Capital AudioFest Chronicles 2022
Thoughts on the 3rd floor listening rooms.
CAF 2022 Show Report By Rick Becker

Room 325 Gestalt Audio Design
Look closely at the speaker above. Did you catch the Plexiglas baffle with the ribbon driver on top? The Wolf von Langa speaker from Germany caught my eye when I first saw it in a print magazine and it was a treat to hear it here at Capital. The beauty of it is its low-profile wood cabinet with a veneer that leans rustic with the knots in the wood and then flips contemporary with the black field coil full-range driver and the Plexiglas upper baffle with the ribbon tweeter.

It would look right at home in my décor and give me an unobstructed view out the wall of the window behind them. On the back side appeared to be a passive radiator.

The rest of the rig had a very familiar feel with another TW-Acoustic turntable with dual Raven tonearms and yet another Massif Audio Design record weight. The word is getting around. And another SRA platform atop yet another Codia Acoustic Design rack — this time the more elegantly styled Stage 3000 Diagon that I am very happy to own.

This time the integrated amp was a Tron that seems to be an adaptation of their Atlantic 300B Stereo power amp, fitted here with Western Electric 300B tubes. Yet there was also their Atlantic preamp on the shelf above. Just below the turntable was a Tron Convergence phono stage. Under everything (except the turntable) there was some kind of vibration-absorbing device that raised the component high enough that the feet did not rest on the shelf — a tweak I also practice.

Pay attention here. It is available as either MM or MC and in a standard as well as a signature version. It is also available as a mono phono stage "for use with Mono cartridges, without all the inherent hum loop problems associated when using a mono cartridge into a stereo phono stage." It is also available in all the variations mentioned for the stereo version. It wouldn't surprise me if this was the mono version to mate with a mono cartridge on one of the tonearms.

Next to it, in orange, was a very highly regarded (by Roy Gregory, no less) MC phono stage from Konus Audio Vinyle, a niche company that makes uncompromising, but not outrageously priced electronics in Japan, I believe. They also distribute Fuuga cartridges, so I expect that suggests the level of excellence they strive for.

Gestalt Audio Design is a retailer in Nashville, TN, out just past the West End. They put together a very fine-sounding room with some very interesting equipment. This whole cluster of hotel rooms on the 3rd Floor was a delight. I hope that people weren't so focused on the big rooms on the other side of the Atrium that they missed the good stuff here.

I'm sending this in for publication, as this is a natural breaking point on the 3rd Floor. On the next installment of the Capital Audiofest Chronicles 2022, I'll start on the large meeting rooms. While you're waiting for that, be safe. There's a lot of illness going around and the hospitals are filling up. Enjoy the music!

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