Capital AudioFest Chronicles 2022
Fine music on the 5th floor Part A.
Show Report By By Rick Becker

Room 515 Terry Audio
The Terry Audio room was an example of thinking outside the box, but not quite cantilevered outside the façade of the building. The aesthetic here was a bridge between vintage radio and studio gear, and pro-audio. The tone controls at the top of the CEQ 6 Band Passive Mastering Equalizer ($6k) were colorfully bedecked with hieroglyphics that a studio engineer would readily appreciate. The more contemporary piece in the middle was a PrismSound Dream ADA-8XR (an analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter) which we all need to convert our LPs and cassette tapes to digital for storing in our NAS.

The bottom piece looked like something my father (a highly respected ham radio operator) might have appreciated, though the knobs were a bit more modern than what he used post-WW II. The room was designed for a mastering studio, after all, which is why this gear eschews the typical audiophile aesthetic. These guys are out of Cedar Creek, TX, just outside of Austin where a lot of music happens.

The Point Source Mastering Monitors ($8k), which featured an Altec 604 make-over design from Great Plains Audio, had six different time-aligned modes in the external crossover. They were comparing a Bryston amp with the Terry Mastering Grade Reference Monitor amps ($6k) that were on the floor directly in front of the speakers. These amps were notable for using BJT transistors only — not FETs or MOSFETs.  I picked up an interesting white paper about these amps and the importance of the amp and speaker match-up in the mastering process. It should make interesting reading on a cold winter night.

The cables here looked pretty generic. I loved the speaker stands here which came from real trees. Despite the atypical appearance of this room, the music sounded pretty good — another of those rooms where you might be encouraged to get up and dance. Vintage horn designs have a way of connecting with your emotional strings.

Room 516 MOS Arts
Taking a different approach to turntable design than their Montrose model with the metal plinth, the Custom Reference turntable with Schroder CB tonearm ($16,500) shown here used a 4" thick walnut plinth with the motor drive separated from the bearing and tonearm. That was their brass record weight on the LP. The turntable uses an AC synchronous motor and speed is stabilized with an optical sensor that reads from beneath the platter. A ModWright PH9.0X phono stage ($4,750) was employed to feed a ModWright KWH 225i Integrated amp ($9,750).

Digital duties were handled with a Weiss DAC501 ($9,645), a ModWright Analog Bridge ($3,900), and a Roon Nucleus+ with 2TB SSD ($2,959), though I didn't hear this side of the equation. The loudspeakers were the Fern & Roby The Raven III ($8,500), with a single full-range driver from Seas operating with 94dB efficiency. Black Cat cables were used throughout the system, as well as within the speaker.

The ModWright Analog Bridge is an unusual creature that allows you to tune your system with two 6922 or 6SN7 tubes on separate, selectable circuits. Placing the unit between a digital source component (with volume control) and an amplifier allows you to select two different tonal experiences. There are lots of other implementations possible — even balanced, that are too numerous to mention here, but if the idea of adding multiple tube tonal qualities to your rig appeals to you, investigate this analog bridge further. This is a tube rollers delight!

The transitional Ash equipment rack ($5,650) that was used in the room is pictured on their website. Accessories on a side table included the red cartridge alignment tool ($20), wood coasters ($49.50 set/6) with vacuum tube architecture wood burned into the surface, black vibration absorbing footers ($325 set of four), and their brass record weight ($135). Did you get a holiday gift idea here? For your after-show cigar, there were small boxes of wood matches, courtesy of Fern and Roby. This is not only a class act with shades of ‘old money' from Christopher Hildebrand, but the music was very good here, too.

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