Capital Audio Fest 2018--show report


DAY 1

I came primarily to audition loudspeakers, so this report will focus on them. I omit associated equipment, as there was just too much to keep track of, and few rooms had handouts with the detailed list of components.

The first day of the show, I managed to visit 2/3 to 3/4 of the rooms that were of interest to me. The remaining rooms I’ll visit tomorrow morning, and then start going back for a second listen in the afternoon.

In what follows, I’m more or less transcribing my jotted notes that I took while in the room in question.

Note: the regular-sized hotel rooms being used by most exhibitors tended to emphasize strongly a particular bass range. For too many of the rooms I noted “bass boomy”. Only a few rose above this…

 

Some highlights, not necessarily in order of preference.

DAEDALUS ZEUS. Very large speaker in a large room. Very good generally, beautiful on classical. A big sound, but not overdone (like some others). Very natural. Wonderful dynamics. True majesty on large-scale classical.

DAEDALUS APOLLO. I still don’t know exactly how I feel about this speaker. It’s good certainly, verdict is out on whether it’s great. Decent imaging and soundstaging (I would have had them a bit further out into what is admittedly a small room). A good clean presentation, could be a little overwhelming on some tracks (volume of playback?, room?). Promising to be sure, and a real contender.

SALK SONG 3 BEAT. Easily my nomination for “best bang for the buck” speaker auditioned so far. Extraordinary for the price.  I repeat, really extraordinary.  A nice presentation overall, good depth of soundstaging, for the size of the woofer the bass is definitely there—and then some. Bass could be a bit boomy depending on the recording (see above). Beryllium tweeter (the BE in BE-AT), one of the best I’ve heard. On one recording it got a wee bit steely on massed violins being played back at high volume. Very impressed.  Of course the wood veneer is also fantastic.

IMC Audio. One of the true sleepers—well, perhaps not even a sleeper, as it doesn’t go on sale till this coming January. Extraordinarily fine. Look for a photo on the web—it’s unconventional, to be sure. A large slightly curved array (curved both horizontally and vertically) using bending wave drivers.  Sitting on top of massive woofers in a large cube. Very very natural sound. Good imaging, good soundstage. Good dynamic range, but not overdone. A true full-range speaker, that doesn’t overwhelm. Projected price around 20K. Dedicated crossovers with lots of adjustment, needs two power amps. I repeat: if ever a new company and a new product deserved to succeed, this is it!

HARBETH 40.2. OK, I admit it, still my favorite. One of the few in the small rooms that didn’t boom, but still produced strong, deep bass. Pure, natural, clear. Excellent timbre. Good imaging and soundstaging. Brought a smile to my face and tapping to my toe.

VIMBERG MINO. 29K. I believe this new speaker, or its bigger brother, has been commented on very positively from other previous shows, and I understand why. Big, full range, but not overblown sound, very natural, impressive presentation, sense of effortlessless.

DESTINATION AUDIO NIKA. Large speaker with horns and a massive cone woofer. The size overwhelmed the small room…..but the sound didn’t. It managed that trick of being delicate *and* full when required. Dynamic for sure. Ultimately I thought that the image projected was perhaps bigger than natural.

SONNER LEGATO UNUM. These tiny speakers with small, small, small mid-woofers seem to defy the laws of physics.  Using a 5.5” driver (it looks about 4”), every single visitor to the room was asking: where’s the sub-woofer?  *And* they could play loud, very loud. Ultimately I thought them slightly bright, slightly “hyped” overall and a little “larger than life”, though part of this could have been the volume they were being played at. Amazing engineering, to be sure.

 

Middle of the pack (for me).

What these speakers shared, was that they all struck me as highly competent speakers, doing everything right, but somehow they didn’t separate themselves from the pack. It’s as if there were a good, clean, modern sound that a number of manufacturers are converging on.

DYNAUDIO CONFIDENCE 20.

VIENNA ACOUSTICS BEETHOVEN CONCERT GRAND.

QUAD Z4. Nice presentation, but little except a keen price to differentiate it from many others.

