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

Classic Audio Loudspeakers
The Roosevelt room, as usual, was populated with horn speaker lovers listening to a couple of Classic Audio Loudspeakers' variations on that theme, powered by Atma-sphere tube amps, and others from boutique manufacturers. LPs from a turntable with a Tri-Panar tonearm, and reel-to-reel tapes were the source of music here.

While not tonally accurate, it pushed the goosebumps meter to the red zone when they played a session tape of Jimi Hendrix working on Voodoo Child. Elvis might have left the building, but Jimi was just on the other side of the glass in the studio. The room also serves as the Dog Pound for various iterations of Nipper.

On the far right edge of the photo, up at the front wall of the room, was a McIntosh Power Controller with meters for amps and volts, a component that probably dates back to the Nippers on display.

From Classic Audio Loudspeakers comes these Model 1 monoblocks with 34 Watts each from push-pull 300B tubes ($27,950).

This room always seems to be filled with visitors who stay for a long listen. The source components were far off to the right. These presenters were not intimidated by long cable lengths, nor did they feel a need for cable risers.

Gershman Acoustics
Next door to the Roosevelt room with the Classic Audio horn speakers, with only a small hallway separating them to dampen the sound transfer, was an Enjoy the Music.com favorite with our staff of reviewers.... Gershman Acoustics with the much-anticipated American premiere of their new Symphoria speaker! I had heard it a month earlier at the Toronto Audiofest 2025 high-end audiophile and music lover event, driven by solid-state electronics in a room that always rates Best Rooms recognition. Here, with an all-tube rig, it was even more spectacular, eclipsing what I have heard from their more expensive Black Swan 30th Anniversary speaker.

In all fairness, much of this praise must be shared with the outstanding components in the rig. As usual, their rig was strung with a loom of Cardas Clear Beyond cables, which would typically add a tidy sum to the cost. Behind the rack was a product I vaguely recall from their room at a previous show, the Subasse Audio Vividus Zwo ground device ($13k) from Germany. Beneath the LampizatOr DAC on top of the rack was a LampizatOr Gulfstream music server ($8,500), which is seldom heard at US shows.

The DAC was LampizatOr's new flagship tube DAC, the Aphrodite ($105k), fitted with 5U4G tubes from KR Audio in the Czech Republic, one of our less conspicuous NATO partners, in the front row. I'm partial to tube gear in general and LampizatOr, more specifically, as I use their Amber 4 DAC (reviewed here), which has now been replaced with the Amber 5 model. The Aphrodite was placed upon a turntable platform set on the top shelf of a Pangea equipment rack ($249). The bronze sheen seen on the front and side is an artifact of the light falling on the textured finish. The chassis is black, like the perimeter of the top in this photo.

A VAC Master preamplifier (starting at $30k) was in the rack while Master 300 Mk2 monoblocks ($44k/pr.) were placed directly on the rug.

Gershman wanted Enjoy the Music.com to let our global fans know their new Symphoria speaker ($70k) is the sweet spot of the higher-priced Gershman loudspeaker range. At the same time, they have two stand-mounted monitors and their 30th Anniversary Grand Avant Garde floorstander at much more accessible prices. They are all super-achievers.

Note the 3-D double-star in the midrange and the "rope-twist" shape of the surround. You can also see the separation of the two modules.

The Symphoria is a two-module speaker, like the Black Swan, but unlike the Black Swan, where the midrange/tweeter module is suspended above the woofer module, in the Symphoria, the midrange/tweeter module nests into the V-groove of the bass unit and is isolated by vibration-absorbing discs from IsoAcoustics, which also makes the custom footers for their floorstanding speakers.

The sides of the bass chassis and the mid/tweeter chassis are routed out for the placement of aluminum rectangles. On one side of the mid/tweeter module, the model name "Symphoria" is etched into the metal. In this case, the metal bands are black to match the piano black finish.

In the lobby of the hotel, an example with contrasting copper metal bands was shown with the attractive wood grilles. I've heard the Symphonia with the wood grille in place, and very little sound quality is sacrificed for the protection they provide.

The music in the room was airy with bloom, transparency, dynamics, and high resolution with all the glory that great tube amps supply. With 89dB sensitivity and a nominal 6 Ohm impedance, good tube amplifiers of more modest power should be more than ample in a more modest-sized room. While "Symphoria" refers to a feeling one gets from classical music, I'm pretty sure this speaker will rock, too. For all the praise I've given the Gershman rooms at the Canadian shows, it's exciting to see them finally eclipse those performances here in the US.

JBL And Audio Research
It was getting to be late in the day on Saturday by the time I wandered into the larger of the two VPI rooms. Aside from the expected VPI turntable, finished here in silver and anodized rose color, Audio Research electronics filled the lower half of the rack, plus the two amp stands. The speakers were large JBL horns—a modern take on the Classic Audio Loudspeakers I had heard two doors back. They were a stand-mounted miniature version of their Everest floorstander of days gone by.

In an attempt to embellish the vibe of the JBL speakers and analog playback, they were spinning a modern take on the Doo-Wop sound popularized in the ‘50s. It didn't hit the proper buttons in me. You would think Harry Weisfeld, who created VPI back in the day, would have some original Doo-Wop LPs in his collection. But then you get into the problem of what to do with the other speaker and monoblock, since they would be monaural.

Audio Research phono stage, preamp, and monoblock.

Acora Acoustics And VAC
In the smaller (but still decent-sized) VPI room, a pair of Acora's entry-level MRB-1 monitors ($8k) in Grigio Carnico, one of two standard stones, was looking very elegant, but somewhat precarious on the minimalist stand. There are also two special order stones; they are all elegant. These small speakers with front-firing ports can be used close to a wall on a credenza or bookshelf, or out in the room like this on a stand. The sound quality is excellent across the entire brand, and is highly acclaimed by a lot more people than just me.

Out in the hallway were a pair of The Tempest & Nemesis speakers from Luminous Audio Technology, destined for after-hours sessions from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

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