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It was déjà vu all over again all over again (and again).Capital AudioFest was the fourth Show I have attended this season, only to encounter MBL North America's Jeremy Bryan demming the same system he had at SSI in Montreal, at Axpona in Atlanta, and at Axpona in New York: 101E Mk.2 speakers driven by 9011 monoblock amplifiers, a 6010D preamp, a 1621A CD transport, and a 1611F D/A converter. But this time, not only was the hotel carpet different (and uglier), the room was large enough to allow the omnidirectional speakers to sing as they should. Again I listened to "The Boy in the Bubble" from Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back CD, and the hi-rez solo piano recording made by MBL's Jürgen Reis, "Walchensee, Mondnacht," performed by Martin Vatter, from the album Klangbilder, played back from a server, and the highs were smooth and mellow without being rolled-off, just as they should be and are in real life, the imaging stable and accurately defined.

As well as listening to hi-rez digital files on the MBL system, I auditioned 15ips open-reel tapes from the Tape Project on a much modified Tascam recorder from United Home Audio. UHA's Greg Beron (that's Greg's hand in the photo) replaces the heads with low-impedance ones sourced from the company that supplies Abbey Road Studios in London, wired with single-crystal cable and silk-dielectric caps. A UHA machine costs $8000–$17,000 depending on the level of work the customer needs, and the machine is lined-up to be compatible with Tape Project tapes. Listening to a Decca orchestral recording of Suite Espanole, I was reminded how good analog tape playback could be. Even a mono Thelonious Monk cut from 50 years ago sounded fresh.

As you can see from my photo, it was pretty dark in the room hosted by Command Performance A/V, so I couldn't see who was discussing the state of high-end audio in the US. It turned out to be Joseph Audio's Jeff Joseph, Manley Labs' Eveanna Manley, and The Signal Collection's Chris Sommovigo. I write about the migration of audio manufacturing overseas in my forthcoming "As We See it" in the September issue, and both Joseph and Manley are proud that they still manufacture their products in the US—"We're based on Chino, not China," said Eveanna, though she admits that this does add a premium to the retail price that is an unwelcome downside given, as I wrote about in the April issue's "As We See It," the reduced spending power of the middle class these days.

But if the premium is accompanied by performance, it can be justified, and the system in the darkened room was providing much music, courtesy of Pure Music running on Jeff's MacBook Pro. As it had two weeks ago at the NYC Axpona, the laptop was sending USB data to a Bel Canto LightLink converter, which in turn fed the audio data via a low-jitter ST optical link to the Bel Canto DAC3.5VB. This was connected to a Manley Jumbo Shrimp tubed line stage and a pair of Manley Snapper 100W tube monoblocks ($7250/pair) via Cardas Clear interconnects and speaker cables. Speakers were the Joseph Perspective ($11,800/pair), which marries two magnesium-cone woofers to a Sonatex-dome tweeter. AC power was provided by Shunyata's new Talos ($3500, and also made in the US), which replaces the company's well-regarded V-Ray unit.

Listening to the Philharmonic speakers, I couldn't see a source. There was an AVA CD player but its display said "No Disc." There was a turntable but no LP playing. Then I saw an iPad in someone's hand. It was controlling Jim Salk's new StreamPlayer ($1295), the rightmost of the two small red-line-fronted boxes on top of the preamp in the photo. This is similar in concept to the Bryston BDP-1 we reviewed in June, in that it is a PC running Linux that is optimized for streaming audio from an external source, in this case Salk's own NAS drive (the left-most box), connected by Ethernet cable. Whereas the Bryston offers control buttons and a display, the Salk is controlled by a remote client running on an iPad, iPod Touch, Android phone, etc. The Salk StreamPlayer, which was sending audio data via USB to a Wavelength Cosecant DAC, will be available in October.

One of the first rooms I went into was that featuring products from The Signal Collection, the distribution company run by the affable Chris Sommovigo (right). Also in the room was Todd Garfinkel of M•A Recordings (left), who was using Chris's system to play the masters of some of his excellent-sounding recordings. (I mentioned below that M•A had made a sampler CD to be given ever attendee.) The speaker featured in the photo is the M3 Mk3 ($6499/pair) from Swedish manufacturer Transmission Audio, a floorstanding sibling of the standmounted M1i Ribbon Mini I had auditioned at the Atlanta Axpona last April. The M3 used two of the metal-cne woofers developed by Bo Bengtsson and Ted Jordan. Each woofer is loaded differently to give a two-a-half-way design. The crossover to the ribbon tweeter is set at 3kHz.

With the speakers driven by Klimo Tine class-A tube monoblocks ($8999/pair), a Klimo Merlino preamp ($6699), hooked up with Stereolab interconnects and speakers cables, I listened to some of Todd's DSD masters played back on his Korg MR2000 recorder, as well as a Red Book WAV file of a track from M•A's well-regarded Calamus: The Splendor of Al Andalus. Despite competing noise from a live band playing in an adjacent ballroom, the sound was open, and clear., with a wide soundstage.

"Sometimes I can evoke the breathless rush of feeling that I experienced the first time that I ever really heard Robert Johnson's music. Sometimes a note will suggest just a hint of the realms of emotion that opened up to me in that moment, the sense of utter wonder, the shattering revelation."—Peter Guralnick, from Searching for Robert Johnson (New York: Dutton Obelisk, 1989)

It's an experience that all true blues fans need to savor. Fly into Memphis, drive south on US 61, into Coahoma County, Mississippi, down to the Delta, down to Robert Johnson country. There, on one of those steamy nights when the moon is full and fog, or maybe restless spirits, rise from the cotton fields, you can drive down to his two graves, in two churchyards nearly within sight of each other. You can sit in the dark and listen to the trains that were his constant mode of transportation. And on the way back to Clarksdale, the Delta burgh where Bessie Smith passed, you can go down to the crossroads and judge for yourself. Romantics say you can feel, smell, and even hear Robert Johnson's music, if not his desperate deal, still hanging in the humid Mississippi air.

It was just a matter of time, I suppose. Almost exactly a year after Rega replaced their popular P1 record player with the upgraded RP1, the British company has introduced the new RP3.