There were Grimm MU2s everywhere at CAF 2025 and if you’ve read my review, or any review, you know why—”If you want to hear the best digital music reproduction I’ve heard by an obvious and distinct margin, you’ll need to find a Grimm MU2 to listen through.”
But I want to highlight the Grimm Audio PW1 Phono Stage ($5800) because it has generated a similar kind of buzz—“Have you heard the PW1?” typically followed by “I don’t know how they do it” and “I don’t care. It just sounds right!” Did I say I don’t review analog gear?
I first met Brian Charney of Charney Audio in 2005 on my very first Road Tour article for 6moons. What was a Road Tour?
As I explained in 2005:
This will be the first in a planned mini-series of home audio visitations. With gasoline approaching $3.00 per gallon, you may very well wonder why I would want to drive around NJ to listen to other people’s gear? The answer is simple – this is the end result of all this thinking, writing, talking, listening, haggling and haranguing over audio. How people actually live with their systems; how this becomes a personal experience once this stuff leaves the dealer or manufacturer (or previous owner). Whether or not I care for the sound is of very little relevance to the subject at hand. The fact that the people I’ll meet have put together a system they want to share is what counts. And what does this actually mean to them? How does owning and enjoying a Hi-Fi fit into their lives?
Fast forward some 20 years and we find Brian continuing his exploration of single driver horn-loaded loudspeakers and tube amplifiers (and more) as Charney Audio.
This is the Charney Audio Lumaca VI 145″ long Tractrix horn speakers with the VI Stands using the Voxativ AC-2.6 drivers delivering a reported frequency response of 20Hz to 22 kHz ($61,000/pair w/Voxativ drivers) .
Amplification, D/A processing, and cables were also from Charney Audio and included their 300B Stereo Amplifier ($12,000), Preamplifier ($19,000), a heavily modified Audio Note DAC 4.1 ($24,000), and a Lucas Audio Lab Server ($12,000) serving the bits.
Here’s some of what I said about Brian’s system back in 2005:
We listened to a variety of music; Ray Brown, the excellent soundtrack to Unforgivable Blackness; The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass, the wonderful Entre Amigos disk, Willie Nelson and others. In Brian’s listening room, the sound is eerily present. The sonic stage is set and vocalists in particular are physically embodied, hanging out there in the room for you to listen in.
Eerily present also applies to this system at CAF 2025 along with plenty of physical presence, lightning fast dynamics, and that direct and seamless hit you expect from a large horn using a single (great) driver.
Christopher Hildebrand and his company Fern & Roby make beautiful things that make music while his other company, Tektonics Design Group, makes beautiful things, some bigger like bigger than human-sized bolts or cast bronze baskets and port tubes as used in the DeVore Fidelity O/Bronze (review). The system for CAF 2025 included the F&R Raven II speakers ($5950/pair) with the Isolating Speaker Stands ($1650/pair), F&R AMP No. 2 Integrated Amp ($8500) which I reviewed in October of last year, a Grimm MU2 ($20,600), and a full suite of network gear from Network Acoustics including their Muon Pro Streaming System ($2985) and Tempus Ethernet Switch ($5355) with Black Cat cables tying everything together all sitting on a Fern & Roby Equipment Rack #1 ($5950).
These skills, art & craft, combine in Fern & Roby’s products and one of the newer results is this lovely The Archival Turntable ($25,000) that sits on a Fern & Roby walnut and Richlite plinth housing a Technics SP-10R ‘table and SME M2-12 tonearm. Yum.
Here mounted with a Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC ☆ ES Moving Iron Cartridge. A symphony of materials in the service of music.
I’ve reviewed and enjoyed a number of products from Dan Wright’s ModWright including the LS 99 Balanced Tube Preamp and KWA 99 Monoblocks (review) and KWH 225i Hybrid Integrated Amplifier (review). For CAF 2025 Dan brought along a prototype version of an upcoming amp, the KWA 300 SS Stereo Power Amp ($17,500) that’s coming early 2026.
Here paired with Alta Audio Adam speakers ($17,000/pair), another lovely Pure Fidelity turntable in blue—the Harmony MkII w/Savant tonearm ($15,000)—with a ModWright PH 150 Tube phono stage ($9750) and LS 300 Balanced Tube preamp ($11,000), music was clear, nicely and tightly controlled, with reassuring weight, texture, and body.
