Alex goes to CAF

You should come to CAF,” Ken Micallef said. He has been saying this for what seems like decades. “It's cool, smaller and more manageable than AXPONA. You'll like it.”

- BY ALEX HALBERSTADT

I explained to Ken that I don't like crowds. Or airports. That trying to listen while people are talking loudly over the music aggravates my Generalized Anxiety Disorder. And that having to sit through anything at all by Dire Straits rubs me even wronger than it did in high school. But this year my curiosity got the best of me, and on a crisp November night I rode the Acela to Washington's Union Station, then took the Red Line to North Bethesda, and at long last, tired and already regretting my Amtrak dinner, trudged toward the twinkling lights of a Canopy by Hilton.

The following morning, at another Hilton five minutes away, I walked into my first US audio show. The global, all-ages vibe of High End Munich was nowhere to be found, nor were the airy digs of its MOC convention center. Under fluorescent lighting, the crowd was overwhelmingly male and distinctly American. During my first 15 minutes at CAF, I spotted at least five pairs of sweatpants, four hearing aids, three yellow-gold Rolex Submariners, two tiger-themed Ed Hardy jackets, and one hairpiece. I was also surprised to find myself on the younger end of the CAF age spectrum. As a fellow audio journalist tartly noted, the Rockville Hilton sported “more canes than women.”

If Capital Audiofest had once been a scrappy local show that attracted some of the more colorful characters from around the DC area, it has become an international showcase for many of hi-fi's bigger players, and during my visit I heard no shortage of the kind of shock-and-awe systems aimed at the kidnap-insurance crowd. But I'm happy to say that I listened to plenty of fascinating, keenly priced, great-sounding gear while mostly managing to remain civil and keep my blood alcohol level under 0.08.