Capital AudioFest Chronicles 2022
Musical mastery within the 3rd floor Meeting Rooms.
CAF 2022 Show Report By Rick Becker

Regency (Very Large Room) NOLA Loudspeakers
I've admired NOLA speakers over the years but their presentation in the very large Regency room was disappointing. As you can tell from the first two photos there was a lot of space both behind and in front of these speakers. I've had some experience with open baffle speakers before and I suspect they were not taking full advantage of the design by bringing the speaker so far out from the front wall behind them. The music being played was not my favorite or even close. I stopped back a second time a while later and the music was more revealing, yet I just knew this speaker deserved a better setup. The speakers were driven by a VAC preamp and VAC monoblocks. The front end was a Sikora Reference turntable. Maybe the problem was the rig was set up in a bass node in the front corner of the room. As I mentioned earlier, all four of the largest rooms seemed to fall short in their acoustic presentation.

The Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 speakers are impeccably built as you can see. They are said to benefit from a major breakthrough in crossover design. New magnesium woofer cones and new midrange drivers. The true ribbon drivers next to the midrange take frequency response up to 100kHz and a special twin ball-bearing base with spikes are said to eliminate floor vibrations. Sensitivity is 91dB/W/m so you wouldn't need a massive amplifier in a more modest room. The piano gloss Santos Rosewood veneer was very elegant.

I was pleasantly surprised to see NOLA has developed its own woven flat speaker cables.

The impressive Sikora Reference turntable with a Nasotec 203A1 swinging headshell with a DS Audio optical cartridge mounted on a Tru-Glider tonearm was the front end in this room. The DS optical cartridges have their own dedicated phono stage.

Plaza I (Very Large) Matterhorn Room With Fink Team, Kroma, etc.
The Matterhorn Audio Group took a different approach to this third very large room. They set up two different systems on adjacent walls, each with a pair of loudspeakers to audition. Halfway down on the right-hand wall was a pair of Fink Team speakers that has gained a lot of attention, particularly the smaller stand-mounted Kim (($12,990). I got to hear about eight bars of music on the larger floorstanding Borg ($36,490) which I thought sounded pretty good. Both speakers were driven by a Creek Audio Voyage i20 integrated amp ($6,195) and a Voyage CD player ($3,495). The cables were by HiDiamond. Unfortunately, I have no photos of either of these speakers.

At that point, they switched to the system against the far wall where I had a listen to the larger Kroma Atelier speaker, the Elektra ($120k). The other speaker was the Kroma  Stella Xtreme ($34,200) which I did not hear. They were driven by Viola Audio Labs Sonata preamp ($33,800) and the Viola Cadence monoblocks ($35k).

There was a Technics SL1000R turntable ($19k) on board fitted with an Ortofon cartridge but unfortunately, I listened to the Linn Klimax Organik streamer ($39k). The cables were by Ansuz Acoustics.

Lucidium racks featured Lucite shelves and pillars that looked very sharp. Unfortunately, the music was very sharp here, too. My experience suggests it may have been due to the ultra-precise Linn streamer. Linn tends to do digital ultra-precisely. I wish I could have heard the turntable in this rig.

Both rigs were placed at what seemed like an appropriate distance from the front wall behind the speakers but the cubic volume of the room was simply too large and/or the wrong dimensions to get a good performance here. Or maybe the ambient room tone simply made it too difficult for the rigs to shine. I doubled back to this room in hopes that I might have a shot at listening to the Fink Team speakers, but no such luck.

---> Next Page.