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

Dreamscapes AV And Theory Audio Design
Theory Audio Design is into home theater in a big, dynamic way. I didn't get into this room, but from what I've researched, I wish I had—at least to broaden my knowledge of home theater.

TriangleArt
The TriangleArt room had a whole new look, simply by virtue of changing the speaker from the Metis, which had a large carved wooden horn that looked like a modern sculpture, to a more conventional speaker with a traditional horn (still wood) for the compression driver. The horn and the bass cabinet are made out of solid walnut.

The music here was as transparent and dynamic as with the Metis speaker, yet I sensed the tonality was slightly different—something that I could verify only if I could hear them both in the same room. Yet the new speaker was obviously designed by the same person as the Metis.

This was the new Selene two-way speaker with a downward-firing port and a 14" square footprint that appeared significantly smaller than their Metis speaker. Like that speaker, however, it is highly efficient (97dB/W/m) to integrate with the rest of the Triangle universe of amplifiers. Be sure to read our Triangle Art L-200 MK2 stereo vacuum tube preamplifier review.

Also new was the large M100 SE tube monoblock power amplifier, seen here on the floor, and on silent display on the counter in front of the gentleman in the first photo was the new TriangleArt I-20 single-ended dual-mono integrated amplifier was reviewed recently by Enjoy the Music.com.

The turntables are always shown with gold trim in the Triangle room, but earlier I saw one in all-black in the Perfect8 room (836) on the 8th Floor.

TriangleArt typically offers generous discounts (only at the show) on the show demo models that would pay for your trip to the show from almost anywhere.

SVS Sound
SVS addressed the audiophile group with a simple rig with a Hegel amp and one of their three UltraEvolution floorstanders. They also have monitors and surround speakers in this series…and of course, subwoofers. They didn't over-promise with this presentation. 

It would be interesting to hear what the speaker could do with a more high-profile rig, specifically, tube gear. It ships with both vibration-absorbing footers and spikes.

SVS Immersivephile^TM Home Theater
This room was listed under Orchard Audio, but you might have missed that fact (as I did) when you walked in to find a full-blown SVS home theater immersivephile^TM sound set-up, including two of their massive subwoofers, one of which you see in the corner. The amps were all from Orchard Audio.

They also do DACs and streamers. Not wanting to get sucked into an immersive audio feature-length film, I moved on.

Master Artist Audio
This is where things started to get interesting in an audiophile way. Burmester has been making a big push in the North American market, both in Canada and the U.S. I've admired their presentations on both sides of the border when they have presented systems that included their own speakers. But here was something new, and just as excellent.

Master Artist Audio was a new name for me. I spoke with the owner, who told me they were an off-shoot of Audio Video Artistry in Memphis, TN, his company that specializes in home integration, which he founded in 1998. In 2012, they started Master Artist Audio as a speaker manufacturer, selling mostly in the Memphis area. As their reputation grew, they started developing a relationship with Burmester, a German high end company of long standing.

The Rack of Silence rack with black pillars and wood cross-pieces, was something I haven't seen before. This rack is not my favorite design, but this version is a little more interesting and keeps most of the attention on the equipment. It has been around forever, it seems, so it must be doing something right.

In the outer room of the suite was a relatively modest system with the Burmester 232 modular integrated amplifier, which I've heard numerous times now, always sounding very good. It was paired with this floorstander with a D'Appolito configuration of Accuton mid-bass drivers with a ribbon-type tweeter. The cabinet is a sophisticated shape, and the teal/green surface is actually OEM Porsche leather. The front baffle is a figured veneer. The outrigger base adds stability and the footers are for vibration absorption. Design-wise and acoustically, it was a world-class speaker. Two prices were given for the Fresco model: $32.5k and $23k. The higher price might be for the version in leather versus all wood?

The ribbon tweeter had unusual foam surrounds to control dispersion.

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