Capital Audiofest 2023 Show Report / Chronicles Part 1
The 8th Floor Part A
Show Report By Rick Becker

Room 828 Bricasti Design
The Bricasti Design room was sounding like a slightly smaller version of the Wynn Audio room that walked away with a Best Rooms award at the Toronto Audiofest a few weeks ago. High resolution and exquisite transparency, but here Bricasti components from Massachusetts replaced the Karan Acoustics electronics from Serbia. An I2S digital output interfaces with their DAC with a proprietary interface allowing the transfer of DSD signal directly to the DAC. So this unit works for both Redbook CDs as well as SACDs.

New from Bricasti was the M19 Reference Disk Player ($10k) which looked very handsome in silver and dark gray. For this kind of money, you get a chassis machined from solid aluminum and dual toroidal power supplies — one for the drive unit and another for the digital signal path to eliminate the possibility of interference.

Sorry about the soft focus here, but I thought you'd be interested in the simplicity of their remote. I also appreciated the legibility of the display on the unit itself.

Also in play here were the Bricasti M1Series II Argento Edition DAC ($12k), M21 DAC Platinum Edition ($19k), M20 Preamplifier Argento Edition ($12.5k) and M28 Special Monoblock amplifier ($30k/pr.). Also here were Gotham Cable, and let's not forget the Tidal Audio Piano speakers from Germany, their entry-level speaker at $64k. With both DACs, I suspect they were offering comparison listening opportunities, but I didn't have time for that.

Room 830 Nexus Audio Technologies
Nexus Audio Technologies is a new sales and marketing company run by Walter Schofield, who is a real veteran of high-end audio. He represents Alta Audio, the American speaker manufacturer, Infigo Audio, a Canadian electronics manufacturer, Primare, the Swedish electronics manufacturer, and Stenheim speakers from Switzerland, all established, well-respected companies.

Seen in this room was the new Stenheim Alumine two.five speakers driven by a rack full of mostly Primare electronics. The two.five fills the gap between the Alumine two stand-mounted monitor and the more expensive Alumine three and it filled the room here very well with satisfying bass. With 93dB/W/m sensitivity, 4 Ohm impedance, and a minimum of 10 Watts to drive this two-way speaker, a relatively low-powered tube amp might not be out of the question. As I've said before, the right amplification is essential for driving Stenheims. The Primare rig here was pretty decent, but this wasn't quite a match made in audio nirvana.

Elsewhere in this show, the brands marketed by Nexus were well represented. We've already seen Alta and Infigo, and I believe we will see more to come.

Room 832 AV Luxury Group
AV Luxury Group presented four rooms at Axpona this year and I've felt guilty for giving them short shrift. Part of it may have been my fatigue; another part may have been that their rooms were so similar and similarly very good. Here at Capital, they had two, which were vastly different and both excellent. This first room featured a Raidho TD3.2 three-way floorstander with 90dB sensitivity, 4 Ohm impedance, and a $70k price tag in piano gloss black, (more expensive in the stunning walnut burl.) We're talking Tantalum diamond-coated midrange and bass drivers here.

The Raidho was driven by a new Margules U-280SC 30th Anniversary Special Edition tube amp ($12k and reviewed here) limited to just 30 units. With Active Servo Bias, you can use KT88, KT90, KT120, KT150, and 6550, without the need for any adjustment. Personally, I've written off buying Russian tubes if at all possible, so you can do that with KT88s in this amp. This one was fitted with Genalex Gold Lion KT88 from Russia and put out 50 Wpc @ 8 Ohms (100 Watts in mono.) We're talking Class A, zero negative feedback, with transparency and dynamics that will allow you to smell the sweat of the performers. The air of the music venue filled the room, with the music itself just hanging there... until it was time to jump and man, the music really jumped in this room with electric blues.

Prefer a little more bloom? Just switch from ultralinear to triode mode with the flip of a switch. It can also be used in mono mode if you want to create monoblocks with more power. You can also use it without a preamplifier thanks to its input attenuators. It sure didn't sound like it needed a preamp to me, though you may need one if you have multiple sources.

On silent display were these two Margules speakers, unfortunately out of focus, which featured a very attractive, rich-looking oiled wood from the Yucatan, priced roughly at $5900 for the floorstander and $3900 for the monitor. You can get a better idea of the wood from the Margules website.

As it turned out, I ended up having dinner with Julian Margules, third-generation owner of this much-evolved business, but that's a story for later.

Let me also mention there was a big display for RSX cables in this extended room, which indicates they were probably used in the system here.

Part 2: 8th Floor, Part B Coming Soon!
This brings me to 2nd Base on the 8th Floor, though the numbers ascend in a clockwise direction on each floor. Part 2 will be the 8th Floor, Part B. At this rate, my show coverage will likely require 8 to 10 parts, culminating with my selection of the Best Rooms. Hopefully, I will get all this done in time for some Christmas shopping. Keep checking back as there is a lot more exciting gear to be covered.

---> Onward to Part 2 of Rick Becker's Capital Audiofest 2023 show report.

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