My memory isn't good to start with, but I could've sworn I heard substantially more bass coming out of the MartinLogan Expression ESL 13A hybrid electrostatic loudspeakers ($23,500/pair) in Planète Haute-Fidélité's room than during any other visit to the retailer's showroom in past years.

Saying Audio Group Denmark/Wynn Audio impressed at this year's Montreal Audiofest is an understatement. They brought the goods and then some. That "some" is what I perceived as the quality of the merchandise and its performance in relation to its price.

ArtistCloner is one of those audio manufacturers, like Audio Note, making complete systems from cabling to speakers to power conditioners. Its designs stem from one person's singular vision.

When I first got interested in audio in the UK, in the 1960s, four English brands dominated the domestic loudspeaker scene: Goodmans (founded in 1923), Celestion (whose first loudspeaker was launched in early 1925), Tannoy (which started making loudspeakers in 1928), and Wharfedale. Wharfedale was the youngest of these brands, founded in 1932 in Yorkshire—the land of the Dales—by Gilbert Briggs.

Wharfedale is still a British brand, with its R&D department in the UK, but it's now owned by the IAG Group, which was founded in Hong Kong in 1991 and is based in Shenzen, China. In addition to Wharfedale, IAG owns the Audiolab, Castle Acoustics, Leak, Luxman, Mission, and Quad brands. In recent years, Wharfedale has been introducing redesigned versions of some of its classic speakers. Herb Reichert favorably reviewed the three-way Linton Heritage loudspeaker in September 2019; then, at the 2022 Munich High End Show, Wharfedale introduced the subject of this review, the Heritage Series 90th Anniversary Dovedale.

You want chunky sounds, vivid tone, socking bass, and a globe-like soundstage with notes that appear so solid and dimensional you might be tempted to try to pick them like an apple from an apple tree? If so, then step right up into the Altitudo room, which may look a little small for the amount of gear present and the size of the speakers I listened to, but make no mistake, the sound I heard from FLAC files streamed from a hard drive was clean, muscular, and colorfully diverse.

Technics was showing some delightfully high-end stuff. The turntables were more alike sonically than different, revealing a house sound marked by clarity, explicitness, transient speed, ambient cues, and vivid pictures.

The room shared by distributor Motet and PMC Speakers showcased a system—actually, two systems, but I only experienced one. This system surprised me, not merely because it delivered a full, big-picture sound but because the source of that sound was not what I initially assumed upon entering.

The Innuos/Asona room showcased and AB-tested two network streamers for me: the flagship Pulsar and the Pulse.

TAD was demonstrating a beefy all-TAD system, beefy in looks and sound. The result? As I listened, "An iron fist in a velvet glove" came to mind.