[Letitroll98]

Which balding older fatguy would that be? A more specific description is needed before we can issue a BOLO.
Your compliance would be aporeciated.
Scotty

Why the good lookin' one of course.

[dB Cooper]

Big 'find' for me today was Larsen Speakers (Democracy room)which have a very unusual design aimed at reducing interaction between speaker, room, and listening position (as were the Allison speakers of yore, in a very different implementation.) I was very impressed at the way they 'drew me in' to the music, no small feat considering I had just come from hearing the $220K KEF 'MUONs", which looked like they were designed by Salvador Dali.

These are the $7K Larsen 8's, with and without grille covers:





Only beef I had here was that the cabinetwork may not have been quite up to what you see in the same price range from, say, Daedalus or Salk, but they did sound very musical. But I was impressed enough to link to their website here: www.larsenhifi.com.
 
The MUONS were very detailed and had much better driver blending than I am accustomed to hearing from multiway/multidriver systems like the Legacies, but IMHO they share a certain 'hi-fi' affect and although they impress at first, I can imagine their ruthlessness becoming an issue over time. Darn it, I was ready to drop the $220K for a few minutes there... 
For that kind of coin it ought to be impossible to find a flaw.

Here is a MUON (The speaker, not the guy- sounds like some species of alien from Star Trek, doesn't it?) :



(On second thought, a better name might be the LOWWAF? )

Other general impressions: Seems like much more emphasis on vinyl this year. I was reminded of why I don't miss it very much as I listened to the MUONs play the pops, clicks, and surface noise with breathtaking clarity. I recognize others feel differently, and admit that I heard some very nice vinyl playback today, and to each his own, but... One turntable exhibitor said pretty much the same thing to me, so "you pays your money" I guess.

Sorry to see the headphone contingent rather underrepresented as this is the one segment of audio that is experiencing solid growth. These mfr's should be courted energetically.

It will be interesting to see if the move to the first week of November rather than July/August when it is hot AF brings more attendees in.

I am skipping most of the rooms which bring the same stuff every year (even stuff I like) to maximize my time.

See y'all tomorrow. If you see a redheaded guy in a black 'Knights Who Say NI' T shirt, let's introduce ourselves.

[ArthurDent]

So, who all's gonna be there?
I'll be wearing this. If you see me, feel free to say hello, and have a great show regardless of whether we cross paths or not!

See y'all tomorrow. If you see a redheaded guy in a black 'Knights Who Say NI' T shirt, let's introduce ourselves.

Would that I could dB, wrong end of the country. Thanks for the picks & thoughts, and Great 'T' shirt collection. Keep 'em comin'. 

[dB Cooper]

Good to meet Letitroll98, mix4fix, HAL, and Bunky (who actually may have been at the same Frank Zappa concert as me 35 years ago.)

[Letitroll98]

Good meeting you Coop.  I had a ball for the whole show.  My best moment at this year's Capfest was early Sunday morning when I stopped in the VPI room so Matt Weisfeld could show me a new arm mount.  After Matt showed me the arm I sat down to listen to the system on display which included KEF's $225,000 Muon speakers and VPI's new $48,000 air bearing Titan turntable.  Harry Weisfeld puts on some Mussorgsky and sits down next to me, a minute later Johan Coorg of KEF sits down in front of me, the three of us listening to this remarkable system shooting the breeze about the various qualities of the system.  Tremendous dynamics and unmatched clarity.  Imaging and soundstage were consistent and rock solid stable if not the widest or deepest I've heard.  Instruments were hard to distinguish from live music.  I felt like I had calibrated my ears, for the rest of the day all systems were judged against the clarity of the KEF/VPI system, nothing came close.  Nothing quite replicated that realism.  Others mentioned the room had problems earlier in the show, by Sunday they had that sorted out.  Great show with some really outstanding rooms.

[dB Cooper]

I thought the Tidal room gave the KEF's a real run for their money, also very detailed but a much more relaxed (and relaxing) presentation.

My issue with the show... all shows... Hell, the 'high end' in general... was economic. I did some math and the systems I had info for and those mentioned in the Stereophile show report came out at a mean of $58K if you don't consider cabling, excluding the Odyssey room and the KEF Muon room. Add in those rooms and you get a mean of around $70K and a median of well over $100K. I didn't work out the mode but would guess that would be in the upper 20's. Again, that's excluding cabling (now a big buck accessory too) and for some rooms, a front end. While I don't begrudge anybody to spend their money however they please, I think the hobby would be well served by having a healthy entry level market and giving that market visibility on the show circuit without turning noses up by deriding it as 'mid-fi'. If the perceived price of entry for satisfying reproduction of music in the home is $~60K, it's going to be a tough road for the 'high end' ('deep end' might be more applicable to much of what I saw), we're going to need young people to be interested- and at these price levels, they generally aren't. They're fine with their $400 Bose tabletop system. By contrast, my first $330 Dyna system, which I saved and mowed lawns for a year to buy when I was 15 years old, would cost about S2400 in today's dollars- and it gave me years of musical satisfaction. There needs to be some sort of counterpart to that system today, and for the most part, there isn't.

