Reminder: The Capital Audiofest is this weekend

F1nut

Today and tomorrow, be there!

http://www.capitalaudiofest.com/

mdaudioguy

Had a fun time there last year, but other obligations won't allow for me to be there today. Tomorrow's still up in the air, but I'll make it if I can!

That said, if you're in the area and enjoy getting ears and eyes on a lot of different gear (you ain't gonna see this stuff at Best Buy!), I definitely recommend heading over.

Strong Bad

I'm rolling out in the morning to get there right around when they open, 10am. In addition to Polk, there's a few on my list to see, like Woo Audio. Got my sights set on a Tube Headamp.

F1nut

Here's a few pics and comments from the show.



Polk LSiM 707's and 703's sounded great! They are being driven by Bel Canto gear and connected with MIT cables. Really sweet set up, if I say so myself. The 703's bass is so good that more than a few thought the 707's were playing.



The LSiM 707's bi-wired with MIT Oracle cables.



A close up of the MIT Oracle network box....magic stuff in there.



Tidal speakers and a DCS stack. I didn't really care for the sound last year, but I think they were a different model speaker. This year the sound simply moved me.



The bigger of the two, the T-3.4 from Classic Audio has amazingly tight bass with a silky smooth presentation that just sounds right. Very enjoyable.



Atma-Sphere tube power driving the Classic Audio speakers.



This was the first time I've heard this gear from Paolo Audio. 30 watts of tube power driving those single driver speakers resulted in surprisingly good sound. The remote is a round wooden box that has no buttons. It works by holding it up and rotating it with your hand 90 degrees one way to increase the volume and 90 degrees the other way to decrease. Pretty trick.

No photos, just a comment....

One of my favorites from last year was Soundfield Audio. The funky looking large speakers he had last year were damn good and the monitors were impressive for their size. This year, no monitors and the new two box design he brought simply didn't do it. Sorry AJ, those 20+ year old SDA's have got you soundly beat.



If you're local, you owe it to yourself to stop by on Sunday. I promise it's well worth your time.

BlueFox

Polk is using a music server as the source? What DAC are they using? Any high-res files, or just CD quality?

F1nut

Yes, a music server and a Bel Canto CD transport with a Bel Canto DAC.

headrott

Thanks for the pictures and comments Jesse.

treitz3

Hello, Jesse. Tom here. Would you happen to have a personal pick for "best of show"?

Strong Bad

Just got home from the Audiofest. VERY impressive showcase of serious gear!

The new Polk LSiM 707's are outstanding. Mark brought in his BBQ amp and replaced the one you see in Jesse's photo above (bottom shelf). I took my MOFI version of The Cars "Candy O" and let that go on the big boys. Those Polk engineers really got those things spot on.

The main thing I was interested in was the Woo Audio headamps. The Woo folks are super nice and go out of their way to help ya. I found my "Holy Grail" and it's the Woo Audio WA6-SE headamp. I plugged in my Sennheiser HD600 cans and the Woo lit 'em up in all the right ways. Very powerful, smooth, detailed and extremely open sounding. I tested out a couple other models above and below the WA6-SE...but they couldn't match it.

Mark pulled me into the United Audio room and I was blown away! This is some VERY serious gear that I can't afford! The reel to reel was phenomenal. The speakers simply disappeared into the music. Quite amazing actually!

Speaking of Mark, was great to see him and shoot the bull after several years. I'll see ya at the Fest in Sept!

dorokusai

We were using a MacBook Pro ala Pure Music in conjunction with iTunes into a black box prototype BelCanto DAC(24/192 USB), into a BelCanto 2.5 DAC, into BelCanto REF1000 Monoblocks. The reproduction was flawless. The files were as hi-res as you can find and own. MIT provided all but the computer cabling to include Oracle level speaker cable which is in person....more than impressive.

We had a BelCanto CD3t for the folks that brought media and had more than one stellar demo from walk-ins. My two favorite attendees Mike and Lisa from NYC came again and as always, brought me some notable music selections since they're seriously the sole reason I asked for a CDP in the first place. They don't believe me but it's true folks. The CD3t was a bit quirky and would stop loading after about 6 hours of being powered on nonstop. This is due to a capacitor problem and a power cable disconnect solves the problem thanks to BelCanto's late night technical support served with a cocktail. It usually happened at the worst time but at least we figured out how to fix it.

