Capital Audiofest 2015

[wkhanna]

Capital Audiofest 2015

It is that time of year, CAF is just around the corner & our usual gang of 'phliles from Pittsburgh will be in Washington DC for the entire three-day event.

Stay tuned for our show report on what's hot, what's luke-warm & what sucks.
They have moved the show this year to the Rockville Hilton which promises to be a bigger & better venue with more exhibitors than ever.

In particular, we can not wait to see our friend, Brian Zolner, partner & figurehead of Bricasti Design, to discuss the review by Michael Fremer of the Bricasti M28 monoblocks.

We spent hours (many in private, after-hours sessions) with this amp at last years show.
Mr Fremer seemed to come away from experiance with these amps with a longing for more bass response & girth.
Something we felt the M28's excelled at.

[Finleyville]

So? It has been a couple of days now. We, the anxious public, want to know how it went!

[wkhanna]

I am compiling photos & reviews now.

1st of multiple posts will be ready tomorrow.

[wkhanna]

My gosh, the old sayings get truer & truer as time rolls on.
And yes, time truly does fly when you are having a ball.
And that ball is exactly what CAF has always been about.

Overall the new venue was an improvement, with more of the larger-size conference rooms for exhibitors along with being a better managed facility. Some minor downsides were the lack of good restaurants within walking distance (of which a plethora existed at the previous Silver Spring location) & very unfortunate was the comparative lackluster performance & want of action around the hotel bar that has been a hallmark of previous shows. My concern over this has less to do with opportunity to indulge in libation than give attendees the chance to casually walk up to a designer, major distributor, owner or reviewer & just casually shoot the breeze & in general, simply ”talk shop” as though one was hanging out with their buddies. Also, the comradery amongst us hobbyists was in somewhat subdued display than in previous years at the bar, but NOT anywhere else around the show.

The layout of the exhibition rooms throughout the space & signs directing show attendees through the sometimes maze-like hallways was often confusing for me & at least a few others I spoke with. Better signs & directories could have made navigating the event much easier.

But fear not, as this year’s event had the most after (official)-hour action I have yet seen. Many of the exhibitors were gladly accepting visitors into the wee hours the evening. Some of them providing reasonably well-selected choices of refreshment some of which were reinforced. Along with other generous show-goers always willing to share their private holdings, one never need fear suffering from thirst at this event. In fact on Friday night in the VPI room, you could walk in, grab a beverage one’s choice, listen to any of 15 or more (I forget the exact number) VPI-produced turntables each with its own headphone rig, or sit down at a big round table & join in a card game with Mat Weisfeld (president of VPI), Klaus Bunge (owner of Odyssey Audio) & anyone else who cared to pull up a chair. I doubt you will ever find such relaxed, informal, friendly or comfortable environments at any other show anywhere in the world.

Yes, there were slightly fewer exhibitors this year & attendance may even have been down a bit too, but from my assessment, the general overall quality of the sound coming from the gear was to my ears better. And nearly all the show-goers I talked to were V pleased. One issue that was mentioned by a few attendees & exhibitors was the scheduling. CAF was four weeks later this year making it the weekend prior to Labor Day & the next show on this year’s schedule will be a week earlier, just four short weeks away. All this makes for a hectic timetable if you are an exhibitor, especially if you are shipping equipment, where delivery lead-times could cause you to end up at a show without anything to show. Not to mention, a busy time of the year for the rest of us to try & get away from home for an afternoon or weekend with schools starting & a holiday weekend just around the corner.

[wkhanna]

Bricasti

Bricasti

Once again, Brian Zolner cobbled together a jaw-dropping display of concert hall size, accuracy & impact like V few have ever experienced.

His formula has not changed over the years. I like to call it the KISS Principal (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Start with a M1 Bricasti DAC using minimal filtering & high quality volume control, & then place the impeccable, extremely well balanced & accurate Tidal speaker at the other end of the chain. Introduced at last year’s show, he now inserts his M28 Bricasti mono-blocks in the middle all linked by his own V minimalist, run of the mill, blue-collar-looking cabling & running source direct from his small apple laptop running JRiver via a rather pedestrian & mundane looking USB cable.

The simplicity of his layout was in ultra-stark comparison to most other rooms with their multitude of sources, amps, gizmos & masses of cabling quite literally as thick as your wrist.

We always spend a lot time with Brian & this year was not different. He gives so freely of his wealth of experience & information learned the hard way from years in the business of both the consumer product & recording industries. As a matter of fact, we kept him so distracted he forgot to run his company payroll while we held him hostage for hours at the bar Saturday night.

The coup de gras was when Brian auditioned a recent DSD recording of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. This recording, according Brian, illustrates the true advantage of DSD, a technology that must be applied during the recording process. Applying DSD to music files already produced is of little value, in most cases hardly more than a marketing ploy used to entice us to yet again buy music we already own for the third, fourth or ump-teenth time (a view that Charley Hansen, designer of Arye, for the most part also subscribes to). But getting back to this recording……. This thing was made with a dynamic range of 60 dB. That means the difference in loudness from the quietest, deepest, darkest, most silent passage to the cacophonous, most thunder-rumbling, room bulging, wall bending crescendo is three times what regular ‘good’ recordings are made at & at least two times anything I have ever heard in hi-res. Now consider that Brian ran this exhibition direct from the M1 DAC to the M28 (no pre-amp) at Zero (0) attenuation. In other words He had it cranked to 11!

The sound produced was a benchmark of what digital done right is all about. Yes, I am an analog fan, but Brian's system was better than any analog I have ever dreamed of let alone heard. I have only heard such dynamics, subtle textures, ambiance & tonal realism at the concert hall. Just cuz it was at zero attenuation do not assume the room was was at constant ear-bleeding levels. On the contrary, the softest timbre of a tiny triangle or a muted horn played off-stage (as is scripted in the composition) was full of life at a micro-level volume. And when the crescendos of the finale' burst with lightning speed as I have never before experienced it made every surface of the room breathe like the lungs of a great blue whale emerging from a two mile deep dive.

With no reservations whatsoever, the absolute BEST of Show.

Well done, Brian.


Two M1 DACs are on the stand. The one on top is pure gold-plated, an option available that also includes pure gold accents on the remote. A playful whim on Brian's part in actuality it does not look overly 'blingy' in person.