On an overcast and still cool late February Saturday, members of DCHFG convened at member William Assmann’s house for refreshments and audiophile pursuits.

The featured guest was John Tucker of Exemplar Audio fame. Bill’s system features Exemplar’s comprehensively modified Altec-Lansing 1570B tube amplifiers. In addition, Bill uses the Exemplar phono stage that Bill said was instrumental in dialing in the precise low impedance needed to obtain the ideal sonics from his Hana Umami Red cartridge.

New DCHFG member, John Williams, made a presentation about his passion for tube electronics and his thriving electronics repair business. Dr. Vinyl (aka Jose) came with news of an exciting new tonearm coming from England that is creating a lot of buzz.

Of course, no meeting is complete without the audiophile prizes that our leader John Gatski provides.

This special DCHFG meeting was assembled for a screening of The Band’s Last Waltz concert film. Recently released by Criterion in a spectacular 4K Blu-ray release, it was particularly poignant because of the recent passing of Band member Robbie Robertson. Director Martin Scorsese’s film is a homage to the The Band and associated musicians spanning the era from the mid nineteen sixties to the present. Interestingly, Martin Scorsese’s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon’s soundtrack is the last recording by Robbie Robertson.

The meeting took place at DCHFG Gerry’s home with his dedicated multimedia system featuring top tier audio components and a recently installed ninety eight inch OLED TV.

Of course every DCHFG meeting features tasty audiophile related prizes to round out the event.

It has been several years since DCHFG visited LTA Audio located in the cozy Takoma Park, MD suburb of Washington, DC.

A lot has happened since our first visit. LTA has now expanded to a second floor with a dedicated listening room and space for engineering prototype work.

With all this activity, LTA has been working on several new products and upgrades to their existing line of audiophile ware.

For this DCHFG listening event, two unreleased products were featured. First was a brand new 120-watt mono block amplifier design based on David Berning‘s, DCHFG member, ZOTL technology.

The system was driven by the soon to be released LTA DAC which is a first for LTA. Many DAC chips were evaluated but eventually settled on the extremely popular TDA1541A chip that has been successfully used by many boutique audio vendors. This 16-bit chip outputs to ZOTL Tube circuitry for connection to downstream components. The DAC also employs a rich set of input options including the usual S/PDIF, optical, and USB Type-C. Also available are i2S inputs and HDMI ARC. The latter is becoming increasingly popular for allowing consumers to connect their TVs and control volume with their TV remote.

David Berning was present and gave insight into these designs to DCHFG members.

For the technically interested, a tour was given of both the upstairs engineering lab and downstairs manufacturing facility.

The audition system made use of the Pure Audio Project speaker with source material coming from a computer supplied with FLAC music files.

As always, the meeting concluded with the famous DCHFG raffle where members received audiophile treats in the form of CD and file based recordings.

DCHFG would like to thank LTA Audio for their generosity in opening their facility for this listening event.