Jason Victor Serinus

While I didn't reach anywhere near the altitude of the planes leaving SFO's runways, I was finally making headway on the Westin's 3rd floor. The home of many of CAS' exhibits, it got even homier when I entered the room sponsored by Pass Labs. Pass rarely if ever makes an appearance at a consumer show, but with no dealer in the greater Bay Area—the closest is Reno Hi-Fi, which happily arranges in-home demos for CA consumers—the company's Desmond Harrington and Kent English finally decided to let "local" consumers hear why so many critics rave about Pass products.

I've previously praised EnigmAcoustics' Sopranino self-polarizing electrostatic supertweeter ($3690/pair), which I first encountered at T.H.E. Show Newport Beach. The Sopranino claims a flat response to beyond 40kHz and fully passive operation without the need of external bias. Here I heard a pair of Sopraninos in two different configurations. . .

Far more beckoned on the lobby level, but you can only keep them down on the farm so long. Eventually, the lure of unexplored territory pulled this Cancer crab out of the questionable security of his shell onto the wilds of the Westin's second floor. There I encountered the wildest of them all, Sean Casey (above), spinning platters in the Zu Audio room.

JIB cabling, long linked to its factory in Berlin, has now birthed a distinct US branch. Aptly named JIB-USA, it's located in Fremont, CA. At CAS, Allen Ong and his son displayed, among other models, the company's new DSP-001 speaker cable ($7150/2.5m pair). Composed of UP-OCC that is cryogenically treated, insulated with Teflon, and terminated with rhodium connectors, the cable made its silent show premiere.

Ensconced in the third hotel in its four-year history, the three-day California Audio Show opened on August 9, 2013 in the five-floor Westin Hotel in Millbrae, CA. Otherwise known as the Westin SFO, the hotel resides on One Old Bayshore Highway, a hefty stone's throw from San Francisco Bay, directly across the water from the airport runway where Asiana Flight 214 crashed on July 6.

Many of David Wilson's highly acclaimed, long out-of-print recordings are poised to make old and new generations of audiophiles very happy. On August 1, the first two of a selected batch of Wilson Audiophile Recordings will return to circulation as high-resolution (176.4kHz/24-bit), CD-quality, and MP3 downloads. Distributed by Naxos via a host of mass-market and hi-res digital music stores, including Chandos' "The Classical Shoppe," eClassical24bit, HDMusic, HDTracks, HiResAudio, Linn Records, Onkyo, and Qobuz24bit, the first titles in the series are Recital, James B. Welch's disc of four centuries of organ music, and Beethoven and Enescu Sonatas, performed by violinist David Abel and pianist Julie Steinberg, this magazine's "Recording of the Month" for February 1984.

With AXPONA's shift to Chicago, the Capital Audiofest has become the only high quality audio show on the East Coast south of New York City. Taking place July 26–28, CAF has relocated to the newly remodeled Sheraton Silver Spring Hotel, a superior and eminently accessible venue that has double the number of large exhibit rooms as last year's Crowne Plaza in Rockville, MD.

Located inside the Beltway, just three blocks from the Metro line, CAF will take place just 1 mile from the DC city limits. With 44 exhibit spaces booked as of July 17, many of which will display major brands, show organizer Gary Gill is optimistic that attendance will far exceed last year's under-1000 estimate.