DEVORE GIBBON SUPER 9. Their new model. Thunderous bass for the size. Good dynamics and full sound. But everything a bit homogenized, blended/mushed together, I think this affects timbre most of all, as well as individual instrument lines. Perhaps a by-product of being demonstrated as excessive volume (compression?).

TAD E1 [not sure of model name, floorstander]. Big sound, but overlarge images. What I call a “technicolor” speaker.

LEGACY SIGNATURE SE. After that less-than-rave review in Stereophile, I wasn’t expecting that much, so I was pleasantly surprised. Rich sound, good bass. Dynamic. Believable size of image. The more I listened, the more I became aware of a less-than-totally-natural timbre, and they also got a shade steely on classical violin at high volume. Definite bang for the buck, but probably not for me.

 

Disappointments. No disrespect to these makes/models, but on the day, in the room, listening to the tracks being played, I was severely underwhelmed. They have good reputations, so likely under different circumstances they would be much better.

SPATIAL AUDIO M3. I’d been really looking forward to hearing these. Very boomy in the room (because of open baffle??), and the sound overall seem very homogenized. Timbres not distinct, and everything kind of mushed together. Opposite of what I’ve been calling pure/clean sound.

WALSH OHM 5000-series. What can I say? As with Spatial, I’d been really curious to hear these, but I didn’t cotton to them at all. Perhaps it was the unconventional set-up (even for them), perhaps it was the room, perhaps it was the source material. Other people there seemed happy. But other than being overly loud, there was no imaging at all, the sound was homogenized, not in the least beguiling, and frankly it reminded me of a quality sound system being piped into a noisy upscale restaurant. As I say, *my ears* *on the day*, as I know there are many fans of this line of speakers.

 

Any requests of speakers for me to seek out?


128x128twoleftears
I want to say 29K, but I may be misremembering.  I know it began with a 2 and was five figures.
I was at the CAF today and asked that exact question.  The Destination Audio Nika is $29k, but the US distributor is selling the 1st 5 pairs for $25k.
OK, added to the remaining list--I'll be here tomorrow morning, and so far Odyssey and now Triangle Art are on the playlist...

DAY 2

OK, first, I’m now ready to nominate my joint best of show: Daedalus Zeus, and IMC Audio Forty-10.

Also, my joint best value for money of the show goes to: Salk Song3 BE-AT, and Odyssey Liquid.

General observations.

Nothing new here. The preponderant demographic: middle-aged and elderly men. I felt right at home. Systems: just about every room was offering *both* vinyl (high-end turntables) and streaming digital.  General trend: no surprise here either, expensive and very expensive components, “value” pieces being relatively few and far between. Another general trend: playing demo systems/pieces in rooms at too loud a volume. Almost ubiquitous. It drove me out of a couple of rooms. In several others, I’m sure it negatively impacted the sonic presentation—surely people want to hear timbre, musical lines, etc., and not just how loud it can play before smoke starts issuing from the amp or the speakers.

 

Top picks of Day 2

I covered all the remaining room and revisited a good number of the others.

GAMUT RS3i. What a speaker!  Beautiful. Within 5 seconds of walking into the room, I could tell this was a quality product. Bass remarkable for its small size, if a bit bloomy (room). Overall superior sound, good imaging, difficult to judge soundstaging (positioned close to front wall with lots of windows). Expensive! If I had the $$$, I’d be seriously considering the floorstander that’s the next one up in the line-up. Color me impressed. These Danish speakers run rings around Dynaudio.

HARBETH 30.2 Anniversary. Wow! Paired with a full suite of Rogers electronics, and newcomer Accusound cables, this system rocked. Yes, Harbeth and rocked in the same sentence. Yet it was natural and balanced, definitely not polite but also not technicolor (this is a negative term in my improvised audiophile vocabulary). A difficult line to walk, but pulled it off. Fine imaging, perfect timbre, dynamic, vivid, and decent bass for the size. Volume getting cranked up excessively/needlessly towards the end, and I had to leave.

