Capital AudioFest 2024

 
 
I ve managed to visit almost all rooms, here are some of my favorites:
Top of the line Albedo speakers from Italy, $160.000, however I have NEVER heard Natalie Dessay and Sonia Yonchveva sound more realistic and alive ! Top 3 best sound at the show!

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High Water Sound from my fellow NYer Jeffrey Catalano, playing Cessaro Acoustics from Germany in rather small room. Ever gracious Jeffrey accommodated my request after the show hours ended and played one of my favorite editions of the Handel's Water Music on the Harmonia Mundi label.
We just sat there mesmerized. After a grueling day hearing awful crap that passes for demo muzak I just melted in my chair, my ears relieved! I just don't know how Jeffrey does his magic, I think MOST exhibitors will do much better if they hire Mr Catalano as their set up person. As usual for the HighWaterSound, another best of the show contender! I will pIan to somehow get these Cessaros from him in not that distant future!

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Two way speakers from French wire manufacturer Espirit were quite refined sounding. These made their US premier and were so new that were not even fully broken in. However even not fully broken in, they sounded like these have great potential for small to medium size rooms, if little on "lighter"-sounding side, however I suspect their Alnico magnet driver and Duelund caps in their crossover need at least 600-1000 hours to fully break in to have a fully fleshed out sound and mid bass impact. The tweeters were AMT ribbons. About 20K USD.
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very good and smooth were Mc Tech from the Phily area using the flat driver tech from the Linaneaum from 90s, but much more refined. Great value, and Mr Gallo is great to talk to. Very musical set up!
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These Sound Labs 9 ft towers I need to listen to much more extensively, to fully decipher their enormous potential and negatives, but in some performance areas no speakers regardless of price can match them! You better have at least 10 ft ceiling, and be prepared to enter another dimension of sight and sound!
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I was expecting great things from the new Kharma Veyron model at 300K USD! However despite being able to fill a very large room with bass heavy sound pressure, to my ears the set lacked "musicality ", "humanity"and refinement and sounded rather somewhat "mechanical" , which was strange given that I consider Kharma one of the best, (if not the the best) dynamic speaker manufacturer. Something was clearly off in the Evolution 20/20 room, which was puzzling given that its master set up man Mr Truitt has made Kharmas sing in the past shows like no other.
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Excellent sounding also were the Genesis bamboo finish floorstanders driven by state of the art Heed Helicon monoblocks from Hungary! At 15-17 K these present great value and should be considered by anyone shopping in this price range and way beyond. Mr Koh was very gracious as usual!
 
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Ron and Audiolibertarian,

Enjoying your ongoing videos, photos and comments! Thank you for all the hard work.
 

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