Capital Audio Fest 2024 "Turntable Centric" Video Coverage Starts Here
Cap Audio Fest seemed well attended and there was plenty to see and much that was new
Part 1 of Tracking Angle's Capital Audio Festival 2024 coverage is an hour plus long video mostly highlighting turntables and tonearms but also a few other interesting features including an interview with composer/musician/HD Tracks entrepreneur David Chesky's 17 year old son Lucca who introduced a new $995/pr loudspeaker. You're sure to enjoy the interview I conducted with him.
The top photo show a The Wand turntable fitted with a newly designed arm that's a collaboration between The Wand's Simon Brown and Genesis's Gary Koh. Hope it sounds as good as it looks!
VPI debuted its new, long awaited Model One turntable and tonearm that takes its design cues from the original HW-19 'table. The gimbaled arm is completely new. Mat Weisfeld explains it in the video.
Two Polish turntable manufacturers are now imported to America. In addition to J.Sikora, BennyAudio's two models are now available in America as is the Perpetuum Ebner line from Germany that made it's American debut at the show.
BennyAudio Odyssey
Other turntable brands at the show and in the video: SOTA, Pure Fidelity, SAT, Acoustic Signature, The Wand, AMG, Technics, Pear Audio Blue, Rega, maybe a few others you'll see close up and personal. There were tonearms from VPI, SAT, Glanz, The Wand, Tru-Glider, Acoustic Signature, and Auris.
Our west coast correspondent Michael Trochalakis covered last summer's Pacific Audio Fest and interviews Pure Fidelity turntable designer John Stratton. I missed PF at Capital Audio Fest so inserted the Stratton interview into this video. Worked out well and of course there's Michael Johnson's excellent review of his PF 'table updated with the new motor controller.
Ayre introduced the PX-8, its first new phono preamp in many years. Cost is around $6000 with add on modules for A/D conversion and a DS Audio optical cartridge equalizer circuit. Alexus Audio also introduced a DS Audio equalizer setting in its phono preamp and DS itself debuted the TB-1000 all-tube equalizer.
Sutherland introduced the new TZ Vibe trans-impedance phono preamp selling for $1400 and Belleson introduced its new $3250 Radiance Wi-Fi enabled phono preamp. that features a single input. It's $8500 Brilliance offers two inputs. The new Revox B77MkIII was on display and no surprise: it looked like the real deal because it is. It's built in the same factory that originally built Revox decks.
Plenty of good news for vinyl enthusiasts and records and tapes played in many rooms. Curiously, vinyl seller participation was seriously down compared to last year, with many empty tables on the lower level floor. Not sure why.
It's an hour long video that may tax the minds of short attention span YouTubers so for those, pleas watch as much as you can absorb at a time. I got a new microphone system and the sound is much improved! Another video coming soon to fill in what's not here, much of it complete room systems and loudspeakers too.
Noted:
There were many empty tables in the vinyl seller area on the hotel's lower level. Far fewer than attended last year and I'm not at all sure why. Is it a one year drop or a signal of something else? Next year will tell. Could be the Internet or something else.
While the show generally attracts upstarts, entrepreneurs and out of the mainstream audio manufacturers ("big" names like Magico, Wilson, D'Agostino, etc. don't participate), at this show YG Acoustics and its new distributor Supreme Acoustic Systems had much of its lineup demoed in many rooms and the sound in all of them showed how its done. Even in small rooms the big ones sounded great. One of the YG rooms was my pick for overall best sound but more about that in the next video.
I was there mostly to cover analog so don't expect speaker details in my reports but the second video will cover more speakers and systems. Stenheim was there in a few rooms too, and in the VPI room, with the smaller Avenger as a source, amplified by Gryphon Essence preamp and monoblock amps into Stenheim Ultime speakers as seen below in the video's thumbnail. Big room, even bigger sound and among the best at the show. A smaller pair driven by Vinnie Rossi electronics also stood out.
