Capital Audiofest 2023 Show Report / Chronicles Part 3
The 7th Floor Part A
Show Report By Rick Becker

Room 726 M101
In stark contrast to the previous room, you walk into Room 726 and it is all about the cables with the lighted power cords, interconnects, and speaker cables dominating your attention in the darkened room. Their website comes up at the top of the page when you search for M101. As you scroll down you see all their cables along with the price range for each one. You know where you are. There's a price list with show specials and it's easy to figure out the price of 2M power cords in their three series: Nova ($2k), Supernova ($5200), and Hypernova ($10k). Balanced XLR, unbalanced RCA, and LAN Ethernet cables are similarly easy to discern, though these prices were good only until November 19^th. (Again, it pays to come prepared to shop at shows if you have a good idea of what you're looking for.)

This room caught my attention last year, too, where the Big Surprise was that the system was running off-grid from a battery supply unit. This year, that battery supply unit was replaced with a sonically superior (they claimed), but much less attractive unit shown at the bottom of the photo above. The Renogy unit in the top half of the photo was the AC to DC converter to recharge the battery.

Last year I noticed the silent background to the music without knowing about the system running off-grid. This year I noticed the battery and I was not able to identify a background that was much blacker than most of the other rooms I had visited. They weren't prepared to do an A/B comparison so it was hard to tell. But as I sat in my office and listened to my music sample recorded with my camcorder, the silent background was easily identified.

I recognized the AGD Grand Vivace monoblocks ($19k) right away, too, sitting next to a Mola Mola Makua line stage ($12,200). The Paradigm speakers were from the Persona series and sounded very good with the higher-end amplifiers than you typically hear in Paradigm demonstrations in brick and mortar stores.

The simplicity of the weave in the cutaway above suggests it is a power cable design. It looked fragile with the plastic discs and thin plastic spacers between the discs. For sure, you do not want to ever step on one of these cables.

The more intricate weave and the use of copper and silver suggest this is a signal-carrying design. This looks like it must be constructed by hand, which explains the high prices. The music was clear and inviting. Another good showing from the folks at M101 this year.

Room 728 Amped America
The Amped room had a lot of signage for themselves and for WireWorld power cables and Acoustique Quality speakers…and no one was around when I visited. On the bottom shelf of the Pangea Vulcan 4-shelf rack ($200) was an Adcom GFA565SE stereo power amp. An Adcom preamp was positioned on the next shelf up, and an AMPED unit was on the next shelf up.

The speaker was the new Acoustique Quality Passion Fever model ($8k).

The Music Hall MH Stealth direct drive turntable ($1649) was equipped with an Ortofon cartridge and had a useful auto-stop mechanism. I noticed Roy Hall of Music Hall was present at the show.

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