Supplies—one feeding the DAC and one the amp.  All wired up in partnership with Triode Wire Lab cables.

Voltii ‘Rival’ Speakers.  This is an Italian brand and my knee jerk reaction was like, wow they look like a clone of Klipsh Forte IV’s.  I think they are of higher efficiency and sounded sublime (3x the price of Forte IV).  With the Border Patrol stuff in the chain, it seemed like a match made in heaven.  Here is a link:

https://voltiaudio.com/rival-2/

The system sounded magical to my ears.  I didn’t want to leave and was thinking of returning but never made it back.  The room was very unassuming and didn’t have a lot of ppl milling around, so I was second guessing myself while on my drive back.  I shouldn’t have.  They had the very same setup at AXPONA in Chicago earlier this year and received tremendous praise from well known reviewers.

Ok one more for tonight—and perhaps one or two more tomorrow.

This is another example of a speaker manufacturer that a lot of people weren’t familiar with—Rosso Florentino—an Italian brand.

For my money, they were the most gorgeous looking box speakers at the show or at least out of all the rooms I visited.  Every inch of them was just exquisite.  And the sound? Immaculate.  Dude was playing a demo CD with with lows and highs and I (and others) were like holy shit.  The imaging on these puppies was laser sharp and the resolution crystal clear.  The third and last example of SS gear in the chain (though I didn’t recognize any of it besides the Lumin streamer) which actually sounded more than decent.



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And the award for the sexiest tube amp of the show goes to Voxativ-T805 SET Integrated using 805 output tubes.  Approx. $35K.

I’ve always been curious as to how realistic the experiences in these rooms are, both bad and good. Awkward rooms, potentially poorly treated or minimally treated. I’m surprised that high end manufacturers would want to display their products in this environment.

I know this is the only way for most people to audition equipment these days, and that is a shame.

Kamran: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the MoFi SP10’s. They seem to be reaching saturation on YouTube. Also on today’s flavor of the day (or is it yesterday’s) OB speakers. Cindy liked your “bargain of the century “ comment but when I showed her the pics on the Sarah thread & expressed my feelings on the appearance, she showed me this;


I “hadn’t “ seen it before.     BTW, not my usual style but I’m really getting into “ Belafonte returns to Carnage Hall” at the moment.

Maybe it’s “tube magic “ Ralph


how to adjust website for screen resolution

Zeos’ reaction on the Mofi SourcePoint 10 sound demo:

https://youtu.be/_5rLRECb-Mk

For those of you not familiar with Zeos—let’s just say that he is very expressive and colorful — so watch discreetly if you have children around or if you don’t care for folks using expletives with reckless abandon. People may not like him but you can’t argue with his entertainment factor nor his subscriber count for the matter.

Funny thing is that both of us were caught off guard, not only with the in person demo but with the tube amp in the Audiophile Junkie’s YouTube clip, since we both experienced the demo on 200 wpc SS gear.