Capital Audiofest 2012 Show Report
Coverage By Scot Hull of Part Time Audiophile 

Snake River
Snake River Audio, out of the Snake River Valley in Idaho, was showing with Sonist and Déjà Vu Audio. In fact, it was Snake River's Jonny Wilson himself that was leading the demo in the Sonist room. Here, Jonny introduced us to The Piano Guys, a piano-cello collaboration that's become a YouTube phenomenon and have recently released their first full-length album called, appropriately enough, "YouTube Hits". Another new-to-me group is The Bass Gang, a smashing collection of music from a group of four musicians and their big ass upright basses. I've ordered both discs! As for Jonny's cables themselves, well, it's just about shy of impossible to pull out a cable's contribution (or lack) to a system you're not absolutely familiar with, so I won't go there. I can say, however, that the Cottonmouth cables shown here at Capital Audiofest use a sheath that looks remarkably like, well, the skin of a snake. I like it. It's certainly eye-catching.

The Snake River lineup is a trio of venomous beasts, the Adder, Cottonmouth and Mamushi. Adder uses 99.999% pure silver, the Cottonmouth uses 24karat gold-plated OFC "with a minimum of 80 micro-inches of plating", and the Mamushi can use either silver or gold-plated copper but adds magnetic shielding. The top of the line Signature Series is available either unshielded (Cottonmouth) or shielded (Mamushi), but the wire used is a blend of silver, gold and copper. Pricing is available online.

Audio Note
On the one hand, we have Star Wars fans. On the other, we have Star Trek fans. On the gripping hand, we have Audio Note enthusiasts. Personal feelings about sci-fi partisanship aside, something like this is what always comes to mind whenever I wander into an Audio Note showroom, except I always feel like I'm on the wrong side of the argument. It's as if I haven't given the appropriate secret hand sign, or have failed to respond with the right code word. It's nuts, sure, but there is something going on in Audio Note world that has very much the feel of a clique or cult. Just sayin'.

Here's my summary, and it's not intended to grant me access to the Future Secrets of the Audio Note Society. It's pretty simple, really, and it's a feeling that was shared by the show goers I rigorously tested using the latest scientific methodologies in statistical sampling. That is, I asked the guy next to me. Anyway, we both agreed -- Audio Note routinely puts together a nice show room. It is also very definitely an Audio Note room. Rich, intimate, warm, inviting sound came from the AN-E SPE/HE sitting in the room's front corners. These $9500 speakers are 98dB/W/m and were very ably driven by a $19,000 Meishu Phono Silver Signature 300B-based integrated amplifier. A $12,000 CD-4.1x DAC/Transport combo put out the digital signals.

And for the record, Star Wars rules.

Sophia Electric
Sophia Electric of Vienna, VA, is known for a couple of things. First is their (to all reports) simply outstanding line of current-production 300B vacuum tubes. The top of the lineup is the Royal Princess, a tube that they retail for a healthy $1200/matched pair. They installed these big tubes in one of their top-of-the-line $8000 Sophia Electric 91-05 Single Ended amplifiers, the other thing Sophia is well known for. A vintage Studer CD player provided the tunes. The speakers I heard were the $18,000 S.E.T. Princess Horn speakers, which are configured with a horn-loaded compression driver and a 15" woofer. These giant cabinets are 97dB/W/m, 8 Ohms, and have a 40 Hz to 20 kHz frequency response. An optional upgraded crossover is available for an additional $2000, and explained the white wires dangling from the front mounted reflex ports – prior to the show's opening, the Sophia team was demo'ing the difference between the two crossovers to a few customers, and it was this on-show-floor flexibility that mandated the inelegant dangle. I'm guessing here, but I suspect that if you really wanted it this way on delivery, the Sophia team can accommodate you, but whatever, this was a rather clever move as it made a nice demo. As to the sound, I found the room full of what I'm coming to learn is the "classic tube sound" – full, rich, deep, resonant and fully immersive. Diana Krall has rarely sounded better.

Robert Lighton
Robert Lighton of New York is a furniture maker that specializes in using reclaimed and eco-friendly woods. The audio line includes a single offering at the moment, the $20,000 RL10 loudspeaker with 95dB/W/m sensitivity, 6 Ohms impedance, 25 Hz to 25 kHz frequency response. The drivers, custom made in Japan for RL Audio, are a 10" paper woofer matched to a 1" fabric dome tweeter, and both are fitted out with Alnico magnets. The speakers are quite handsome to look at and are very obviously made by someone who knows what they're about. The solid wood cabinets feature some very graceful and flowing lines that almost hides the fact that there are no parallel surfaces on this speaker at all.

Shown here with electronics from Audio Note, including the $15,500 Conquest Silver monoblocks configured with some very impressive black bottles, the Robert Lighton speakers seemed pretty laid back, with a dark, voluptuous sound. The word I wrote down was "romantic".

Border Patrol/Living Voice
Rounding out the high-sensitivity/low-power run, I found Gary Dews of Border Patrol. Gary is also the East Coast dealer for Living Voice loudspeakers, and he'd assembled a very fine-sounding system leveraging these speakers and his custom-made 300B-based amps. Today's system was tied together with a Model SE300B amp, Gary's first design, which comes standard with a beefy external power supply. Shown here with a pair of the very popular Royal Princess 300B tubes that the Sophia Electric crew brought around, Gary's SE300B amp carried the $3000 upgrade "EXD" package, which adds copper chassis parts (over the aluminum in the standard version), and deep cryo's the output and inter-stage transformers. This option is available for all of Gary's amps; existing amps can also be upgraded to this spec.

At the end of the chain stood a pair of $11,750 Living Voice Avatar OBX-RW, with their big external crossovers sitting discreetly behind them. 94dB/W/m, 6 Ohms, and a 35 Hz to 25 kHz frequency response, a ScanSpeak Revelator tweeter, and a pair of 6.5" paper drivers in an MTM array, these are the speakers my then-three-year-old twins were so enamored with back in 2010 at the first Capital Audiofest (gotta start ‘em young, folks). Then, as now, I took their point, as the pairing with the all-Border Patrol electronics produced a truly superior sound that was on par with the very best on offer here at Capital Audiofest. Deep bass, rich and resonant mids, airy highs, detail throughout the range, and an open, easy presentation made more than one of us in the room marvel at what a "mere" 8wpc can do. Definitely not what I was expecting and something I still find surprising at every listen. Most pleasantly so. Great pairing!

---> Click here for part 3.