A room I can always count on to deliver soul-stirring, heart-warming, duct-tearing, yearning-to-possess sound is the one hosted by Hearken Audio/Atelier Audio, an oasis of some of the least mechanical, most musical sound I've heard this side of real-life music.

The first audiophile I met lived near a sewage treatment plant on the outskirts of Moscow. It was a few months after the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1992, when I was a college senior, and I recall walking with my father to his home past block after block of the identical dingy white tenements that encircle most Eastern European cities.

And now for something completely different, Part 2

On the gentle urging of one of the nicest guys in the biz, Ed O'Herlihy, owner of Ontario retailer EQ audio video, I visited, among the many exhibits Ed was hosting in his nearly stadium-sized space, was the Focal 1000 series Utopia 7.0.4 Dolby Atmos demonstration, the exact same setup that Focal presented in Dallas at this year's CEDIA Expo.

You want more "big" sound? The kind whose tentacles can reach into every nook and cranny of a large room with warm reverberant energy, rich tones, colorful harmonics, and bass tremors that'll seep through your seat? Then step right up, into the DALI room, which was showing its new flagship KORE loudspeakers ($150,000), monuments to state-of-the-art speaker design conceived in the land of the Vikings—Denmark—along with a pair of 200Wpc, class-D NAD M23 monoblocks ($5000 each), a streaming M33 integrated amp ($7800), an AudioQuest Niagara 5000 line conditioner (7000), and a bevy of AudioQuest Thunderbird Zero cabling.

And now for something completely different, Part 1. Shortly before the show, I received this invitation from George Taylor of Canadian distributor Entracte Audio:

"Hi Robert, I am writing to extend an invitation to Room 353 of the Westin Toronto Airport Hotel at Toronto Audiofest. The room will be jointly operated by Angela Yeung–Gilbert Yeung, (retailer) Absolute Sound, and Entracte Audio. . ."

In the killer-sound megabuck category, I present to you Wynn Audio's system, which, in your typical hotel exhibit room, wouldn't fit or, if it did, would be so squished together as to make the room look like a storage space, not a listening area. Here, in the spacious hall-like Carlyle room, Wynn Audio's system fit like a glove, a musical glove, I might add. Compared to its system at the last Toronto show in 2019, Wynn Audio went slightly lower key this time, not in the size or price of the equipment, but in the color of the demoed speakers. Those in 2019 were finished in an alluringly striking lime green. Forget lower key—this year was lower key lime.

You want organic, vinyl-like sound without the vinyl, without spending an arm and a leg for it? Then I have the system for you, found in the Innuos/ASONA room. It starts with an Innuos complement of a PULSEmini network player ($1600) and a PhoenixNET network switch ($4900)—those switches, they've upped the digital game—plugged into the preamp section of a Cen.Grand 9i-90SA fully balanced headphone amp ($2900). Amplification was assumed by the gorgeous (and gorgeous-sounding) KT-88-tubed, 80Wpc Synthesis Roma 510 AC amp ($6500) from Italy, which powered a pair of bass-reflex AperturA Sensa speakers (starting at $4300/pair). Analysis Plus cabled everything together.

Exasound products have always been the source—literally, they make front end equipment—of good sound when I've heard them at audio shows, and this time was no different.

Exasound was sharing a room with Muraudio and Constellation—a constellation of three companies, if you will. The trio's setup included the Muraudio SP1 speaker (US$19,500/pair), an electrostatic/dynamic hybrid that radiates sound 120° horizontally and 16° vertically, a pattern said to prevent soundwave interactions with the floor and ceiling to achieve better imaging and bass.

If an audio company is in a position financially and infrastructurally to build components to make a complete system, it probably makes sense to do so, especially when it comes to mid-priced gear that isn't necessarily audiophile oriented. A lot of people who like music and want quality sound, without feeling the need to go overboard in that department, want to be able to buy a turn-key system from a reputable company so they won't have to worry about finding components from separate companies that'll work well together. This same-brand system philosophy also makes sense for us, the audio diehards, because it serves our industry to have people want to join the good-sound crusade and support hi-fi companies in general, rather than completely avoid getting into quality audio because it's just too complicated and fiddly to do so.

It's why Moon by Simaudio launched its Voice 22 standmount speakers ($3800/pair, optional stands $500 extra).