Part 1: 8th Floor And More CAF 2024 Show Report
A great way to start the day at an audiophile / high-end audio event.
Capital Audiofest 2024 Show Report By Rick Becker

  Making my way to CAF 2024, I rolled out of Rochester at 2 p.m. and headed South on Route 15. I crossed the Pennsylvania border and noticed some road kill while I drove through poor towns that have only marginally changed over the forty-five years I've traveled this route. It was impossible to imagine a market for high-end audio gear in these parts. Even as I approached Harrisburg there were few signs of growth or modernization.

Highway signs just west of town warned "Beware of increased deer activity." No kidding. Stiff carcasses with hooves in the air validated the warning. I no longer drive like a disciple of Richard Petty. As the saying now goes, "You have to finish to enjoy the music."

It was a warm evening with a clear dark sky when I rolled into the front entrance of the Hilton. A fire engine red MACO MACARIA greeted me. This was an open baffle speaker I had recently reviewed and was excited to hear again with both wood and quartz baffles in the rooms upstairs.

There was no record of a room for me at the Hilton. This is why I always throw a sleeping bag in my car when I travel. I picked up a copy of the show program to study later and asked around for Gary Gill.

Gary was at the Rockville Pike Craft Beer Wine & More, a few doors down from the Hilton. He said my room, along with others from the Press, should be at the EVEN Hotel, directly across the street. Except it wasn't. Michael Fremer, Greg Weaver, and a few others were on the list. A call to Gary by the desk clerk and then to the hotel manager straightened it all out. I uploaded my gear to the fifth floor, parked in the underground lot for the weekend, and popped the cap on a Moosehead beer I had added to my cooler at the last minute. After enjoying the second half of the Subway sandwich I had bought in Mansfield, PA, I settled in to study the ads in the Audiofest program and review the floor plans to see who was there. I counted 125 rooms, down from 129 last year, plus the booths and tables in the Atrium and on the 3rd Floor where there was also a concentration of headphone displays.

Much work lay ahead. I've got 579 photos and 140 video clips to work with. Expect me to take many weeks to share the adventure as I visit all the rooms at the show. If you're looking to just hit the highlights, my coverage may disappoint you. I approach the show by exploring each room, looking for gems or insights that might be of interest to all audiophiles of any socio-economic background to help them enjoy their music because... well... that's what I've been doing for Enjoy the Music.com for 25 years.

With luck, I'll finish by Christmas if hurricanes don't blow, so treat it as a journal you can revisit a couple of times a week for the latest update. I hope you will find it nearly as interesting as being there in person, though there really is no substitute.

As it is customary for gravity to pull objects toward the center of the earth, I start on the 8th Floor in the numerical order of the rooms but first, just one exception. We often talk about rooms, systems, or speakers that give us goosebumps when we listen, and deem that emotional reaction as evidence of a superior product. Over the years, I've become somewhat hardened to those experiences at shows, partly because I move so quickly. This year one room was so outstanding it brought tears to my eyes as I listened.

I slipped into the darkened room and was lucky enough to get a prime listening seat. The presenter recognized me, nonetheless. (My ponytail and beard are a dead giveaway.) He knowingly put on a favorite song, "Coolsville," from Rickie Lee Jones' eponymous album and I listened in awe to a song I thought I knew so well. My emotional response was far deeper than goosebumps. I could feel the music, her voice, and her presence right to my core as I slipped tangibly close to believing she was right in the room.

It was a time warp that welled up my eyes – experiencing her back then, right in the room in the present moment. I got up and walked away almost in a daze when Val Cora came over and hugged me. I expect he's seen my reaction to this system from many others at the show.

I need to give this room a special shout-out because this doesn't happen very often – and I listen to hundreds of systems every year. It's not that this system was the most expensive I've ever heard – it wasn't, though the analog front end might have been. But it was a very high level of gear expertly positioned in the right size room to allow my reaction to happen. Sure, it was a 45 rpm version of the LP, and it was a favorite song from that album, but the guy behind me then requested "The Last Chance Texaco" from that same album, another favorite. I surrendered the prime seat to him, took one just behind, and almost had an emotional replay.

The Potomac Room (47' x 43') is almost as large as my whole house and the ceiling is higher, so this system would not produce the same results for me even if I could afford it. And I'm not about to buy an amp with Russian tubes. But the opportunity to hear a state-of-the-art system is something I hope many others appreciated at the show. I've heard other, larger systems in this very room, but none had the magic of this one.

A few general specifics about the rig. The front end was an SAT XD1 turntable with a CF1 9Ti 9" tonearm. (It looked like a 9", anyway.) It had the special vibration-absorbing base but I'm unsure if it had the optional vacuum hold-down feature. Figure the price to be well above $300k. The phono cartridge appeared to be a Lyra Atlas Lambda. Below the turntable was the motor controller. And below that was Aurender streaming gear, though I only heard vinyl played during my visits. The preamp and phono stages were VAC Statement Line and Statement Phono Stage with separate power supplies on the shelves below.

The power amps were VAC Statement 450 iQ monoblocks. The speakers were the flagship Acora VRC available in six standard colors ($218k) and shown in Sunset Fire, one of several special stones at extra cost. Cabling was Cardas Clear Beyond, including the long extension cords that crossed the width of the room to Cardas Nautilus Power Strips with passive EMI / RFI filtering.

We will come upon this room again near the end of the show report where I'll have more to say about the new models he introduced at Toronto. While there were many fine rooms at the show at more affordable prices, from there it was all downhill. But stay with me. A lot of fun lies ahead. Now, back to the 8th Floor in numerical order.

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