Toronto Audiofest 2024

Masimo, Masimo . . . What’s there to say about Masimo—the company that owns Bowers & Wilkins, Marantz, Denon, Classé, among other notable brands—at this juncture that’s new? This: The California-based company is hosting three rooms at the Toronto Audiofest, one I have yet to visit, the second I visited but can’t talk about because its star product is under a press embargo until next Tuesday, so you’ll have to wait. And the third? I visited and was left impressed by its sound.

At the heart of the system was a two-channel, 250Wpc, fully balanced, MM/MC phono-equipped, dual-mono Marantz 10 amplifier (CA$20,000), fed by a Marantz Link 10N network player/preamplifier (CA$16,000). Both components are beasts, in the best sense of that word—they didn’t just look muscular, they delivered music with drive, substance, and panache. They didn’t act alone, of course—the Bowers & Wilkins 804 D4 speakers (CA$20,400/pair) they were hooked up to sounded like a synergistic match.

What this gathering of equipment, which included an AudioQuest cable loom, produced from hi-res files streamed off a computer hard drive was sound that was clean, rich-toned, fleshed-out, utterly natural—no peaky, harmonically-thin business here. Bass strings emoted oodles of microtexture and vocals hung lifelike and spherically smack dab between both speakers. It was an encouraging beginning to my show report.