Inside CAF 2025 Luxury Hi-Fi Show Part 2 — Capital Audiofest's Large Exhibit Rooms And Lobby Displays
Fresh trends, the hottest audio equipment, and rooms everyone's talking about.
Capital Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

20/20 Evolution Systems And Truitt Physics
As a fan of Kharma speakers for decades, I was delighted to visit this room to find their Exquisite Midi Grand Signature towers ($330k) playing. You're not likely to find these at a brick & mortar store. Their Plan B, for the rest of us, was the Elegance dB9-S ($50k) with all-midi wiring in the popular aubergine finish. The music from the towers was indeed exquisite.

The Kharma were driven by Conrad-Johnson ART-300M class A/B Limited Edition updated amps ($45k/pr?), unfortunately, out of focus in the front row. These are not your father's Conrad-Johnson amps. The days of classic tube warm, mellow sound are behind them. This was as modern a rig as any at the show, and superior to most.

The amp in the middle was a hot-rodded Premier 350 stereo amp with Truitt Physics upgrades ($40k). The rack on the right held a TW-Acustic Raven Anniversary with Black Knight upgrades equipped with a Raven 10.5 tonearm. The cartridge was a CAR-50 ($10.8k) from Kuzma. Below it were the C-J ART Phono (Limited Edition) and ART-88 Pre-Amplifier (Limited Edition), each $30k. On the bottom shelf was a SW1X VDT IV Special Valve Digital Transport & Streamer. (The VDT V is priced at $81.9k, so the IV will be a little less, presumably.)

Over on the left were the SW1X DAC V Classic ($68k), the Taiko Olympus I/O input/output interface, and the Olympus server, their flagship products ($100k, for both). As the lights were on for both of these, I presume they are what I heard. This is one of the most highly regarded servers in the high end, so I'm sure it did not let the rest of the system down.

Enjoy the Music.com has reported on the Kharma speakers many times over the years, and here they are worth another look and listen. Cabling was listed as Siltech Double Crown and Kimber Kable KS Select. The stands were from Artesania. The light on the stands was the Reliable Uberlight Frame, seen all over the show.

High End by Oz 
Ozan Turan gave me the rundown on his minimalist system that sounded very good in spite of the untreated room. It was basically just two parts—the speakers and the 'amp'.

The Thrax speaker was comprised of the silver monitor (Thrax Lyra bookshelf, $28k) that goes down to 34Hz on its own. It has 90dB efficiency, so you don't need a massive amp. The black subwoofer modules ($18k/pr) below act as a stand, and bring the price of the full speaker system to $46k. It's pre-wired. You can bring your speaker cables to either the monitor and loop down to the bass, or to the bass module and loop up to the monitor, depending on how you wish to drape your cables. Both modules are sealed, acoustic suspension designs.

The speaker cables were Albedo silver Reference cables, and the power cord was an Albedo Gravity 2. The power distribution box was from Sin Audio in Bulgaria, as is the Thrax gear. Bulgaria is another of our NATO partners.

The Thrax Enyo modular system was an all-tube, true dual-mono amp delivering 50 Watts in Class A. The output tubes were two GU50 Russian tubes per channel, which cannot be exchanged for another tube. The designer doesn't want tube rolling, as it changes the sound. The GU-50 is a strange tube that was designed in Germany, but after WW II, it was manufactured in Poland, where supplies still exist. It didn't become an ‘audiophile' tube until the collapse of the Soviet Union. A Chinese version (FU-50) is still in production, but Thrax prefers you use the "Russian" version.

The Enyo has a built-in DAC, built-in streamer, and a built-in MM/MC phono stage. There's a home theater by-pass. It has AirPlay and Bluetooth for streaming. Just add speakers, which he did. It's a modular design, so you can update the DAC or streamer in the future. I didn't catch the price of the Enyo, but it could be around $15k for the basic integrated amp, and maybe $25k with the DAC and Phono stages. The Innuos server below was not in service.

Oz insisted on streaming a song for me, but when he couldn't find the excellent live version of George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone", we went with a studio recording. It was "Bad" alright—"Bad to the Vinyl." So Oz insisted I listen to an 'audiophile-approved' recording that revealed what this potent combination of components can do. For someone who isn't afraid to put all their eggs in one chassis, the Enyo is easy to recommend. Yes, there is a remote control, and yes, there are reviews out there.

