Listening to music in the Emia Labs room was one of those moments when I was reminded of how very little I know—that and how distressingly easy it has become for me to acclimate to different levels of audio goodness when confronted with different levels of build quality and design ingenuity. Earlier in my first day at Capital Audiofest 2018, I had heard other things I had thought were very good—and they were, in their way. But listening through the Emia system to recordings I know well—especially LP reissues from the Electric Recording Company, which co-sponsored the Emia room—was an experience far in advance of most.

By the time I arrived in Rockville, MD—a personal commitment kept me away until around 2:00pm on Friday— Capital Audiofest 2018 was already in full swing, with brisk traffic in the halls of the Rockville Hilton, and standing room only in some of the exhibits.

My first stop was the room sponsored by a new loudspeaker manufacturer called IMC Audio...

Tuesday, November 6, Basil Audio (22183 Villa Oaks Lane, Saratoga, CA 95070) is holding its first annual "It's About the Music" event. The open house will begin at 10am, with demonstrations available until 10pm. Representatives from Focal, Naim Audio, and McIntosh Laboratory will be on hand to demonstrate their products and answer questions. Manufacturer presentations will take place 7–9pm. Among the highlights will be the first North American demonstration of Melco's N100 Digital Music Library.

Virtually all of the active components in your system—DACs, preamplifiers, power amplifiers—work by modulating the DC output of their power supplies with an AC music signal. Surely, then, the more perfect your household AC is, the more perfect your audio system's output will be. Analogies abound—to dirty water used in distilling good whiskey, to inferior thread used to weave fine fabrics—and all amount to the same thing: you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Sometimes, I feel I'm two people. One, a card-carrying audiophile, is always looking for ways to optimize his enjoyment of multichannel music recordings, a purist pursuit that begins with file playback and leads to DACs, amps, and speakers, while eschewing anything that can complicate or compromise the sound. Thus, while his main system may seem elaborate to outsiders, to him it seems streamlined: NAS>player>DAC>preamp>power amps>speakers. In fact, it's possible to combine the NAS and player in a single device, if that device's CPU and RAM are capable of doing all the tasks—but these product categories continue to evolve so quickly that he prefers to keep them discrete.

Thursday November 1, 6–9pm, Atlanta specialty audio retailer HiFi Buys Atlanta (3157 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA) will have an open house featuring special guest Richard Vandersteen, founder and head engineer of Vandersteen Audio. Richard, along with global sales manager Brad O’Toole, will demonstrate the System 9 (above), featuring the new Sub Nine subwoofers and System 9 granite bases, the Quatro Wood CT loudspeakers with the new M5-HPA high-pass amplifiers, and the new Sub Three adjustable subwoofer with the Treo CT loudspeakers.

To celebrate its fifth birthday, Southern California retailer Audio Element (117 East Union Street, Pasadena, CA 91103) is having an open house on Saturday, November 3, from 11am–4pm. Featured will be new products from dCS (the Bartók D/A headphone amplifier), Musical Surroundings (the Nova III phono preamplifier and Hana ML phono cartridge), and Wilson Audio (the Sasha DAW loudspeaker).