We also had a problem with Pure Music in that we didn't know the Advanced(PRO) menu existed and accidentally turned PM into MUTE mode. It threw a huge curveball for us for a good while. THANKFULLY, Scott Hull(Part Time Audiophile Webzine) knew Robert Robinson, who designed Pure Music and because of a good tshirt giveaway call by yours truly AND a promise to play the entire first album from ABBA....he personally contacted Rob, who was actually at the show. Rob and his beautiful companion Claudia came down and trained Steve and myself on PM and all the cool features. That guy is crazy nice and we all listened and extolled the virtues of hi-res audio against the multiple versions of Neil Young's Heart of Gold. We had every version but the DSD lick and it was very cool to A B them so quickly and easily. Robert has the DSD version and hopefully we will as well down the road.

I missed my Audio Research gear but the BelCanto changed my opinion on ClassD amplifiers. And they're a bit more than ClassD but that takes some street explanation from PJ Zornosa, the BC rep and Jedi of all things BelCanto. It's tight to say the least and while I'm not SOLD...I have a better opinion of that brand across the board.

Audience provided another power conditioner but honestly the in tow MIT Z Powerbar sounded just as good and had more outlets. Kevin Kemp, the local Audience rep was solid and very cool to meet and hang out with at the show.

The Crowne Plaza hotel was just great with support and this was by far the best CAF so far. My homeboy Gary Gill(CAF Organizer) and his entire family support the show with manual labor to say the least and could not be nicer. Mama Gill, brother Mike, nephew Jon and the list goes on. This family really kicks ****. Not only does he setup this event but he's a helluva trombone player when they do the freeform music event each night.

We gave Polk Audio bags away at the front desk this year, much to the dismay of the entire event since they had to be constantly reminded of us at every turn....that or MIT Cables. It was hilarious. We will not be ignored.

There's sooo much to talk about but I'm soooo exhausted from all of this. I could not have done this without the local support of our resident Wood Jedi, Jesse(F1Nut) and from a couple key Polk warriors Steve Odimeiher(Texas based Polk Regional Sales Representative) and Fred Donohue(BWI Kiosk Manager and Polk Swiss Army Tool @ HQ)

Standout rooms for me were Joseph Audio, Daedalus, Paulo Audio, ZU Audio, Kanso Audio Furniture, Woo Audio, Cathedral and Classic Audio loudspeakers. All of them did really great things and I wouldn't hesitate to visit them again. Not to mention they had real down to earth folks who didn't mind chatting for a few minutes....or longer.

BEST EVENT EVER....and Best in Show for me would be the Classic Audio room playing the REMIX(No Vocals) of The Human League's "Don't You Want Me" on vinyl. It was AWESOME.

Other Noteables:

Cadillac Sky - Blind Man Walking
The Other Side - Chuck Brown & Eva Cassidy
Widor - Symphony #5 - Conductor Peter Heilford(sp?)
Janiva Magness(sp?) - What Love Will Do
Mainliners - Jim Christopher & Brown Burnett
Balanced Power Technologies Demo 2008
Robert Lucas - .....can't read what I wrote

And my favorite on OUR speakers,

AACS Annapolis Area Christian School - "Blessing" - by Recording/Sound Engineer Bob Keiser who brought the only copy in existence to the show. Bob miked and recorded this track so hopefully offline it will become a part of Polk's list of playables. He and his wife Crys were super nice and we talked extensively about all kinds of things Polk Audio and general audio nonsense.....lovely folks.

mark

leroyjr1

Sounds like fun.

schwarcw

Sorry I missed the show this year. I just had too many family events going on. I went last year and loved it. It looks like it was a great time.

Thanks to Mark, Jessse and all the Polkies that helped with the Polk Audio room. I look forward to next year.

Jesse, nice writeup of your impressions.

BlueFox

I hope F1 enjoyed the music server playing digital files, and he didn't grind his teeth at the blasphamy.

F1nut

More pics and comments.....



