What are the big attractions at Capital Audiofest coming up this Friday?

You are welcome. Have fun at the show. I only go for one day and don’t get to spend a lot of time in many rooms that I would like to. But I get a good sampling of what’s out there that I might be interested in and if I might be missing something.

This year I had my trusty decibel sound meter app handy and used that to help explain what I heard in various rooms and how that compares to home. Very helpful. Most of the rooms had things tuned in pretty well. A couple could have used a tweak here and there. Some a bit bass shy but didn’t catch anyone clearly overdoing the bass.  
 

Worst thing was the horrible boring “audiophile” music that so many choose to play. So much well recorded good music out there that people actually know but many do not seem to care. Not being familiar with the recording playing makes it very hard to compare rooms with just a single recording to sample. Oh well. Still all very cool.

Oh I am not there misunderstanding I think from an earlier post. 

I’m about 80% through the show and the standouts have been:

1: Odyssey/Symphonic Line: Klaus is showing a top flight system this year featuring electronics from Symphonic Line with Odyssey Liquid speakers. There’s a video of Klaus showing off the system to Michael Fremer here: 

2: MoFi room featuring Piega speakers with a BAT amp. Wow those little Piega stand mounted speakers make nice music.

3: Singer Audio’s field coil speakers with Whammerdyne 2a3 amp. Outstanding!

4: Classic Audio Speakers with Atma-Sphere amps. Great sound but I don’t think they had the system dialed in as well as they did at the 2019 show, where it was one of the highlights.

5: Pure Audio Project- great sounding open baffles with the horn drivers.

@rooze its really funny how different people’s perceptions are. I guess that’s why so many different kinds of gear get bought.

I thought Classic Audio/Atmasphere room was dialed in very well yesterday. That was the first time I thought that in a few years since first time I heard that same room which had to be several years back. Last couple times was overly bright and I actually found it hard to listen but this year the sound was very real, very natural sounding. At least with the small jazz ensemble record being played. That was with the Class D amps. Then they switched to the tube amps for Abby Road and Come Together sounded as good as I’ve ever heard it and I’ve heard it a lot many different ways over the years.

@mapman -- I loved the LTA room as well.  They supplied electronics for two rooms.  Both were fantastic. Their prototype DAC was impressive.  They had the top off and it was nice to see the guts of the design.

@fthompson251 -- The VAC/VSA room was astonishing (as it should be -- large, well treated room with 800k of gear).  I had another revelation in the large room with United Home Audio (local DMV reel-to-reel producer).  I walked in and heard Dean Martin sounding better than I'd ever imagined he could sound.

The rooms sponsored by Now Listen Here were also solid.  The Joseph Audio Pulsars sounded great.  I didn't get a chance to hear the Fyne set up.

I enjoyed two rooms with using the the Gryphon Diablo 300.  No coincidence, I'm sure.

I skipped a couple of rooms that were playing overly fussy music I didn't like, but found some great music, including stripped down blues, live folk, etc.  This was my first show.  I might bring a couple of CDs next time and see how that goes.