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Can you judge an exhibitor's products by the music he plays? Perhaps not, but when I walk into a room playing "Hotel California," that mad percussion ditty "Music for Bang, Baa-Room and Harp," 90s grunge (footnote 1), or God No! Jazz at the Pawnshop, it's all I can do to stay put and not scream.

Treehaus Audiolab’s Richard Pinto has the good taste to not play absolute drek and the astute inner vibrations to play music that sounds good, is well-recorded, interesting, and thoughtful. I heard Fleet Foxes from the hallway. As I entered Pinto’s room, he continued with St. Vincent’s…

The Hear This room included products from Von Schweikert Audio, WestminsterLab, Lampizator, Small Green Computer, Sonore, and MasterBuilt.

Streaming varied music from Ipad—Yoyo Ma covering "Ava Maria," Creed’s "Arms Wide Open," Donny Hathaway’s "The Ghetto,"—the sound was crisp with strong leading edges and air, air, air.

Source components included a Lampizator Horizon ($49,000), Small Green Computer sonicTransporter i9 Optical (Gen3)($2999), and a Sonore Signature Rendu SE optical ($4950).

Amplification was WestminsterLab Class A Monoblock Amplifiers ($32,900/…

Ampsandsound is perhaps best known for his amplifiers made to drive either headphones or loudspeakers. (See for example Herb Reichert's Gramophone Dreams #47.) At this show, however, Ampsandsound manufacturer/designer Justin Weber was showing his Arches monoblocks ($50,000/pair), which put out up to 65W each with KT-88 tubes or 85W each with KT-150 tubes.

The other components in the system were the bold-and-black Ampsandsound Yellowstone Preamplifier ($35,000), a VPI Avenger Direct turntable ($36,000), and an Aurender A20 Music Server ($14,000). Loudspeakers were the Acora QRC-1…

If you're a fan of my Stereophile scribble, you know I don't consider myself a fan of stuff like DSP processing, digital amplification, spatial reconstruction, or active room correction—all of which play an important role with Bill Dudleston’s Legacy Audio loudspeakers.

So you could have knocked me over with a flea-watt tube amplifier when I heard Dudleston's Legacy Aeris ($23,400/pair), Legacy Focus XD ($15,200), and Legacy Signature XD ($11,200) loudspeakers. I was floored. This was one of the best-sounding rooms I've heard so far at CAF 2023.

Whether playing Shelby…

On A Higher Note’s Philip O’Hanlon is typically seen at shows playing unusual records while entertaining attendees with his charming storytelling and Irish brogue. This was something different.

Brogue intact, O’Hanlon was operating Déjà Vu Audio’s room. No surprise there, as Vu is a major mid-Atlantic dealer, based in Vienna, Virginia. The room contained O’Hanlon’s Graham LS5/9 standmount loudspeakers ($7773/pair), a MoonRiver 404 Reference integrated amplifier ($5995) with a MoonRiver MM/MC phono stage module ($775), Lector CD-707 tubed compact disc player with separate PSU-3T…

Always a friendly face, yay, a calming presence as I crawl through show halls, Technics' Bill Voss was on hand to play music and talk shop in a space hosted by Overture Ultimate Home Theater Electronics of Wilmington, Delaware.

New to the room, and recently announced, Technics’ 4th generation Direct Drive SL-1200 GR2 Turntable ($2199). Salient points of the table’s build include a newly developed motor-drive circuit, newly designed low-noise power supply adopted from Technics’ Reference Class SL-1000R turntable, "new color cues of certain parts and elements, as well as the new…

Not content to consistently produce some of the best sounding rooms at CAF year after year, Harry and Mat Weisfield changed up almost all their ancillary gear from 2022, but the sound remained fantastic.

Room one, where Harry unpeeled a new copy of a Classic Records edition of Respighi's Pines of Rome, played penetrating sounds via a VPI Avenger Direct turntable with Fatboy gimbal tonearm ($36,000) and a VPI Dragon turntable ($8000) outfitted in ZZ Top–worthy red alligator hide, four Cherry VPI Isolation Bases ($1200 each), and electronics by PrimaLuna: an EVO 400 Tube…

Impossibly ambitious? Too many demands on the audience? Tommy done better? A final collapse before a glorious resurrection? 1971's Who's Next, which began life as a more-advanced-than-Tommy sci-fi rock opera called Life…

New York City continues to have a rich hi-fi culture, but many of its fabled hi-fi shops have shuttered—think of Lyric Hi-Fi, which played a major role in the development of audio's high end before it closed in 2021 (footnote 1). But recently NYC's hi-fi scene has experienced a bit of a renewal, with undertakings aimed at a wider, younger audience. One example is a new, niche audio showroom in SoHo, which opened in September, by former deejay and fashion designer, artist, and current audio craftsman Devon Turnbull (footnote 2).

The Ojas Listening Room could…

Hanging at the bar at the Hilton Twinbrook, one hears stories of audio deals gone bad, an actor absconding with a $500,000 system to an unknown Mexican destination, or sordid tales of a peeved player spiting bile at an unknowing colleague. Then there's show organizer Gary Gill, whose upbeat, generous persona is a prime contributor to the success of the Capital Audiofest.

Another valued player, who possesses a sense of inner calm I wish I could generate, is Valve Amplification Company President Kevin Hayes, one of our industry's good guys since his company's founding in 1990.