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Having never before seen a pair of Klipsch La Scalas ($CAD15,000/pair) in person, I was pleasantly surprised by their appearance when I saw them in the Kennedy HiFi room. Looking stately, dare I say noble even, with their wide baffles and hardwood enclosures, the Klipsches were coupled to a system that included a Simaudio Moon 393 preamp ($CAD6800), a Moon 330 120Wpc power amp ($CAD4400), and a Pro-Ject 2Xperience turntable ($CAD1700 with arm and cartridge).

More great sound was had in retailer Audio Eden's room, where they were showcasing a system fronted by SME's Synergy all-in-one record player, which includes the SME model 12 turntable, SME lV arm with internal Crystal Cable wiring, an Ortofon Windfeld Ti MC cartridge, and a built-in phono stage made by Nagra ($CAD28,000 total cost)—but no kitchen sink.

The first thing I did at the Toronto Audiofest—after eating breakfast and attending some business meetings—was visit the Zesto Audio room, where I was hosted by Zesto Audio President and designer George Counnas. I was eager to hear the just-announced Leto Ultra vacuum tube preamplifier ($9995 US), which features—wait for it—tone controls.

Making their North American debut in the Rotel/Monitor Audio room were Rotel's P5 preamp, with built-in 32- bit/768kHz DAC ($CAD5299), and 1080Wpc M8 mono amps ($CAD18,000/pair). Speakers were Monitor Audio Gold 300s, said to employ technology trickled down from the company's flagship Platinum ll model.

With its abundance of high rises and freeways, Toronto has the feel of a big, bustling metropolis. It is Canada's most populated city, North America's fourth after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles. It is also the country's business epicenter and the only Canadian city to have an MLB team and an NBA one, the latter the Toronto Raptors, the league's 2019 championship winners.

Romantics rejoice! In an age where ice seems to melt faster than hearts, there are still great musicians who uphold the Russian tradition of romantic music. Vadim Gluzman, Johannes Moser, and Yevgeny Sudbin may not (yet) have the cachet of David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Sviatoslav Richter, who famously came together with Herbert von Karajan to record Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, but their new SACD of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, and Arno Babajanian’s sole Piano Trio (BIS-2372) places them firmly in the grand Russian tradition of emotive, give-it-all-you’ve-got musicianship.

In the realm of loudspeaker reviews, John Atkinson's measurements and my empirical observations have one important equivalency: Both are meaningless abstractions until confirmed by your listening experience.

Both are contingent on factors that are necessarily obtuse and not especially controllable.