Greg Roberts of Volti Audio makes horns. You probably already knew that and I reviewed a pair, the Rival Special Edition Loudspeakers (review) last year. For CAF 2025 we’re looking at the relatively new Volti Vittoria ($50,000/pair) that offer as physical and immediate a sound as you’re likely to hear, paired with a Cary Audio SLI-90 Integrated Amp ($5494), WiiM Ultra w/teddy Pardo external power supply ($945), and the Mystique Z DAC ($11,000) from Mojo Audio.
I had the great pleasure of hearing Chet Baker’s take on Elvis Costello’s “Almost Blue” and as another listener exclaimed as the track ended, “How can you not have a tear in your eye after that.”
I reviewed the Thrax Enyo Signature Integrated Amplifier (review) and was very impressed by its “Infectious music-inspired energy”.
For CAF 2025, Distributor High End By Oz brought a fully tricked out Enyo Integrated Amp + Streaming DAC ($24,500) paired with Thrax’s 2-way Lyra SE speakers sitting on top of the matching passive HADES low frequency extension add-ons ($46,000/pair) that turn the 2-way standmounts into floorstanders all wired with Albedo Silver cables. Rage Against the Machine’s “Bullet in the Head”, selected by Oz when an attendee asked for something with more “pop”, raged through this large room with startling levels of energy, rage, and plenty of pop. Where’s my lighter?
Gryphon’s Diable 333 integrated amp (more info) is currently driving the Barn resident DeVore O/96 and it’s 2x 333 Watts (@8Ω) of Class A/B power are filling the B-Side with sweet, powerful music. While the Diablo 333’s first 10 (or so) Watts run in Class A, the Gryphon Antileon Revelation Amplifier ($49,800/per chassis available as Stereo or Mono), part of a system in the Falls Church, VA dealer Command Performance A/V room at CAF 2025, is a dual mono, pure Class-A high current design with “massively Oversized Power Supplies” offering 165 Watts per channel.
Each year the guys from Command A/V pick a decade as show theme and this year the 1970s ruled which meant wigs with bad haircuts, porn-star mustaches, velour track suits, colored lights, 70’s music and plenty of fun. Rock on, dude.
EMM Labs had their new TXi CD Transport ($12,500) spinning discs in a few rooms at CAF 2025 and I enjoyed two:
…the small system in a small room from Audioshield Distribution featuring the Credo EV 1202 Ref. Loudspeakers ($16,995/pair) I reviewed back 2022 (review)…
…and the big system in a big room by Bending Wave USA and EMM Labs with the mighty Goebel Divin Noblesse ($269,000/pair) filling this large space with ease and power. I’ve spent time with a bunch of gear from Canada’s EMM Labs including the DA2 V2 Reference Stereo DAC (review), NS1 Streamer (review), and the MTRX/2 mono amplifiers / PRE stereo preamplifier combo driving the big Credo Cinema LTM speakers (review) and I’ve come to expect nothing but solid engineering in the service of big, powerful music.
YG Acoustics had their speakers in more rooms than I could count on one hand at CAF 2025 including the Sonja 3.3 ($146,800/pair) I recently reviewed, here paired with the fascinating and flashy Alieno 250 LTD SE 300B Amplifier ($80,000)—”The first tube amplifier utilizing two 300Bs generating 250 Watts per channel” and the company emphasizes it is “NOT a hybrid tube/transistor amplifier”—along with the matching Alieno 6H30 Line Stage ($75,00).
The Alieno gear drove the big YG’s with help from a stack of Taiko Audio digital gear with a lovely relaxed ease, plenty of power, and great grip even down low. Color me intrigued.
I always, always, want to stay in every Zu Audio room I’ve visited over the years far longer than show-time permits and this room at CAF 2025 was another case of that same strong impulse. Sean Casey of Zu stands behind a pair of Technics ‘tables and DJs away playing what I consider to be nothing but great and varied music from 45s and LPs that typically come with an educating intro. A pair of Method Bookshelf Speakers ($1400/pair) with and without the matching Method Subwoofer ($1500/each) brought the tunes in room with one of three amp pairings that included a Pass Labs XA25 Amplifier ($5700), Black Ice Audio Fusion F35 V.2 Integrated Tube Amplifier ($3200), and a Schiit Aegir Power Amplifier ($995).
“How do get we more people into hifi?”
Play great music and have fun doing it.