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

Altec Lansing, Infigo Audio, Valerian, And Sound Insight
I watched a very engaging video of a jazz performance with excellent sound coming through the new Altec Lansing Ribbonacci Reference electrostatic speakers ($89k). Later, I caught a bit of an Eric Clapton documentary. This room generated a lot of buzz at the show. Unfortunately, in the darkness, I didn't notice the Ripole subwoofers with four flat-woven fiberglass 12" drivers in each column.

The rack was filled with Infigo Audio electronics, and music was from SSD or Qobuz.

The Valerian VisionMaster Max ($5k) was a spectacular 4K RGB triple laser projector delivering a perfect rectangle with high image quality while being positioned far off-axis from the screen. It claims to be capable of a 300" screen size. It is a RedDot award winner, and on sale now for $4k. I'm going to need a bigger house, or maybe paint my garage door white.

6th Floor

Geshelli Labs
Geshelli Labs always puts on a funky room, but they out-dazzled themselves this time with an SPL display with colored lights that danced with the music.

The racks didn't seem to hold anything new, but the music sounded very good through the Acoustic Energy AE 520 speakers. The dark stain on the solid wood cabinets with dovetail construction was very nice. The rack was by Sound Solver, and cables were from ViaBlue. They even dressed up the chairs nicely with slipcovers.

Geshelli Labs
In their 'quiet room' I spotted Grado Signature HP100 SE and Reference Series RS-2X headphones among others available for sampling with their headphone amps.

Dreamscapes AV And KRIX
From the sound of the press release this room was supposed to be a spectacular home theater presentation with a modular speaker system designed to fit behind a screen.

Unfortunately, it was just past 6 p.m. on Friday, and the room was closed.

Spiritual Sound
With the title of this room, and the way the rig was set up with chairs lined up against the opposite wall, I was expecting a presentation of ambient music for a Zen experience. Spiritual Sound, however, is a cable manufacturer. A brochure was labeled "Codex by Spiritual Sound," and the cables feature solid silver conductors in an air/Teflon dielectric with silver connectors.

The widely spaced Larson speakers are designed to fit close to the front wall, and they produced a reasonable soundstage, much better than most speakers when placed in that position.

The AGD preamplifier and AGD The Audion III monoblocks I reviewed provided a high-resolution signal for the Larson. Beneath the table was a TeraDak streamer.

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