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They say staring is impolite, but as I listened to the music from this system in the American Sound of Canada room, it was hard to keep my eye from wandering to gaze lustily at the assembled gear.

Okay, so what next?

BIG speakers, namely the 3-way PMC Fenestria ($90,000), which loomed tall in the second Motet room. Upstream components included an Accuphase A75 amplifier ($25,600), Accuphase C2850 preamplifier ($25,000), Lumin U1 streamer ($10,000), and—get this—an iFi Diablo DAC that retails for $1200!

Another fun room was the one sponsored by Centre Hi-Fi, a Montreal-based audio dealer that decided to add a flagship division called Genesis that offers higher-performance and higher-priced products than it normally sells.

My third room belonged to audio importer Motet and Winnipeg-based retailer AltitudoAudio. The gear in this room was more modestly priced than in previous rooms, but it delivered the musical goods.

Next up was another great-sounding room (it felt so good to be back!). Hosted by Mark Elias, owner of retailer Soundstage Fine Audio, this room boasted some high-grade gear, starting with Vandersteen’s new, dark, and handsome KĒNTO Carbon speakers ($49,000/pair), which Vandersteen representative Brad O’Toole seemed rightly proud of, as well as of the company’s 150Wpc solid state, zero feedback M5-HPA High-Pass monoblocks, which were powering the KĒNTO's higher-frequency drivers.

“Hello Toronto Audiofest! It’s good to be back!”

That was my first thought when I entered the Westin Toronto Airport Hotel, the same venue used for the previous, and first ever, Toronto Audiofest in 2019. It was also the thought I had inside the first exhibit room I visited, sponsored by importer Wynn Audio and helmed by the amiable Wynn Wong.

What would it be like to attend an audio show?

It's a reasonable question coming at the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel tail-end (fingers crossed) of a worldwide pandemic.

I'm about to find out because I'm at the 2021 Toronto Audiofest, held at the Westin Toronto Airport Hotel from October 22–24.

You've got your 2001: A Space Odyssey speaker, which of course is a tall, black, featureless monolith. Then there's your wooden "Who's buried inside?" speaker, your "R-I-C-O-L-A" speaker, your enema bag or double-inverted enema bag speaker, your menacing hooded-Klansman speaker, your "looks like a robot, praying mantis, or Transformer" speaker (mine), and your "Does it leave a slime trail?" speaker (looks like a snail). You've got your "Is that a room divider?" speaker, your "looks like you stepped on a duck's head" speaker, and your "whipped cream dollop suspended in time" speaker.

I've got a music problem. Specifically, I've got a rock music problem.

It's a true cliché—that is, a cliché that happens to be true: Rock music, in almost all its forms, is young people's music. It's about new, fresh experiences—new love, new sex, consciousness sought or attained, rebellion, drugs—and when you've reached a certain age, those experiences don't feel so fresh anymore. That's a fact about which it's hard not to feel some regret. You don't have to share their sentiment to realize that there's a reason Pete wrote, and Roger sang, "Hope I die before I get old."

We audiophiles so frequently get caught up in the pursuit of perfection that some have attempted to rebrand high-end audio as "perfectionist audio." But is it even possible for a single piece of audio gear, let alone an entire audio system, to attain perfection when there's no common agreement as to what "perfection" means? It's easier to cue up a Nirvana track than to find the way to audio nirvana.