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As usual, I found cellist and Audio Note UK music ambassador Vincent Bélanger hosting the Audio Note UK room, but this time, Vincent wasn't alone.

I have bumped into manufacturer Artist Cloner’s owner and designer, Sylvio Comtois, many times at audio shows. He strikes me as being a bit of a mad scientist. Not “crazy” mad but mad in the sense of being obsessed with a particular objective.

When I asked Totem's Vince Bruzzese, at last year's "static" launch of the new Bison series, what the impetus was to create the Bison range, he said it came down to wanting to create something special to mark the company's 35th birthday but also that of the Model 1, which came out in the year of the company's founding, 1987.

What did the Hearken and Art et Son rooms have in common? The Graham Audio LS8.1 speakers ($13,300), so it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that I heard a similarly, though not identically, engaging intimacy in both systems' presentations, the kind that made me just want to relax in my seat and listen through whole albums.

"Are you sure there are no tubes in the chain?" I asked On a Higher Note's Philip O'Hanlon, North American distributor of the BBC-inspired Graham Audio speaker line, in Montreal retailer Art et Son's room. Philip was sitting with me listening to an LP of Belgian singer Mélanie De Biasio.

Remember in my first post when I said "How cool it would be if I'd turned into Alternate Rob with a half-million dollar system waiting for him at home?" Well, the system I encountered in one of Filtronique's rooms would fit the bill nicely.

Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by their price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review, and any subsequent follow-up reports, appeared. "Vol.45 No.6" indicates our June 2022 issue, for example. "WWW" means the review is also posted online.