Inside CAF 2025 Luxury Hi-Fi Show Part 1 — Capital Audiofest's Top Floors With 84 Rooms
New trends you need to know about, the latest audio gear, and not to be missed rooms!
Capital Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

  After driving down to Rockville from Rochester, NY, on Thursday afternoon, I got a fresh start on Friday morning to report on the Capital Audiofest 2025 (CAF) luxury high-end audio show for Enjoy the Music.com. I figured I would need all three days to cover the entire show, but was able to spend the last couple of hours on Sunday doing a final sweep of the most prominent rooms.

My CAF 2025 show report Part 1, seen here, covers the 84 rooms on the 8th, 7th, and 6th floors, and Part 2 (coming soon) will cover everything on the 3rd (ground floor), which includes all the large rooms and a hallway full of sleeping rooms, plus the Atrium. As with my extensive Toronto Audiofest 2025 report for Enjoy the Music.com, I will not be covering each room in as much detail as in previous years. Hopefully, I will give you enough clues so you will be able to dive deeper into the internet, or simply contact the companies directly.

8th Floor
It often happens that I run into a really fine-sounding room at the start of the top floor, which makes me leery of my ability to evaluate rooms. Is it simply better than the car audio system I was listening to on the way to the show? As it turned out, there were several rooms in close proximity with YG Acoustics speakers, and they all sounded great. Perhaps their lattice-reinforced tweeter has trickled down throughout the line.

I loved the blue finish, which was indicative of a minor trend in the industry to offer choices other than the traditional silver and black motifs. Their feet are still shaped like spikes, but seem to be made from a combination of materials, suggesting they deliver a healthy dose of vibration absorption.

The amp was a J-M-F Audio HQS 6002. Above it was an Ideon DAC streaming at 96 kHz at the moment. And on top was a J-M-F PRS 1.5 preamp.

Moon Audio
The Saros Audio Systems Europa tube headphone amp and preamp ($8500) was featured here. Details are on the banner. This room was still closed at the opening bell.

Here is the price list from Moon Audio, which appears to be an internet seller with a strong emphasis on headphones, while selling many other major brands, including Bricasti, which had a room just down the hall.

YG Acoustics
YG Acoustics stepped it up with a speaker that you might think was too large for this room, but the sound was excellent.

The Aleno amps with illuminated accents were featured in Jeff Catalano's High Water Sound room within the past year, where they also performed exceptionally well. The preamp is in the center, leaving me to wonder if the speakers were bi-amp'ed with solid state on the bottom and tubes on top.

On the HiFiStay rack on the right was the large Taiko front end. There was no room list here, but I can assure you everything was very expensive.

Bricasti  Design
This Bricasti rig looked very familiar, but there were two new items: the M1 VC DAC ($12k) and the Bricasti Design S7 three-way speakers ($30k). (They have 3 other DACs in their lineup.)

The M21 Platinum DAC ($19k) on the left in the middle featured a chrome faceplate. Above it was their M19 Reference SACD/CD I²S transport (10k).

Their new speaker exhibited outstanding fit & finish and sounded quite good during my brief visit, reminding me of the Tidal speaker they had used in previous shows.

Stillpoints Ultra Isolators were used here, and cabling was by Gotham Cable.

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