The Joseph Audio Pulsar monitor...sounds as good as it looks.



Joseph Audio towers with Bel Canto gear. I thought the JA speakers sounded better last year driven with Manley tube gear, but they were still damn good. They are easy speakers to live with.



I forgot the name, but the tube gear was all hand built in Japan.



Close up of the Japanese hand built tube pre amp.



Close up of the Japanese hand built tube integrated amp.



The 50 watt tube mono block amps are from Audio Power Labs. The eye candy factor is off the charts. They also had a 200 watt mono block version that I somehow forgot to take a picture of. The tubes in those were huge!



The end.


Mark did a great job with the show again and it was a pleasure to met and hang out with Steve even though he played that same damn Bela Fleck song at least a 100 times. I also enjoyed meeting Paul from Paolo Audio and I hope he sells some of his gear, so that his wife lets him continue with his dream. And last but not least, since I don't suffer with ADD, I will not have a music server playing digital files in my rigs.

W WALDECKER

I arrived at the Polk Audio room at just before noon on saturday. i saw Mark/Doro for a few seconds and then i was chatting with another Polk representative.John Atkinson of Stereophile magazine was there listening and taking notes.i asked the rep if he would play the 1st track from Zappas Transfusion CD that i brought with me.he obliged and it sounded excellent through the Flagship LSiM 707s. when the track was over Mr Atkinson asked me for the name of the CD and then he wrote it into his notebook.i read his Stereophile magazine coverage of the PolkAudio room at the CAF and John Atkinson mentioned how well the LSiM 707s handled Zappas guitar lead from the Transfusion CD.I met Mr Atkinson last year at the CAF and after the show he played electric Bass on five songs with the live Jazz band of Gary Gill the gentleman who runs the Capitol AudioFest.Mark/Doro and the other guys from Polk are very professional and did a great job with the room and the setup.they did a fine job at CAF last year as well.Thanks Guys.

F1nut

A link to the Stereophile show review, http://www.stereophile.com/content/capital-audiofest151day-two-morning

strider

Nice job, guys. The Polk room got some good word of mouth on the interweb. I especially liked this one:

Polk: Some of the best sound I heard, and from a $1500/pr bookshelf no less. Didn’t hear the flagship floorstander. Saw a pic someone took where the bookshelves were gone so apparently the towers did get some play time. Polk is the Rodney Dangerfield of high end, they don’t get the respect they deserve.

RuSsMaN

Love it. Way to rep guys. Great pics Jesse.

polkfarmboy

Them MIT cables are expensive

dorokusai

I asked my MIT contact about getting Oracle level cables one day. He said that they had a lot of them lent out for shows and whatnot, so that probably wouldn't be possible. Low and behold, when I received the boxes on Tuesday, they were heavier than expected. Dude....they MUST have sent the low end right? NOPE. $22K speaker cables rocked CAF 2012 this year. The speaker barrels are huge and the interface between the network box(Billet aluminum and at least 20 lbs.) and the actual cable is terminated with a huge MIL-Spec connector. It was sick....and completely overkill since all we had was $4K worth of speakers to connect but in usual MIT fashion....they sounded awesome. Is there a difference between the $22K lineup and my current $1K Shotgun's? I'll let you hear that for yourself down the road but in reality it doesn't matter since I could never spend that kind of money on a small part of my rig anyways.

I'll also have some give away's from CAF to send to Polkies for a charity raffle or just flat out goodies coming up in the next week. I always yank trick show stuff off the truck for Polkies. I have an 8ft Polk Audio banner and some signed Matt Polk literature from the LSiM press release junket.....to name a couple. And a few tshirts that I saved.....but they were the same as last year. I left a huge box of stuff for the staff at Crowne Plaza since they took care of us so well and that should grease the wheels for next year as well!! LOL. For the folks that were supposed to get Small and Large shirts last year, Gary accidentally gave them away at CAF as goodies since we didn't meet up fast enough on Thursday. I've kept your addresses on DYMO labels for a year, hoping to get them this year so for that I'm sorry. I did really try and get you guys squared away but it wasn't in the cards.

polkfarmboy

:cheesygrin: I was wondering what happened to that size S shirt lol