[Letitroll98]

All good points, I had a manufacturer tell me his $8,000 amp was a bargain.  It was his lowest priced separate.  Really? Didn't bother telling him no amp is worth that much to me.  I think at these shows it's what Klaus of Odyssee told me, everyone at the show are vying for the same five millionaires.  The rest of us are tire kickers.  And it's too expensive to bring the lower priced stuff to the show, only so much space in the truck.  Klaus bucks this trend and generally brings affordable gear, but this year there wasn't any other inexpensive display that I saw other than VPI that had a few of their lower priced tables on a silent display and some stuff in the Canmania room. 

For the audio industry at large I'm told the ultra high end and the lower priced products are what's selling.  The vast midpriced market is pretty soft.  Companies like NuPrime, Elac, and Rogue are going strong at the lower end, I'm sure there are other examples.  You can find sensibly priced products without too much trouble, so I'm not too worried about price being the downfall of the high end, rather other market forces are in play.

[*Scotty*]

The GT Audio Works, Hollis Audio Labs room has to be considered a bargain. If you used Odyssey preamp and power amp HAL and GT Audio for the front end and speakers, you would have a hell of a system.
Scotty

[KLH007]

The GT Audio Works, Hollis Audio Labs room has to be considered a bargain. If you used Odyssey preamp and power amp HAL and GT Audio for the front end and speakers, you would have a hell of a system.
Scotty

Scotty, I wholeheartedly agree! I'm using a pair of Odyssey monos on my GTA 2.5s, Exogal Comet Plus as Pre/DAC, Pete's Triode Wire Labs cables, and Mark Schifter's Core Power Technology E=Q 300 for Balanced Power AC, pretty reasonable. An MS-3 is next up as a purchase, works perfectly, has room correction and upsampling built in as user options, and is a bargain compared to the norm of $2000 to $10,000 servers.

[willsw]

While I don't begrudge anybody to spend their money however they please, I think the hobby would be well served by having a healthy entry level market and giving that market visibility on the show circuit without turning noses up by deriding it as 'mid-fi'. If the perceived price of entry for satisfying reproduction of music in the home is $~60K, it's going to be a tough road for the 'high end' ('deep end' might be more applicable to much of what I saw), we're going to need young people to be interested- and at these price levels, they generally aren't. They're fine with their $400 Bose tabletop system. By contrast, my first $330 Dyna system, which I saved and mowed lawns for a year to buy when I was 15 years old, would cost about S2400 in today's dollars- and it gave me years of musical satisfaction. There needs to be some sort of counterpart to that system today, and for the most part, there isn't.

I think there are a lot of companies that agree with you, and in some cases it's show pressures from the vendors you're sharing the room with. Even if you want to showcase a high-quality component that sounds as good as something 3x its price, another company won't want to show unless the component 6x its price is being shown. Figuring out the ratio of prices for the system is difficult as well. We make amplifiers that some consider pricey, some consider cheap, but either way we ideally choose components that could fit economically into a theoretical system that would include our amplifiers, though we haven't managed to do that yet, because we also hope to make our first impressions in rooms that sound really good. At CAF we were in one room with speakers that were $13k a pair, one room with $10k speakers, and one room with speakers that would sell for around $6k if put into production. The room with the $13k speakers had $7500 worth of amplification (amp + preamp) and a $5000 digital source. The room with the $6k speakers had $10k worth of amplification (preamp + bi-amping) and what was likely a $15k+ turntable setup. Completely inverted value chain. It's funny. It does seem that, even though the majority of the audio show vendors are still showing the shiniest things and playing the same tracks they've been playing for years, more people are complaining and more vendors are wanting to show, or showing, more reasonably priced components with music that people might actually listen to at home (that said, I do listen to a lot of live jazz, love a good female singer with a bassist, but come on). 

[putz]

Good meeting you Coop.  I had a ball for the whole show.  My best moment at this year's Capfest was early Sunday morning when I stopped in the VPI room so Matt Weisfeld could show me a new arm mount.  After Matt showed me the arm I sat down to listen to the system on display which included KEF's $225,000 Muon speakers and VPI's new $48,000 air bearing Titan turntable.  Harry Weisfeld puts on some Mussorgsky and sits down next to me, a minute later Johan Coorg of KEF sits down in front of me, the three of us listening to this remarkable system shooting the breeze about the various qualities of the system.  Tremendous dynamics and unmatched clarity.  Imaging and soundstage were consistent and rock solid stable if not the widest or deepest I've heard.  Instruments were hard to distinguish from live music.  I felt like I had calibrated my ears, for the rest of the day all systems were judged against the clarity of the KEF/VPI system, nothing came close.  Nothing quite replicated that realism.  Others mentioned the room had problems earlier in the show, by Sunday they had that sorted out.  Great show with some really outstanding rooms.

What Cart did they have on the Titan?

[Letitroll98]

Lyra Atlas.  Don't know if it was the SL version or not.  Harry said he adjusted the VTA for Sunday morning and it made all the difference, "The thing is like an MRI it's so revealing".  He told me Saturday night they had a cellist come in with his own recording and played side by side live and recording, and you couldn't tell the difference.  Wish I had come down then (I was on the 8th floor and didn't hear anything).