LATEST ADDITIONS

Perhaps you've heard this before, but it bears repeating: Veteran exhibitors and attendees alike have a great deal of loyalty and affection for this seven-year-old show and its busy founder, Gary Gill. I was reminded of that during my very first stop on day one of Capital AudioFest 2017, when Kevin Hayes of VAC described the reasoning behind the decision to assemble such a large, expensive, and distinctly ambitious playback system: "In light of the move to this time of year, we wanted to help Gary and the show by doing something exceptional." The result: a system built around the mighty Von Schweikert Audio Ultra 11 loudspeaker ($295,000/pair), powered by two pairs of VAC's Statement 450 iQ monoblock power amplifiers ($120,000/pair).

That is me you see hanging out the car window like an old hound dog—ears flappin' in the slipstream—a big smile on my face. I am happy in the wind 'cause I am heading down to Rockville, Maryland to Capital Audio fest (starting today, November 3, and running though Sunday November 5) where I will see at least 60 fine audio rooms and I'll chatter on a panel about "The Virtues of Vintage" with old pals, Art Dudley, Joe Roberts, and Blackie Pagano. I'll be cruising the Rockville Hilton Hotel halls meeting new people and visiting the rooms of some old and (hopefully) some new friends. Tickets for entry are only $20 a day or $30 for the whole weekend.

Prelude
The setting of the Prelude to our opera, The Margules Saga, is the California Audio Show, in August 2012. There, on first hearing Margules Audio's tube electronics, I wrote in my notebook, "great inner vitality, warm but with a welcome and appropriate bite." An encounter the following January inspired me to write, of a system that included an earlier version of the company's U280 amplifier, "The sound? Beautiful and warm. I've heard these electronics at two shows, and each time, I've left the room feeling good."

For all the stir over newly excavated tapes by Bill Evans (and the stir is justified), the heart of his discography—the stuff for which he's most celebrated now and will likely be for eons to come—beats in the albums he recorded on the Riverside label from 1956–62. All 10 of Evans' albums from this period, plus a Cannonball Adderley album featuring him as sideman, are included in a limited-edition boxed set by Analogue Productions—Chad Kassem's audiophile reissue house in Salina, Kansas—mastered at 45rpm (so the 11 albums are spread out on 22 discs).

Halloween Music: It Was a Graveyard Smash!

Direct From Cleveland
Orchestral works by De Falla, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz
The Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel (cond.)
Telarc 5020 DD1 (LP). Robert Woods, prod.; Jack Renner, sound eng.; Glenn Glancy, Michael Bishop, disc-cutting engs.

Potentially the best news for perfectionists in years is the announcement of the first stereophonic direct-to-disc recording (in the US, at least) of a major symphony orchestra. Advent records of Cleveland, in collaboration with Discwasher, Inc. of Columbia, MO put four complete and usable runsthrough onto two sets of lacquers. The program was a collection of potboilers—what Sir Thomas Beecham used to call "lollypops"—much of it musically rather trivial, but all ideally suited for demonstrating what a no-holds barred recording can do in terms of sonics: works with bass drum, percussion, deep double-bass material, rich string sonorities" and so on.

From a small regional show, Gary Gill's seven-year old Capital Audiofest has grown into the East Coast Show of 2017. Set for November 3–5 in the Hilton Hotel Twinbrook in Rockville, MD, CAF will offer 57 exhibit rooms spread over three floors plus the hotel Atrium. That amounts to 93 exhibitors and over 200 brands, including a CanMania with 20 headphone vendors. For a show that, just last year, maxed out at 40 rooms with 65 exhibitors and 85 brands, this represents major growth.