Capital Audiofest 2025: Must-See Stereo, Part One

By Frank Doris | December 1, 2025 | Issue 225 | Show Report

I’ve been a fan of NOLA (formerly Alon) speakers for a very long time. It would be a serious understatement to say that Carl Marchisotto, who goes back to the venerable Dahlquist days, knows how to design a speaker. He has long favored open-baffle midrange/tweeter designs, and their spaciousness and ability to project a deep three-dimensional soundspace is a NOLA hallmark. That and powerful dynamics.

At CAF, NOLA showed their Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 ($150,000/pair) with an Audio Research Reference CD8 CD player, a Valve Amplification Company (VAC) Essence line stage ($10,000), Western Electric 97A monoblock amps ($124,999/pair) and Nordost cables. The speakers employ true ribbon tweeters, alnico-ring-magnet midrange drivers and dual alnico-ring-magnet woofers in separate enclosures. Carl had been plagued by amplifier failures (resulting in having to use a not-optimal amp at the last minute) and other mayhem at last year’s CAF, and the speakers still sounded good. The NOLA team was determined to not let that happen again this year, and oh boy did their efforts paid off.

This system had depth, and was warm, rich, and spacious, with beautiful lifelike detail and incredible bass and dynamic presence on everything from Pink Floyd’s Is there Anybody Out there? The Wall live 1980 – 81 (anyone who happened to be in the room when it was playing lucked into quite a monumental sonic experience) to “The Girl From Ipanema,” to…well, forgive me, but I forgot to take notes and just basked in the music.

The NOLA Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 loudspeakers
were impressive to say the least. Courtesy of
Kristen Marchisotto.

I will have much more to say about Capital Audiofest 2025 in Part Two, in Issue 226.