Inside CAF 2025 Luxury Hi-Fi Show Part 2 — Capital Audiofest's Large Exhibit Rooms And Lobby Displays
Fresh trends, the hottest audio equipment, and rooms everyone's talking about.
Capital Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

  Step into the exciting Capital Audiofest 2025, where not-to-be-missed large exhibit rooms and lobby-level displays are featured within Part 2. Rick Becker's extensive CAF 2025 report showcases where sound becomes spectacle and every corner hums with possibility. This year's event brought together the world's most daring designers, boutique builders, and legacy brands under one roof, each booth a promise of sonic revelation. Read about how jaw-dropping stereo systems reveal the best in music, as Enjoy the Music.com's first-listen debuts are features too! Across the exhibit halls, we deliver to you our curated listening room reports that read like a map of audio obsession—ultra-high-end separates, room treatments that transform acoustics, and immersive setups that blur the line between live performance and playback.

Here at Capital Audiofest 2025, leading electronic engineers and designers are on hand to help walk Enjoy the Music.com through signal chains, loudspeaker voicing, and the tiny tweaks that unlock massive improvements. Whether you're chasing the last detail in a reference system or hunting for a single component that changes everything, Rick Becker's CAF 2025 high-end audio show report below is a festival of ideas! Discover emerging trends in lossless Hi-Res Music streaming, analog resurgence, and room-correction tech that's rewriting how we listen.

CAF 2025 audiophile show is the place to test theories, challenge assumptions, and Rick's report may leave you with a notebook full of new directions for your own system. Whether you're a seasoned audiophile or newly curious, you'll learn something special within our Capital Audiofest 2025 show coverage.

Alma Audio, Thales, And Vinnie Rossie (Revisited)
Before I proceed with the 3rd Floor, I discovered the photos I took in the Alma Audio Suite 850 with Vinnie Rossi electronics driving a Von Schweikert floorstanding loudspeaker. As I examined the photo, what I heard was the VR-thirty with the optional powered bass. The speaker was bi-wired with what looked like their white house brand cables, but the room sheet claimed the cabling was by Kubala-Sosna. There seems to be a growing trend toward white cables. The speaker features a Danish beryllium tweeter and Accuton drivers, as well as a rear-firing ambience driver, something Albert Von Schweikert was famous for. In their modern speakers, they use an AMT driver out back. Another banner in the room featured the Ultra Seven model, but I don't think that model was present at the show.

Note the high-end black acoustic panels by Nemesis on the front wall. I suspect they could make a custom-sized panel to fill a doorway to block sound from an adjacent room.

The Vinnie Rossi gear included his Brama Gen 2 preamp and monoblocks that are well known—and for good reason. Other gear included a Thales turntable and FM Acoustics 123 Phono preamp with a built-in click & pop reducing circuit, both from Switzerland. The digital front end, which is what I heard, employed an MSB three-piece Cascade DAC and supposedly an XACT Audio S1 EVO server, which I didn't spot. That leaves the unusual silver component below the gold FM Acoustics phono stage a mystery.

Overall, this was a very impressive room.

Moon Audio
The Saros Audio Systems Europa tube headphone amp and preamp ($8500) was featured here. The price sheet for this room is in Part 1 near the beginning. As I've said, headphone listening opportunities were spread throughout the show, so if that was your main agenda, you certainly hit your 10k steps in for the day.

3rd Floor Hotel Rooms
Starting now, on the 3rd Floor, there was a hallway of sleeping rooms on the far side of the Atrium, which I hope everybody explored, as there were many fine-sounding rooms there.

Audio Note UK
As I often complain about Audio Note UK rooms, they always look the same because everything from the phono cartridge to the speakers, including the cables, comes from Audio Note. Not only do they always look the same, but their house sound is so consistent that they always sound the same, too. In some categories, they have as many as five different price levels, so you have to know the line, look carefully, and study the room sheet, if one is available, to know what you're listening to.

What's not to complain about here at Enjoy the Music.com is the warm, inviting sound, if that's what you prefer. It's the kind of system you can listen to without fatigue forever. The system here was said to have cost over $340k, but as I've said, you can easily tone it down without sacrificing much enjoyment.

The TT3 Reference turntable is their flagship turntable with three motors to balance the torque on the spindle and bearing.

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