Capital Audiofest 2023 Show Report / Chronicles Part 4
The 7th Floor Part B
CAF 2023 Show Report By Rick Becker

  Continuing with the 7th Floor, halfway around the bases...

Room 734 Bache Audio And Alexus Audio
I met Greg Belman of Bache Audio again this year. They are a boutique manufacturer in Brooklyn, NY, producing several models of monitors and floorstanders, some of which are high-efficiency. They are fond of using full-range drivers, though not exclusively as you can see from this D'Appolito configuration above. Some models supplement the full-range driver with a woofer or a super-tweeter. Prices are very reasonable by high-end standards. I believe they have a showroom in Brooklyn for auditioning their speakers.

This Alexus tube amp with 300B balloon tubes in a push-pull configuration caught my eye.

Even more interesting was the Alexus Audio perfect phono V2.2g, about $12k, with a graphene battery to keep your front end off-grid. It was late afternoon by the time I reached this room, which may explain the 11.8 Volts.

Room 737 Mimic Audio
I met Chris Moore, Co-owner of Mimic Audio in Chicago. I wasn't familiar with their store and a quick search turned up their website which was slanted heavily toward headphone listening. The room here strongly suggests they are also into conventional high-end gear with a very attractive layout and fine sound. The components were nicely arranged on Quadspire SVT stands ($1,650 each).

The SW1X gear sports a red pinstripe or is that a separate plate behind the faceplate? It's a nice touch along with the top deck and chassis of this Amp V ($21,495) equipped with 300B tubes. In the previous photo, it looks like this amp is resting on some of Todd Kubon's elegant AmCan Audio Isolator Footers that I reviewed back in 2016. Todd is also in Chicago. But alas, they were considerably more expensive The new PranaWire Dantien footers ($6500).

The SW1X DAC V Special ($42k) was seen to the left of the amp and the SW1X VDT IV ($20,795) was to the right of the amp. Heady gear from The Lotus Group. The cables were Albedo Metamorphosis Signature Monocrystal speaker cables ($23k) with Albedo Monolith Monocrystal RCA interconnects at $1650. Power conditioning was through an IsoTek V5 Aquarius ($3k) .

The Wolf von Langa London speakers ($20k) have been available in the USA for a couple of years now and have an excellent reputation. They were sounding the best I can recall hearing them in this room and I noticed vibration-absorbing footers in use here, too. I noticed the AMT drivers were offset slightly to the left and right of their respective woofers.

Balcony Live Vibe Audio
Robert, from Live-Vibe Audio, was set up on a table on a small balcony overhanging the atrium and was attracting customers with a variety of audio-theme accessories and vibration management products. I cracked a few smiles when I asked him if he had vibrators for the wives of audiophiles. My wife nobly defends the castle while I attend these long audio show weekends and suffers through weeks of inattention while I transcribe these dreadfully long show reports. Might he even have a noise-canceling model?

Check him out. This is a real enterprise with unique items that might make great holiday gift suggestions.

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