Just got back from Capital AudioFest... what a blast!
I teamed up with & shared Room 316 with BorderPatrol. Gary Dews and I were using Gary's beautiful looking and really phenomenal sounding Living Voice OBX-RW loudspeakers (Gary is the sole US importer of these great UK speakers)... I was very, very impressed by these Living Voice speakers (
http://www.livingvoice.co.uk/products-auditorium-speakers.html)... they really don't do anything wrong...
Here's some feedback from Herb Reichert from Stereophile...
The second Border Patrol (and Triode Wire Labs) room featured the wildly over-achieving and vivid-sounding Living Voice OBX-RW loudspeakers ($11,800/pair). Instead were driven by S20 EXD Border Patrol parallel single-ended 300B monoblocks ($16,750/pair) and a 1543 DAC ($1500). This was only my first day, but damn! The sound was really good in both rooms. Border Patrol might win my "Peace and Crickets" prize for Best Sound two show in a row.On Friday evening, Greg Roberts from Volti Audio showed-up with his "brand-new", more affordable "Rival" speakers... After-hours, Gary & I spent considerable time (hours!) with Greg evaluating & tweaking the new "Rival" speakers.
Gary & I let Greg "crash" our party & set-up his "brand new" globally debuted speakers at 2 PM on Saturday (exactly mid-way through the 3 day show). At 2:20 PM (20 minutes later), the speakers were sold to a local audiophile... yeah, that quick!
Here's Herb Reichert's impressions...
"Most of you must know I am a long time fan of Volti Audio's Vittoria horn-loaded loudspeakers. They achieve what I always thought was impossible: a smooth, coherent, hyper-efficient loudspeaker that bubbles with musical life—and never let's on it's a horn speaker. Most folks that heard it agreed except, many wished it was smaller and less expensive. Well, Volti proprietor/engineer, Greg Roberts was listening and at CAF released a smaller, less expensive model, the Rival at only $7900/pair. The sound, while not quite as sweet and sophisticated as the Vittora, was "oh my my" tight fast and textured. The box, the drivers and the music reproduced seemed properly scaled, utterly uncompressed. The new 99dB-sensitive Rival delivered a great portion of the bigger speaker's pleasures. Bravo Volti!
The new Rivals were driven by Border Patrol S20 EXD parallel, single-ended, dual-mono 300B amplifiers ($16,750/pair) and the Border patrol 1543 DAC ($1500). All cables were Triode Wire Labs and sourced from a PI Audio UberBUSS power distribution block."
http://www.stereophile.com/content/caf2016-herb-gets-it#CqMKA2T9CrDibcre.97Also, Gary & I had a three-way split on Room 323 with Lou Hinckley from Daedalus Audio...
Once again, Herb's impressions...
"In my report from the 2016 AXPONA, I wrote a whole blurb about how I thought the Border Patrol room (with Triode Wire Labs and Volti) had the best sound of show, but I couldn't turn it because I had forgotten to take photos. (Sorry Gary Dews.) This time, however, Gary (and Pete) had two rooms and maybe they both will win that honor. The loudspeakers were different in each room, but the sound quality and music quality were equally wonderful in both.
The first Border Patrol room featured Daedalus Audio Athena V.2 floorstanding loudspeakers ($11,850/pair) in a super-deluxe wood finish. They were driven by the PX20 EXD Border Patrol push-pull 300B monoblocks ($16,750/pair), a Border Patrol Control Unit line stage ($6500), and Gary's excellent no-oversampling/no-digital-filtering DAC ($1250)—all of which were sitting on the new Daedalus Audio "Daedalus isolation Devices" (DiD) priced at $480 for a set of three."Cheers,
Pete