ODYSSEY LIQUID. I stumbled into this room at around 5:45 pm, but what I heard immediately perked up my ears. This is one impressive speaker. Natural, good timbre. Excellent bass. Fine imaging (on one sample, I would tend to blame the recording, when images seemed to be leaking from the center to the sides). Dynamic. I really need to hear this again (tomorrow morning, I hope) with some (classical) material I’m familiar with, but for the moment I’m struggling to find anything to criticize. A real surprise. $5900. Good sized floorstander, 2 ½ way, quality drivers. This could be a real winner, but relatively few people will ever hear it, given the sales model (cf. Daedalus and Salk).

 

Revisited…

HARBETH 40.2: one of the few rooms I’d characterize as producing a “human” sound, rather than a mechanical/electronic one. Along with Gamut and Daedalus Zeus (but not unfortunately the other Daedalus Apollo room, where something was amiss). In the Déjà Vu room I could immediately feel my body relaxing, rather than tensing up in the face of the sonic assault.

 

Middle of the pack

MURAUDIO SP1. Good imaging and soundstaging, good timbre, but presentation a little “technicolor”, and depending on the recording and the playback volume could be overbearing/piercing. That impression of being overly insistent was less apparent on my second visit.

BACHE TRIBECA-001.   Just missing my nomination for triple tie best bang for the buck. This is a fine speaker for the money. Presentation is natural, balanced, full, solid, has body, bass was not overdone but definitely there. Unlike most other rooms, I thought it perhaps was a touch over-polite (rather than the reverse). Doesn’t have pinpoint imaging or soundstaging. Instrumental images were natural sized. Massed strings were beautiful, not steely at all. Good prices and definitely worth an audition. I lingered here.

PARADIGM PERSONA 5. Being demo’d with Anthem integrated with room correction, which effectively dealt with the ubiquitous room bass boom. Impressive. A fine, very competent, mainstream, modern speaker. Image size correct, good imaging and bass “just right”. Timbre not quite as rich as I’d have ideally liked.

FRITZ CARRERA Be. Impressive stand-mount. Imaging and soundstaging very natural. A very listenable speaker (what a relief!).  Nothing exceptional, well balanced.  If this could be well integrated with a quality sub-woofer it could be a real winner.

MARTIN-LOGAN RENAISSANCE. A brief listen. Falls into my category of mainstream, more than acceptable presentation, but like many others rather insistent. Didn’t make me want to linger.

GINGKO CLARA VU no. 3.   A real sleeper. Worth keeping an eye on.  The imaging was particularly fine; sound dynamic, what I call a modern presentation. Not sure about ultimate timbral purity, and at high volume levels occasionally slightly strident. Nonetheless, impressive for the price.

PURE AUDIO PROJECT. These had the Voxativ middle driver. Effortless and transparent. Deep bass a bit boomy, even though being demo’d in one of the bigger rooms. Good imaging, decent soundstaging. But yet again sounded overcooked on certain tracks.

AMPHION ARGON 7LS. Another good, not great, speaker. The same boomy bass, with the accustomed modern, mainstream sound.

QLN model? Drivers looked very similar to those in older Proac Response 2.5. Another highly competent but ultimately undistinguished speaker, hampered, I suspect, by the nearly unlistenable source material being played. (Really?)

 

Disappointing

LARSEN 9. Oh dear, another speaker that I really wanted to like. Positives: nice timbre, nice full sound. Set up along the long wall, against the wall (naturally); but I felt the listening positions needed to be further back (impossible, given width of room). Poor, vague imaging, poor soundstaging. A piano was stretched w-i-d-e all the way between the two speakers. On another recording a voice seemed to float around, coming from different points at different moments (and it wasn’t just that the singer was moving around).

VOLTI RIVAL. OK, so it seems like all my disappointments are makes/models that I was expecting to like, whereas the makes I was, err, less than enthusiastic about going into this, all ended up in my middle-of-the-pack category. I don’t know what was going on here. Played with Border Patrol 300Bs and Triode Wire, they still sounded rather too bright to me. How can that be? The horns?? Other tracks sounded “up front” and occasionally piercing. Overall, I have to conclude tipped up. One redeeming feature was the imaging was excellent.

BOENEKE model?   Really really tiny speakers, sounding incredibly strained trying to reproduce full orchestra. Why??

 

Caveats. As ever, YMMV. My subjective impressions on the day, in rooms that were almost all acoustically challenged.  May post some follow-up comments once I recover...