Toronto Audiofest 2024

I saw a real live frilled lizard at the Audiofest. It was wide-spanning and awe-inspiring and finished in Santos Rosewood. And instead of spitting saliva, it projected music. Okay, so it wasn’t an actual frilled lizard, but Coherent Loudspeakers’ 18FC–31J speakers ($72,950/pair)—not a catchy name but there's designer reasoning behind it*—which I spotted in Corby's Audio's second exhibit room, was still impressive to behold.

The speaker's features and specs are impressive, too. About the horn part, designer Frank Fazzalari explained it this way: "The horn, which is 31" by 31", is very special. It allows me to set its crossover very low, at 400Hz. It handles all the midrange and the high frequencies up to 16kHz. It uses a 4" JBL 2440 compression driver with an Alnico magnet so it produces very low distortion and adds the magic of Alnico. The crossover can be adjusted to compensate for different amplifier output impedances.

"Due to the large mouth of the horn, I find the horn's lack of compression to be its main advantage. You might have experienced smaller horns which can scream at you."

The woofer is an 18" TAD TL-1801 driver converted to a field coil magnet structure—it is actually powered—with a sensitivity of 97dB.

As for the speaker's suggested minimum power requirement? Six watts will do. Above 500 watts—the maximum suggested power—your brain might fry.

The other components taking part in this fine-sounding demo included a Kuzma Stabi S turntable with its external power supply ($7800) fitted with a Safir 9 tonearm ($34,000) and Kuzma CAR 60 cartridge ($27,500), a Kuzma Ebony record clamp ($5200), a Corby's Audio carbon fiber mat ($695), a 7Wpc, 300B-based Tektron TK Two 300B-i integrated amplifier ($8000), an Allnic H-5500 phono stage ($7590), a Saturn Audio 103C MKII powerline filter ($2800), Allnic cabling, and racks and platforms by Tough Nut Audio.

The first qualities that popped into my mind when playback began? Unsurprisingly, explicit, tactile, dynamic, and oh so transparent. It's incredible how much information a horn can reveal, and this horn system seemed to reveal every minute inflection and nuance from the upstream components and recordings. And the sound wasn't shouty, just clean and detailed, with nice tone, a fluid sense of delivery, and a lively but sweet character.

If you like big, fleshed-out, inner view, unconstrained-sounding music—and who doesn't?—then I suggest you bag this system and bring it home for your private pleasure. It was an eye- and ear-opener, and it made a lot of other systems at the show sound, well, compressed.

*Model 18FC (woofer size, field coil), 31 (width of horn), J (JBL 2365 horn / 2440 compression driver).