Capitol Audio Fest

Jond, the turntable in the Shindo/Auditorium 23 room was a PTP modified Lenco.  Like you I was impressed with the Auditorium 23 speaker which uses a Line Magnetic replica of the Western Electric 755 running full range.  The midrange was very natural and musical.  My wife said this was her favorite speaker out of the whole show.  I wouldn't go that far since it was too rolled off in the extremes for my tastes but it was still a very musical sound overall.  It was also nice to see Dave Cope again even though it was strange for him to be in a room without any Audio Note gear.

i posted some comments on this year's CAF on AA, but my favorite rooms (in order of preference) were:

1.  Dave Slagle's EMIA room with stacked Quad 57's driven by biamped PP 300B amps built into the speaker base.  Amazingly lifelike fullrange sound.  These were not your father's Quads.

2.  The DejaVu vintage room with 3-way field coil speakers using GIP replica versions of Western Electric drivers.  A great example of Vu's open baffle designs using vintage drivers and horns, although the room was way too small to do the speakers justice.

3.  The Robyatt room with single Quad 57's.

i didn't spend a whole lot of time in rooms with more conventional systems.  For those who like thumpy bass and sizzling highs there were those rooms too.  I took my wife to a number of those just so she could hear what "other" systems sound like, but she too had no interest in staying very long in those rooms.

Charles, unfortunately the answer is No.  My wife is far more talented musically than I (piano and voice) but she has zero interest in jazz and less than zero interest in gear. She mostly listens to Broadway musical CDs in the car.  This was the first time she has ever attended a Hifi show so these were all new experiences for her.  

LarryI, your comment about the Burwell and Sons "Mother of Burl" speakers really surprised me.  Maybe they changed something over the course of the show, but on Friday afternoon when I stopped by their room the sound was just plain awful, I mean ear bleeding painful.  I left the room within 5 minutes out of fear of damaging my ears.  To me that was a prime example of how horn speakers can turn off many listeners.  Maybe they got better over the course of the show but my experience Friday did not encourage a repeat visit.

There were a number of other rooms that did not appeal to me for one reason or another including Classic Audio, Daedalus, Volti, Tidal, and VAC/Von Schweikert, but nothing bothered me like the Burwell and Sons room. 

On a more positive note, some other speakers I did enjoy include TAD Evolution One, German Physiks and Harbeth 30.2.  As I look over the exhibitor list, there were many rooms that I seem to have missed so I don't mean to imply anything good or bad by omitting others mentioned in this thread.

When it comes to speaker appearances, the Auditorium 23 gets a gold star for sure.  The cabinet was made of solid walnut with superb joinery and the vertical walnut strips on the front looked really nice.

Those of us in the DC area are truly fortunate to have an event like CAF in our own backyard.  It has gotten bigger and better each year to the point where it is now considered by many to be the premier show on the East Coast.  Reading the stories about the NY show last weekend brought that point home even more clearly.  Kudos to the CAF organizers.  May they live long and well.

LarryI, that is funny because I went to Vu's this past Friday and heard the same speaker and had the same reactions...exactly.  The speaker in question is the 3-way field coil system with GIP drivers.  I had somewhat mixed feelings about it at CAF although it clearly had lots of potential.  I was inclined to blame the hotel room as being too small for a large speaker like this, however Vu said the room at his store is nearly identical in dimensions to the hotel room at CAF.  In any event, at the store on Friday, after the system was warmed up the speaker had excellent coherency (something lacking at CAF) and excellent detail and dynamics.  I thought that perhaps the bass was not quite as full and weighty as what I heard at the show but that could have been due to the music selection.  Our listening on Friday started with the system totally cold---everything had to be turned on first---and the sound was a little disjointed for the first few minutes but it got better and better as we listened longer.  Without any doubt, this is a very good sounding system and the GIP drivers are capable of excellent sound quality.

I didn't listen long enough to the GIP speaker to be able to draw comparisons with other speakers, and I bet Vu would disagree with me on this, but as good as the GIP speaker was I think I actually preferred the sound of one of the YL speakers Vu had in the same room on my last visit.  That speaker used a big YL wood horn with YL 5500G driver, Goodmans 15" woofer in open baffle, and some tweeter (it may have been a Jensen RP-302).  The YL speaker had the advantage since it was fully warmed up when I listened to it, but I still recall how totally realistic Ella and Louis sounded that day.  

That's interesting about your reactions to the YL/Goodman system.  I can't say I heard those issues with it but perhaps if I had listened longer they might have bothered me too.  My only quibble with it was the bass wasn't quite as rich and weighty as most of Vu's designs. 

Vu said that one of the challenges with the CAF setup was the wall voltage varied quite a bit which meant he had to keep adjusting the field coil power supply voltage.