Capital Audiofest 2023 Show Report / Chronicles Part 8
The 3rd Floor Large Rooms Part A
Show Report By Rick Becker

Regency Room  NOLA
The NOLA room was another that I criticized last year for poor sound, as I did to many of the large rooms. As you can see, it is an expansive, square room that they partitioned off with a row of plants. If memory serves me right, they also moved the speakers closer to the front wall this year. Last year, the speaker cables were stretched nearly to the limit, whereas here they easily reached the front wall, and then made a 90-degree turn to the monoblocks.

This was the Bola Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 that incorporated trickle-down technology in the crossover from the Grand Reference VII Gold and Concert Grand Reference Gold 3 models. Also new were the magnesium cone bass drivers with a gold-plated phase plug that is said to dampen the copper plugs and eliminate colorations. The bass chamber was also increased by 25% to yield a more open-sounding bass and improve overall efficiency to 91dB/W/m sensitivity at 8 Ohm resistance. There were also new midrange drivers that incorporated similar gold-plated phase plugs.

As you can see in the photo, the midrange and tweeters are an open-baffle dipole which eliminates cabinet colorations. It is a 3.5-way design that uses hand-wired crossovers without PC boards. It is available in true Piano Gloss Black as shown or true Piano Gloss Santos Rosewood for $150k. It was likely a combination of these technological improvements and the re-positioning of the speakers that made this room sound so much better this year. The music was transparent, dynamic, highly resolved, and easily filled this large room — a strong contender in this price league.

Another possible 'upgrade' was the new VAC monoblock shown here on what looks like repurposed speaker bases. Featuring a pair of Russian Gold Lion output tubes, these monoblocks had plenty of power for the Nola speakers in this large room. We will come across these amps again in the Atrium in Part 10. I'll also mention again this year that the speaker cables were branded "Nola", not Nordost as many would have guessed.

I walked around this room to check out the bass nodes and found the sound to be quite delightful far off-axis by the row of plants. Beyond that row, against the far wall were the shipping crates that were designed for stacking one speaker atop the other with lips of the 0.75" plywood to keep them from moving about. Routing out "NOLA" was a nice touch, too, as were the fold-away handles on the ends. Between the 200 lb. speaker and the weight of the crate, this would be a 300 lb. lift, at least.

Plaza I Room  Matterhorn Audio
The KI logo on the speakers in this room is misleading. I had first seen, but not heard this Spanish brand at the Montreal show where a bespoke Canadian brand was stealing the spotlight with an unusual design. Think of KI as Kroma Atelier and you will find more reactions to this newcomer at earlier shows.

The Matterhorn Audio Group out of Boston lists Fink team, Creek, Kroma Atelier, HiDiamond, and Illusonic as their brands, but here in the large Plaza I ballroom it was Audio Group Denmark giving us a rare opportunity to hear their Aavik amplification and Ansuz cables and power conditioners driving something other than a Borresen speaker. And drive it well, they did.

These Kroma towers were huge, as you can see from the side view, and they had no trouble filling the ballroom with majestic sound. Electric guitar had fast attack, smooth sustain, and endless decay when the music called for it. Transparency was outstanding and the dynamics and sense of scale were as enormous as you would expect of a live concert in a room even larger than this one. The outstanding resolution belied the fact that this was not a live presentation with a band's well-worn road gear.

The Turandot speaker ($220k in white, $242 in black) is made with Krion, a solid synthetic conglomerate with minerals embedded, probably not unlike what Estelon uses or Wilson's V material.

The Aavik C-880 preamp ($70k) and P-880 power amp ($70k) were seen earlier in the Audio Group Denmark room 310 in Part 7. But the Aavik R-580 ($25,200) was also in use here, taking music from a Technics SL-1000-R turntable ($20k) equipped with an Ortofon MC Diamond cartridge ($10k). Ansuz Gold Signature and Supreme cables and accessories were used here, as well as providing the equipment stand.

I also had an opportunity to hear the white stand-mounted Kroma monitors ($12,600) driven by the same system playing the same cut from Dire Straits. While the music lacked the scale and ultimate dynamics of the larger speaker, the other qualities remained essentially the same and it was very impressive in such a large room. The bass, in particular, was surprisingly good from such a small speaker. The use of a wood dissimilar to the fine veneer on the sides felt awkward, but could probably be remedied.

I also noticed the proprietary cone of the mid-woofer with its unusual random texture and the tube of the front port was yet another wood species. But close your eyes and listen to the music and you will forget all the visual anomalies.

There was also a Linn Klimax DSM Organik DAC with a new Utopik power supply ($42k), a Creek Voyage CD player, and some HiDiamond cables listed that I didn't get to hear. By mid-day on Sunday Tim Lukas of Matterhorn Audio Group had pretty much figured out what most people wanted to hear, and he put on a spectacular show. Kroma is a speaker that we will see and hear a lot more from in the coming year. They will compete with the best.

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