LATEST ADDITIONS

With the title of Director, Sarah Tremblay is Michel Plante's partner in the SSI enterprise.

SSI staff member and singer/flute player Caroline St. Louis took some time off from her career to have a baby, but she was back in top form at SSI 2012, singing with her Give Band.

Seen at the party: Monitor Audio's Sheldon Ginn, winner of the Chris Pine Lookalike Contest.

Gerard Rejskind (left), editor of UHF magazine, and last year's recipient of the SSI Lifetime Achievement Award, is pictured here with Simaudio's Lionel Goodfield (right).

One of the two Lifetime Achievement Awards was given to Richard Petit, President of KeébecSon. The presentation was made by Richard's daughter, Marie-Eve, and was the most touching event at the party.

The speaker of choice in the Audioville room was the brand new KEF Blade ($30,000/pair): a consumer-friendly version of something that started life as a KEF concept speaker. (In particular, in order to reduce costs, the latter's carbon-fiber enclosure has been replaced with one made of a composite resin.) Mid frequencies and treble are handled by the metal-diaphragm KEF UNI-Q array, while low frequencies are given over to two pairs of side-mounted 9" drivers, working in tandem so that bass energy is neither wasted nor allowed to travel through the enclosure structure to modulate the higher frequencies.

In the Audioville room, Chord Electronics of England demonstrated their Red Reference CD player ($26,000), now in Mk.III form. Refinements include a fully motorized transport door, plus a true asynchronous USB input. The player's D/A section, which offers up to 192kHz capability, eschews the use of DAC chips from other manufacturers, its pulse array being designed and constructed entirely by Chord. Styling is on a par with the underlying technology—which is to say, a bit breathtaking.