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

Ocean Audio
Dennis Ashendorf of Ocean Audio was busy with a customer, so I didn't get to ask about his table. On the net, I found: Ocean Audio Primarily Imports & Distributes Australian Audio Products from Les Davis Audio. Les Davis Audio makes vibration control and AC enhancement devices.  Finley Audio makes cables, cable lifters, and the power distribution box you see on the table—all of which I've mentioned in a room upstairs.

Arion Audio And MK Audio
Arion Audio oriented their rig along the long wall of the room this year to good effect. The Apollo 12 speaker system (Gen 2) is an active system with DSP room control, priced at $60k with one pair of woofers. Additional woofers are $7,800/pr. And this system was using four pairs.

The loudspeakers are an open baffle design. The main columns featured a line array of AMT drivers. The subs each feature dual opposing drivers, which push sound out the front and the rear. The painted finishes were excellent, but the view from behind reveals more construction detail than I care to look at.

The racks themselves are from Arion. A 4-shelf unit is $5,900. An EMM Labs Reference DA2i DAC ($35k) and TXi transport ($12.5k) were used along with an Aurender N20 Music Server ($14k) for streaming.

The Aric Audio Super 6SN7 fully balanced line stage ($5,475) had gorgeous woodwork, as did the matching Alpha II push-pull 300B monoblocks ($13,275). An Arion phono stage from Luminous Audio Technology was just below the turntable.

Chang Lightspeed was a co-sponsor of the room, and their power distribution and conditioners run from $800 to $5k. They were one of the first companies to address power conditioning for the high end, dating back to at least the early 1990s. Speaking of power, JPS Labs is a longtime fave here at Enjoy the Music.com and was supplied the cable loom with Superconductor 3 and 4 models starting at $1,799. They've been around for decades, too. See our JJPS Labs Superconductor V interconnects, loudspeaker, and USB cables review.

The black unit on top of the rack above was from Trinov in France, and it was likely a DSP unit. On top of it were two of the new IsoAcoustics Gaia Neo footers, which I have just reviewed. The original Gaia are used on the Arion speakers, and they may consider switching to the Neo for ease of adjusting the speaker so it is perfectly vertical when used on uneven surfaces, which is a lot more frequent than you might think.

Linear Tube Audio
Across the hall in the Randolph room was LTA (Linear Tube Audio) with the large Sound Lab G7-7C speakers in Majestic Maple ($49.5k) and the famous Dr. Vinyl, although they were also equipped for streaming. I had to squeeze into the furthest corner to get everything into this photo. The Sound Lab speakers have an enormous presence. If they could team up with someone like Nemesis at Alma Music and Audio to produce grille covers from customers' or others' artwork, they would probably open the door to many new customers. Their speakers come in multiple sizes if these won't quite fit your room. Note the boxes placed on chairs behind each speaker to break up the back wave.

Running down the rack beneath the impressive J.Sikora Initial Max turntable ($17,725) was a DS Audio TB-100 phono equalizer ($22k) for their optical Master 3 phono cartridge ($10.5k) mounted in the Integrity Tru-Glider carbon fiber tonearm ($7k).

Beneath that was the Innuos Phoenix NET network switch ($4,800) and ZEN Next Gen server ($13,750). Below that on the bottom shelf was a Puritan Audio Labs PSM156-MFR power conditioner ($7,500).

On the right side of the rack was the well-known LTA Aero DAC ($3,950) and a prototype of LTA's forthcoming balanced preamp ($TBD)

The little square on the left front corner of the plinth is a DS Audio ST-50 stylus cleaner.

The monoblocks driving the Sound Lab speakers were LTA Century models ($28k).

Dr. Vinyl was spinning records, and he has become a cult figure here on the East Coast. A group of his fans coaxed him into posing with them. The gentleman he has his arm around is from Sound Lab.

Dr. Vinyl, from Middle River, MD, doing what he loves.

Kinect Advisors
Out in the hall, the Kinect Advisors were on hand to help you afford the gear you fell in love with at the show.

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