At Capital Audio Fest 2024 YG Acoustics Swings For the Audio Fence

has new American distribution, makes a big push in many rooms

While most of the luxury speaker brands don't participate in CAF, Stenheim and especially YG Acoustics made points of being seen and heard this year. YG especially made a play for the ears and hearts—not to mention the wallets—of Capital Audio Festival attendees by demoing a wide range of its speakers from the lower priced to the next to the top XX model. Despite the small rooms in which they showed, the sound was exceptional in every room, but for my ears, it was the green Hailey speakers driven by AirTight—shown in the thumbnail below— that got my eartention. The lead photo above, featuring a Stenheim speaker, relates to a press event described below. The thumbnail for the YouTube video featuring all of the YG Acoustics rooms is below.

The first video I posted concentrated on turntables. This video includes a few, but mostly it covers rooms and systems. I spotted one Technics turntable at this show and one Rega—pretty meager representation— and of course VPI was there in force, but Pro-Ject was missing in action, as was Audio-Technica, Fluance, and many other brands. In a crowded, competitive turntable market, particularly at the bottom end, can some of these companies afford to sit out a show like Capital Audio Festival? I guess they figure yes.

You'll see the Italian turntable brand Thuono make its American debut, and Bergmann appeared in more than few rooms where YG was. You'll see a Michell Gyrodec and a Techodec, a few Acoustic Signature 'tables and a few others.

I visited Fern & Roby room, GTT Audio, Volti, Audience, Harbeth/Prima Luna, MBL, Voxativ, High Water Sound, Audio Note and many others. Acora introduced a complete new line of lower prices loudspeakers housed in marble rather than granite and conventionally shaped to keep cost down. But they use high quality Accuton ceramic drivers and the one I heard for $7,995 sounded excellent, as did a Marten one similarly priced in another room. For a solo act at Capitol Audio Festival I think I covered a great deal of territory and a new microphone set up greatly improved the sound. I don't think anyone will have a problem with it. But you can never tell! And you are guaranteed a few laughs! I promise!

Estelon, another "luxury" speaker brand, was at the show, but showed only the lower end of its range.

I moderated yet another discussion with the engineering "power couple" of Jim Anderson and Ulrike Schwarz—this one covering immersive audio and what they had to day about what happens to their mixes when Dolby Atmos gets ahold of it was both fascinating and surprising, but that's for another discussion.

There are a number of useful pros conferences, one on the first day held by Audio Denmark Group's Lars Kristensen in which he introduced to the American press the flagship T5 Børresen loudspeaker and launched here a new integrated amplifier making use of a new switch mode power supply that uses sine not square waves. He declared obsolete standard power supplies employing large transformers and explains why. He makes a convincing case as did a few amplifiers I heard at this show.

Another impressive presser that wasn't a time waster as many are, was held Saturday morning by Stenheim and Vinny Rossi—group shot at the top. The event was hosted by bi-coastal high end retailer Alma Music and Audio. Rossi (in the center) explained the workings of his latest amplifier and its power supply and Stenheim's Jean-Pascal Panchard (third from the left) delved into his loudspeaker designs. Nexus Audio Walter Schofield's (he's second from the right) marketing concern herded the journalists into the room with a promise of good coffee, fattening, sugary breakfast treats and a promise to waste no one's time. He fully succeeded! The information gleaned would come in handy in a review of any of these products. The others in the photo are from Alma Audio.