Capital AudioFest 2024

What’s in a name? Joe Finn of Timonium, Maryland’s Gramophone clearly knows the answer. He brought a compact system to CAF, one stocked with overachieving gear and equally ambitious cables, courtesy of AudioQuest.

Source component was a HiFi Rose RS150B streamer ($5000) into a Chord Ultima Integrated amplifier ($11,250), driving either Totem Element Metal V2 speakers ($17,850/pair) or Totem Tribe Tower speakers ($6300/pair).

AudioQuest cables and conditioning included AQ Mackenzie XLR ($369/pair), and AQ Rocket 88 bi-wire ($1289.95/8 foot pair), as well as AQ NRG Y-3 power cables ($150/each) with an AQ PowerQuest 707 power conditioner ($1300). A Solidsteel rack ($2000/est.) held this bevy of audio goodness.

Kudos to Finn for playing one of my favorite ambient albums, Beck’s Mourning Phase, which sounded clean, midrangey, and somewhat ghostly over the smaller Totem Tribe Towers, which I mistook for the larger Totem Element Metal V2 speakers; the sound was so big and open.

Finn also streamed Eva Cassidy (please, make it stop), Bob James (mighty funky in here), Lapalux’s electronic pop (shake it don’t break it), and Peter Coincotti’s “Sway,” which had all the earmarks of a coming audiophile classic.

This was a fun room, and the tiny Totem Tribe Towers knocked me sideways.