The lovely (as you can see) and talented (as anyone who heard her sing and play the flute at the SSI 2010 <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2010/oh_caroline/">Give Band concerts</A> can attest) Caroline St-Louis helped out at the show ticket desk. Here she is with her favorite audio magazine.
montreal is:<br>
two spiral staircases
a mist this gray morning drops<br>
upon the curves
a million billion fruit trees, frozen
a few miles from plattsburg,<br>
global positioning system
this afternoon,<br>
high in the sky above saratoga springs:
I had been impressed by Micromega's Airstream, the WiFi-connected DAC ($1595), when Jason Serinus and I heard it at <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/axpona2010/micromega-focal-pathos-crystal/"…; at the beginning of March. But it was the French company's new owner, Didier Hamid, who caught showgoers' attention with the Airstream at SSI. Holding his MacBook Pro in his hand and playing songs from iTunes, Hamid dramatically demonstrated the benefits of doing away with wires. (The rest of the system included <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2010/focals_daniel_jacques/">Focal 1038Be speakers</A> driven by Micromega amplification; control of volume was provided by the iTunes level control on the laptop.)
Take a dCS Scarlatti digital front end ($68,000), combine it with a pair of Nagra VPA tube amplifiers ($20,000/pair, pictured), and a pair of the new Verity Audio Amadis loudspeakers ($29,995) and you'll have a pretty good-sounding system, right?
Son-or-Filtronique was celebrating its 41st year of being in business at SSI and the retailer's larger room featured Verity Sarasto Mk.2 speakers driven by Audio Research Reference 210 tube monoblocks—love those green power meters—and the relatively new Audio Research Reference Five preamplifier. Source was the fully-loaded, four-box dCS Scarlatti SACD/CD player that <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/hirezplayers/dcs_scarlatti_sacdcd_playback_s… Fremer reviewed last August</A>. (My apologies S-or-F, but I didn't note the cables being used.) This was the last room I visited at SSI and all my notes said was "Wow!" So that's all I have to say here.
The smaller room operated by Montreal retailer Son-or-Filtronique was a little on the small side for the bass perfomance of the Sonus Faber speakers, driven by a pair of Ayre's mighty MX-R monoblocks, the midrange and highs were sweet and musical -sounding, whether the source was the MacBook seen in the photo driving the Ayre QB-9 USB DAC or the acrylic-plattered Bauer dps turntable that Art Dudley favorably reviewed in the Show (April) issue of <I>Stereophile</I>.