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

Valve Amplification Company (VAC) And Acora Acoustics
This being Sunday, the room was empty when I arrived, a far cry from the LP presentation the previous evening. Val Cora had brought the same palatial backdrop he had used in Toronto a month earlier in a much smaller room. Here, with the speakers 20' out from the front wall in this room that is 43' across, there was a vast soundstage, and the trompe-l'œil effect was much more convincing, by which I mean the sound seemed to extend beyond the actual front wall into the vintage library. In this case, I guess you could say it fools the ear as much as it fools the eye.

As Enjoy the Music.com has reported for many years at high-end audio / luxury audiophile events during past years, and as with other loudspeakers, VAC has used larger amplifiers or multiple amps to bi-amplify the loudspeakers. Here, the large Master 300 iQ monoblocks putting out 300 Watts in mono mode were sufficient to provide convincing volume through the 94dB/W/m efficient Acora Acoustics VRC speaker. The stone used was Mari Blue, an exotic stone priced $100k above the standard $218k price point. It portrayed wealth more than almost any speaker in Piano Gloss Black. Val prefers to use Cardas cables, and the equipment list below confirms that.

On the Acora Acoustic granite racks to the side of the room were the front ends on the left with the SAT turntable on top, with the Aurender streamer below and the black LampizatOr Genya amp on the bottom shelf. The Genya is a poor man's Poseidon, with every dollar spent on sound quality without any frills or visual embellishment…or tall tubes that require it to be placed on top of a rack. On the horizontal rack were the VAC Statement Phono Preamplifier and Statement Line Preamplifier, each with its dual-mono power supplies directly below. Be sure to read Enjoy the Music.com's Acora Acoustics QRC 2 floorstanding loudspeaker review.

The SAT turntable and tonearm are statement products.

The Lyra Atlas cartridge is also highly esteemed. Note the ground wire that plugs into the side of the headshell.

Quite simply, this was one of the best rooms at the show, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has been hanging out in the high end. Yet it makes me thirst for the next great speaker to come from Acora.

On one side of the large mezzanine in front of the Potomac room, VAC and Acora set up a display of their more affordable speakers and amps. On the other side of the mezzanine was a display of colorful in-ear monitors from T10 Bespoke.

The Atrium
Starting at the bottom of the grand staircase leading to the Atrium floor, we begin a tour of the periphery, then wander to some of the inner tables.

All Elite Audio
All Elite Audio has a new store in Timonium, MD, on the north side of Baltimore, where they sell vintage and more recent used gear.

STAX Limited
Douglas Ipm above, makes the rounds of audio shows with his Stax headphone brand.

MA Recordings
Todd Garfinkle is a regular on the audio show circuit, too.

Headamp

Pilot Radio
By mid-afternoon on Sunday, Pilot Radio was packing up. Enjoy the Music.com recently had a World Premiere Review of their Pilot Radio vacuum tube stereo Preamplifier. Pilot Radio was a start-up by the grandson of the owner of the original Pilot Radio company, which was in business from 1917 to the early 1970s.

They manufacture a vintage-looking tube preamp and power amplifier and are now based in Texas. Maybe they sold off their display models?

Ann Bisson
Anne Bisson, another regular, was selling and signing CDs and LPs while sharing space with Kirmuss Audio.

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