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Part 10: Best Of Capital Audiofest 2024 Blue Note Awards
After 452 photos and over 41k words of copy submitted for Parts 1 though 9, it's time to salute some of the Best Rooms and make some Honorable Mentions. This has been the hardest Part of my chronicles to write. Not only were there 125 rooms, 15 tables, and 17 booths listed (though a couple of rooms were no-shows and I missed one other room, and some of the booths in the Atrium were filed at the last minute while others remained empty), but good sound quality and musicality were easy to find. We all have our personal sense of what constitutes those values and I won't go down that rabbit hole. I encourage you to read the summaries of other journalists for comparison. We don't all think or listen alike, nor do the manufacturers. While some of last year's Best Rooms are not on this year's list, that's mostly because the competition has increased. There is a lot of outstanding and interesting gear available at all price points and I hope my chronicles have pointed out some that interest you. To further that end, I've included a list of Honorable Mentions that may have had only a single item of particular interest, or a room that reached a quality level just short of Best Of Capital Audiofest 2024 Blue Note Award status. I had to make a lot of tough decisions with those. It is certainly more fun to write about each room and spread the word about new products – the participants have spent big bucks and expended considerable energy to participate in the show. They deserve such acknowledgment and the press, by and large, overlooks many of them. My allegiance is to the readers and the participants, regardless of whether they have been or become advertisers. While it is tough to balance those two entities with integrity, it's what I try to do. Here we go, listed from the top floor downward as
presented in Parts 1 through 9. The rooms are hyper-linked to the page on which
they appear, though you may have to scroll down a bit.
Honorable Mentions: CAF 2024
Standouts 823 Infigo Audio & Alta Audio with the new Alta Aphrodite speaker with open baffle mids & tweeter 841 Alma Audio for the Technics SC-CX700 all-in-one monitor 849 Alma Audio & Well Pleased AV for the Qln monitor 852 Synergistic Research & Scott Walker Audio for educational acoustic demonstrations 703 Audience AV with their small monitor that doesn't know it's small 719 Robyatt Audio with the Quad 2912 speaker 723 Audio Group Denmark for the AXXESS affordable series 749 Theoretica Applied Physics where I finally sat in the sweet spot and 'got it.' 615 MACO for their high-quality open baffle speaker 630 Supreme Acoustic Systems for the best sounding YG speaker at the show 637 Wells Audio for the best I've heard a YG Peaks series speaker 644 Eastern Bay Sound for an affordable single-driver monitor with niche styling 661 DC HiFi Group for an interesting entry-level presentation 308 Philharmonic Audio & Alexus Sonus for outstanding entry-level speakers 325 Gestalt Audio for Cinnamon phono stage and open baffle speaker
Enjoy the Music.com and Rick Becker would like to congratulate the many outstanding pieces of high-end audio gear above for Honorable Mentions. They were without a doubt a step above and we want to congratulate them all for special mention.
Best Of Capital Audiofest 2024 Blue Note
Awards
819 Hear This (Von Schweikert Model 30 speaker) 836 Perfect 8 (Glass speakers) 855 Luxury Audio Group (Vitus and Estelon) 633 Supreme Acoustic Systems (Western Electric amplification with Albedo speaker) 312 Blink High End (Audio Group Denmark) 315 Triangle Art (complete Triangle system) Twinbrook MBL (MBL system with United Home Audio tape deck) Montrose Odyssey (an Odyssey and Symphonic Line system with VPI analog) Madison Gershman & VAC (with VPI analog) Wilson The Voice That Is (Tidal system with Dohmann analog) Lincoln High End by OZ & House of Stereo (Viva electronics with Stenheim speaker) Jackson Bending Wave (Riviera amplification, Gobel speaker, Wadax, and Shunyata) Executive Lounge Now Listen Here (Vandersteen speakers and amplification) Montgomery House of Stereo (Focal Diva Utopia) Potomac VAC & The Audio Company (with Acora speakers and SAT analog)
I look forward to seeing you all at the Montreal Audiofest 2025 from March 28th through 30th. Until then, have a safe journey, and as always...
Enjoy the Music!
---> Back to the main Capital Audiofest 2024 show report homepage.
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