I was thus far surprised (unhappily
) that after over 225 views not one comment. I do wish there was a section on this site that was just for events not dealing with one brand, i.e. emofest belongs in the emotiva threads but this event was multiple brands.
I am hopeful that in the future a section will be created for events that can include live shows, seminars, trade shows etc. that would be i believe helpful and informative.
i did go to the show for 2 of the 3 days it was there and i had a blast. i took about almost 3gb's of pictures and video.
what i didn't do was good note taking. i've got lots of pictures but don't necessarily know what every brand is and what should be said about all of them!
so while i'll post pictures there may not be long narratives about them. so please try to enjoy the pictures at a minimum!
the event was nicely done. i had a great time and met lots of folks there. i would start out by saying that this show had lots of vintage gear, most of the setups were almost completely analog, lots of tube amps (almost no solid state amps at all) lots of CD's and a couple of SACD's.
i will tell you this, i have a new found respect for CD's. i learned one thing in this show and that's if you have the right system, good transport, cables, amp, DAC, speakers--CD's can sound amazing! The same was true for digital downloads of all levels, MP3, and the high rez files especially.
i heard it all, really old mono albums and the latest CD's. lots of Jazz, Classical, Blues, Rock, R&B, etc. all of them sounded great on these systems. lots of the gear there was custom built and the designers and builders were on hand to answer questions.
some you might not have heard of before (speaking mostly for self) some we see on this site and in high end audio mags everyday. i will say another thing, i didnt' see any monoprice anything at this show
i suspect that when you have the money to buy $47K tube amps, you spend the money on cables that look like they belong with it and compliment the amp based on designer recommendations. that's not a knock at monoprice either; i own plenty of their cables--of course i can't afford that $47K tube amp (and ya need two as its a block) so monoprice folks, don't take it the wrong way!
lots of folks worked together to do each room, cable makers, amp, pre-amp makers, DAC folks, speaker folks, turntable folks, etc. i found it interesting that at this level, almost every room had tube amps of some sort, whole or hybrid but they were there and there in force.
i also saw and heard for the first time in my life speakers that were 100db efficient, there were even speakers there that were 140db. those speakers were thunderous in sound, full range and were in most cases using one watt or less and were being powered by 5 - 20w tube amps; AMAZING!
ok, enough talk for now, here we go with some pictures. i do hope these pictures stay here as i'm using the attachment feature of the site so i hope they don't "go away" or something.
this is the place that the Capital Audiofest was held. nice hotel for this type of event.
i'm going to go in the order that i took the pictures and the rooms i visited from 1st floor to 3rd floor.
nice setup using reel to reel with powerful two channel amps (two of them) sounded good too.
each speaker was bi-amped from the two 2 channel amps, the high from one amp and the low from the other amp for each speaker. look at the size of those pipes!
this next set is a real treat. they represented the only room that had 5 different makers of gear that have gotten together and put what they consider their best gear into this system to make it what they consider the best at the show. there is no denying that it sounded great because it did. i wouldn't say it was the best, but it was on the short list (and it's a very short list
)
oh yeah, this is one of those that sets that the note taking thing that i didn't do haunts me as i don't know the names of anything, so just enjoy the pictures!
this guy was quite the salesmen, he could sell anything; he had the gift! he put on quite the show between album cuts.
this is the first time i've ever seen a turntable with two complete tone arm assemblies; guess you can see new things even at my age! they put on an original pressing of Ella & Louie, played the first track "Can't we be friends?" and my friends, it was analog magic in that room. man i hate being poor!
the speakers were incredible. they have 6 - 10" woofers in them, downfiring and one 8" dual for midrange and tweeter. driving those boys full range those woofers were powerful and that 8" was moving some serious air. that mid was moving in and out like crazy; a thing of beauty! these speakers were designed to be bi-amped given the nature of the low end sides design. these boys could easily suck up some power but spit it out as beautiful sound!
oh yeah, no your not mistaken, that's a coin on the top of that speaker. they put a nickel on top of each speaker on it's side during the entire performance and IT DIDN'T FALL! that shows incredible cabinet making and bracing and remarkable audio engineering on behalf of the speaker maker. yes, i got to move the nickel around to make sure it was real and didn't have any flat sides on it! keeping them honest!
no other speaker maker could do that and that is what made this speaker stand out from all others in this show!
next up was the Legacy room (see i did remember something, oh yeah, the names in the picture, thanks for pointing that out
)
those giant boys were amazing both to look at and to listen to. they had two flavors of speakers there, in the big and bigger sizes!
the speakers were nice to see up close for the first time. i was taken aback by their size; they were 6' easy, the big ones were.
aside from amp inputs the speakers each had powered subwoofers built in with dual bass inputs and they were both used on each speaker too. they had some powerful low end being produced.
teaming up with the Legacy folks were folks that some of you Emotiva peoples should know!
did you guess who from the picture above? no, well the picture below should give you a hint!
yep, Sherbourn was in the house and boy did their high end gear look nice. they put out some nice sounds with those Legacy's too!
well, that's all i'm gonna put out for tonight. i'll try to add some new pictures and editorials each night if i can. i'm only gonna put low rez on here because my hi rez shots are all 6mb and larger so, sorry.
uncle Solarrdadd signing off till later.