Part 5: Rooms 601 To 633 At CAF 2024
More rooms, and more magical music!
Capital Audiofest 2024 Show Report By Rick Becker

Suite 632 Supreme Acoustic Systems
Stepping into Suite 632 I encountered tables with Hifistay racks and Western Electric amps on silent display. I forged on into the inner sanctum to discover a more modest rig with YG Acoustics' Tor speakers ($15k w/o stands) which are the larger of the two stand-mounted monitors in the Peaks Series with wood chassis.

A horn is machined into the front baffle around the tweeter like in the aluminum speakers, but the drivers are not as elaborate. The handsome stand was designed by YG for these speakers and appeared to be expensive.

The component stand looked more like a piece of real furniture than most audio racks. It housed a Soul Note A3 integrated amp ($23k) on top, a Soul Note Z3 Network Transport ($14.5k), and on the bottom shelf, a Gold Note DS-1000 Evo ($8k). All-in-all, this was a very nice-sounding rig.

Returning to the first room of this suite I admired the engineering work that had gone into the Hifistay racks I had been seeing.

A closer look at the detail reveals even more complexity. The platform in the upper part of the photo above was labeled "Perfect Point" and the compound foot of the pillar had fine print reading "AntiGravity" and "Ballerina 88 Triple Swing" which sound like difficult moves for any dancer or gymnast, even more so for an audiophile footer.

Also on static display was this gorgeous Western Electric monoblock with a 300B driver tube for the large tube behind it that looked like a new 211 tube from Western Electric. The small tube just to the left of the "WE" on the deck of the amp was also labeled "Western Electric" so there may be some new tubes rolling out of their Rossville Works in Georgia soon if they are not already available. Their website seems to be far behind their product offerings, judging from what I saw at CAF.

Western Electric was established in 1869 and petered out in the latter 1900s after a storied history. But interest in tube amplifiers wouldn't die. In 1996 the company was reborn with the production of the 300B tube first and eventually the 91E integrated amplifier that managed to squeeze 20 Watts out of each single 300B tube by using novel circuitry. Most amplifiers get only 8 Watts out of a 300B and my Eddie Wong monoblocks each get 16 to 18 Watts from a pair of parallel 300Bs. You would be correct in suspecting that I was excited to see the prototype of this new monoblock from Western Electric.

Trent Suggs of Western Electric noticed my interest and proceeded to give me the grand tour of the next couple of rooms which was very helpful, given the lack of signage.

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