On a table running down one side of the room, Oz had examples of other Thrax amplifiers. He's been showing this line for years now.

Bending Wave And EMM Labs
Bending Wave is both a retailer in Boca Raton, FL, north of Miami, a distributor of Goebel speakers from Germany, and always warm and welcoming to Enjoy the Music.com. That's because Oliver Goebel has a foot on both shores. I was impressed when I first heard Goebel speakers at AXPONA before COVID. That impression was further solidified here with the tall Divin Noblesse ($269k) driven by Emm Labs amplification, another world-class brand.

The music was a techno LP I was not familiar with, and the synth beat sounded pretty much like a synthesizer, but man, did that speaker move air. There was continuity of resolution, air, and power from top to bottom, and that bottom was low. It is not common to find a speaker with such air in the bass. Perhaps that comes in part from the four ports around each woofer that keep the back pressure even on the large cone. I've seen that approach taken a couple of times recently by other manufacturers.

With an efficiency of 95dB and impedance of 4 Ohms (3.8 Ohms at 100Hz minimum), you wouldn't think an amp of such power as the Emm Labs MTRX2 V2 would be necessary, but the speaker never flinched, and the music never wavered. It was as rock solid as live music and as present as music is likely to be at a dance club. This is actually their mid-size reference speaker. The Devin Majestic ($600k) is even larger. If you need more bass, their subwoofer looks like four clowns could climb out of it.

All of the gear appeared to be from Emm Labs in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, even the TX1 CD transport at the upper right. Only the unit in the lower right corner raised doubt about the origin. Oh, that was a Revox tape recorder with a SonoruS badge and modification on top of the rack, too.

The Clearaudio Reference Jubilee Limited Edition, from Germany, was in use, fitted with an optical DS Audio Grand Master EX cartridge—top-of-the-line, whose signal was handled by the Emm Labs phono stage. (My original photo is higher resolution than what you see here, and what looks like the cartridge is actually its reflection on the surface of the LP.) The ‘tower' on the left was the DS Audio ION-001 Vinyl Ionizer that removes static from the LP, creating a quieter background.

It was late in the afternoon, and I needed to press on, but I wished I could have pulled out my George Thorogood Live LP.

Audio Group Denmark
No stranger to Enjoy the Music.com, sliding into the Audio Group Denmark room for the familiar vista across a Danish bay, I met Lars Kristensen again and sat down for some more techno music requested by another visitor.

The music here was almost the same sound quality as the Jackson room I had just left, except the bass from those huge woofers had more punch in the room that was only about a quarter of the size of this one. The Borresen A3 Bass Module ($21k, ea.) seen here, incorporates four custom 8" drivers in a folded dipole design driven by internal Class D amplification. It was as tight and focused as the Goebel speaker and had a substantial amount of air in the bass, but it lacked the force of the Goebel speaker in this much larger room. The Eisenhower room is one of the biggest in the hotel, second perhaps, to the Potomac room off the Atrium. Its lower ceiling belies its footprint.

The speaker here was the Borresen M2 ($199.5k/pr.), and it had the exquisite, slender profile of all the Borresen speakers, save the entry-level speakers from Audio Group Denmark.

With the red lights were the Aavik SD-588 streamer/DAC (left), I-588 preamplifier (top right), and P-588 Class D power amp with 300 Wpc at 8 Ohms, 600 Wpc at 4 Ohms (below). Each unit was $30k. The D3 Ansuz boxes were power control units ($10k, $5,250, and $6,930. Interconnects were $12k/1m, and speaker cables were $19,640/2m.

A smaller second system was at the other end of the room with Borresen C3 speakers ($40k), and an Aavik all-in-one U-288 amplifier ($30k). An Ansuz Mainz8 C3 power conditioner was $6,750, interconnects C3 were $4,500/1m, and speaker cables C3 were $9,966/2m. I didn't get to hear this system, but it is sure to please at its price point, and doesn't give up as much sound quality as the price differential suggests. (I've heard systems from Audio Group Denmark at virtually every show and heard most of their gear at one point or another. It rarely disappoints, and when it does, the room is usually to blame.

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