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

The D.C. HiFi Group
The local D.C. HiFi Group put together some entry-level gear with a series of speakers for comparison.

This stand-up poster showing the speaker-in-play and the rest of the rig was super-helpful, and should be emulated by others who display complex systems with multiple speakers.

On the top left, with the orange knob, was something from Fosi, and on the next shelf down was a cheap disc drive.

NOLA Loudspeakers
NOLA speakers moved this year from the dreadful large Regency room on the 3rd Floor to this modest sleeping room on the 7th. I've criticized their presentation in the Regency room for several years, and it makes me so happy report they achieved the excellence I knew their speaker was capable of in this small room. The Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 ($150k) is a hybrid design with open-baffle midrange and tweeters in a short line array, combined with twin-ported bass drivers with magnesium cones, each in a separate chamber.

The flyer for the speaker lists a lot of improvements to the speaker but it looks the same as speakers from previous years. Check out their website for further details if you're so inclined. The speaker comes in piano black, as shown, or the gorgeous Piano Santos Rosewood we've seen in previous years. The speaker base includes twin layers with ball-bearing isolation, similar to what we've seen on Mon speakers.

With 91dB/W/m efficiency, the NOLA was easily driven by the Western Electric Type 97-A monoblocks, each equipped with 8 300B tubes. An Audio Research CD player was the front end (no streaming), and a VAC preamp added even more tubes to the system. Nordost Q Base distribution was used along with Nordost Odin 2 power cables from their Supreme Reference series. I was so happy they achieved redemption in this small room that tears came to my eyes as I was enhancing their photos. I'm sure this speaker will play well in a large room when properly set up, but stay away from big, square, untreated rooms.

Innovo Audio Designs
Last year, the Innovo room was a disappointment for me. The sound quality just wasn't there, most likely due to the mass of bodies in the room. This time was a completely different story, and I was highly impressed. The veneer woodwork has always been eye-catching.

The form-factor is unique, with four oval side-firing drivers creating a holographic sense of space, even positioned as close to the front wall as shown above. The price, the Innovo Luxe T1 loudspeaker at $24k as reviewed here ($27k for premium veneers), is for someone who wants to do both music and video in the same room, without having to resort to a complex surround-sound rig, and with an elegant look as the Innovo provides, this may be the solution.

Here's an alternate veneer.

The kit here was an Aurender streamer on top of a McIntosh MDA200 DAC.

GTT Audio
I was also very pleasantly surprised by what seemed like a significant jump in performance of the Vivid Audio Giya G3 Cu in a bespoke color ($55k) that was new for 2025. The "Cu" stands for the copper caps on the pole pieces of the midrange and mid-bass drivers. Every single driver's backwave is channeled through a tapered tube, and these tubes have been modified based on trickle-down technology from the new Moya flagship. The tubes are still stuffed with wool, but are now bent, rather than going just straight back. This has allowed for modifications leading to lighter, stiffer cabinets in the Cu series.

The shape seemed a little broader at the front than previous models, but it is hard to say for sure without comparing side-by-side. In any case, it's quirky curly-Q design has been around long enough to become a signature design for Vivid speakers. The Giya series comes in four sizes to accommodate different-sized rooms and budgets.

A new modification that will be appreciated by all is the repositioning of the cable connections, which can now be made without tipping the speaker.

I'm not sure what the little wood boxes from VPI are all about, but the room list indicates new gear from Audionet, and Dejitter It in addition to the new Vivid speakers.

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