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 Audio Hunters
The Audio Hunters presented two rooms. They are associated online with the Vinyl Revivers, and it's not clear whether they are a brick & mortar store in Maryland, or a distributor. This room featured Cambridge electronics driving a stand-mounted monitor.

The spalted wood cabinet caught my eye, and I recognized the cork footers from audio furniture at previous Capital shows.

The shelving looks rather basic and not particularly suited for heavier high end gear, but it was fine for the lighter-weight Cambridge components shown here.

I had seen the soundbar-like unit on the console at previous shows and admired its capabilities. A drawing showed an exploded view of its contents. For someone who wants good, holographic sound for their video, but does not want an ‘audio system' with a lot (or any) speakers in the room, this is a relatively affordable and viable solution.

The Audio Hunters
The presentation got a lot more serious in their next room with a Gold Note system on a Solidsteel rack, and Gold Note speakers.

Closer inspection indicates this was an Acoustic Signature Maximus Neo turntable, not a Gold Note. We've got exclusive reviews of the Gold Note DS-1000 EVO Streaming DAC and the Gold Note A6 Evo II loudspeaker. Clarus cables and Tributaries cables were also used here.

Charney Audio
The Charney Audio room was one of those rooms you couldn't see coming any more than Treehaus Audiolab Phantom loudspeaker reviewed here on Enjoy the Music.com a few years ago. Here was a giant swan's neck horn using Tractrix Theory to produce a full-range speaker with 106dB/W/m sensitivity with a single full-range driver. Like Treehaus, they were using their own amplification that featured a unique treatment on the faceplates. How déjà vu is that?

The shape of this speaker is extraordinary, unless perhaps you are a maker of horned instruments and familiar with such designs. It's tall. It's essentially a single piece. It was black to make it more universally acceptable, yet in another color would be considered a sculpture if it never played a single note. If granted a lecture, I would relate it to several movements in modern art.

It is designed for use with a 7.5" Voxativ AC 2.6 or 8" AER bd-3 high efficiency, full-range driver, both from Germany. A Voxativ driver was used here. Note the tall footers and the auxiliary wood flooring to enhance the omnidirectional dispersion of music. It would have been fun to have heard these in a larger room, such as MBL presents their omnidirectional speakers in.

A poster displays the inner construction and presents conflicting specifications from their handout sheet. Whether 104dB/W/m or 106dB/W/m sensitivity, this is a highly efficient speaker. The frequency response may be significant to some. The poster claims 32Hz to 22kHz, while the handout claimed 20Hz to 20kHz, which may be a difference between the driver selected.

Jason Wong proudly displayed the top curve he CNC machined out of layers of plywood glued together. Note the small holes for pins to align the piece. I saw no evidence that the horn comes apart at this point after final production.

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