Celebrating 21 years of affordable Music Hall turntables, the irascible Roy Hall (right) was in fine form on AXPONA's opening day, offering show specials.
Getting ready for the first day's visitors in AXPONA's Ear Gear Expo, Ayre's vice president and CTO, Ariel Brown, was busy setting up the Colorado's company's QX-5 Twenty D/A processor ($8950, right) Codex D/A headphone amplifier ($1795, hidden in center, and the new QX-8 D/A processor ($4450 with S/PDIF inputs, $4950 with asynchronous USB input, $5450 with USB and Roon Ready Ethernet, left).
"What the heck?" Behind the Master Class Area was a giant tan-colored hooded construction, looking like a giant Zamboni machine and labeled "Wynn Audio," with a viewing window at the front.
The show was scheduled to open at 10am today (April 12), but at 9:55am there was already a line of people at the registration desk. AXPONA looks on track to replace CES as the premier audio show in North America.
The late Arnie Nudell, co-founder of Infinity, was very much a mentor to PS Audio's Paul McGowan, and Paul and his team have been working a loudspeaker design that would honor Nudell. AXPONA saw the first public demo of the new speaker, the AN3, which is expected to be available toward the end of the year at a price somewhere in the region of $11,500$14,500/pair. The AN3 features a servo-corrected 12" aluminum-cone woofer, driven by a 700W amplifier mounted on one of the sides, with a folded ribbon tweeter, a rectangular planar midrange unit sourced from Bohlender-Graebener, and an 8" cone "mid-bass coupler," the last a consistent feature of Nudell's designs for Infinity and Genesis.
AXPONA's Master Class lectures offer a series of seminars on sometimes controversial subjects. To wrap up Friday afternoon's talks, Channel D's Rob Robinson explained why for phono preamplifiers, current-mode amplification, with its zero-ohm input impedance, gets the best signal/noise ratio from moving-coil cartridges, compared with conventional voltage-mode circuits, and even improves tracking performance.
I turned up at Mike Jbara's Master Class presentation Friday afternoon, "Achieving Authentic Studio Quality Sound," expecting fireworks. Jbara is the chief executive of MQA and many internet denizens had declared that they would be attending his presentation to oppose what he would be saying. But all was quiet during Jbara's 45-minute talk on what he regards as the benefits of the controversial codec to both the music industry and to audiophiles. Another MQA-related Master Class takes place at AXPONA Saturday April 13 at 12 noon. Moderated by Besflores Nievara Jr., Brand Ambassador for Music Direct, Mike Jbara will join MQA partner NAD's CTO, Greg Stidsen, and other panelists to discuss "The Future of High Resolution Audio." Perhaps the fireworks will be in evidence tomorrow!
In our February 2019 issue, when I reviewed a new integrated amplifier from Colorado-based Ayre Acoustics, I concluded that "the EX-8 Integrated Hub is a high-end contender at a competitive price" (footnote 1). In that review I promised a Follow-Up in which I would compare the EX-8 with Cambridge Audio's Edge A integrated amplifier, which Ken Micallef had positively reviewed in our January 2019 issue (footnote 2). While I'd enjoyed my time with the EX-8, I'd found its balance rather on the light side, and that it projected voices somewhat forward on the soundstage.
As well as live music, the Montreal show offered a full schedule of seminars. Roon's Steve Silberman presented two seminars to packed houses on Saturday on getting the best from the Roon music app and the Roon Nucleus servers, including how to take advantage of the system's powerful DSP engine.
What would a Montreal show be without snow? The first day of the Montreal Audio Fest was bright and sunny, but as walked from my sleeping room to the ballroom to continue my reporting on Saturday morning, this is the sight that greeted me. "That's nothing," snorted native Quebeçois! (And I still find it weird to see trees growing on the top of a tower blockshow venue the Hotel Bonaventure is 12 floors off the ground.)