My third room belonged to audio importer Motet and Winnipeg-based retailer AltitudoAudio. The gear in this room was more modestly priced than in previous rooms, but it delivered the musical goods.

Next up was another great-sounding room (it felt so good to be back!). Hosted by Mark Elias, owner of retailer Soundstage Fine Audio, this room boasted some high-grade gear, starting with Vandersteen’s new, dark, and handsome KĒNTO Carbon speakers ($49,000/pair), which Vandersteen representative Brad O’Toole seemed rightly proud of, as well as of the company’s 150Wpc solid state, zero feedback M5-HPA High-Pass monoblocks, which were powering the KĒNTO's higher-frequency drivers.

“Hello Toronto Audiofest! It’s good to be back!”

That was my first thought when I entered the Westin Toronto Airport Hotel, the same venue used for the previous, and first ever, Toronto Audiofest in 2019. It was also the thought I had inside the first exhibit room I visited, sponsored by importer Wynn Audio and helmed by the amiable Wynn Wong.

What would it be like to attend an audio show?

It's a reasonable question coming at the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel tail-end (fingers crossed) of a worldwide pandemic.

I'm about to find out because I'm at the 2021 Toronto Audiofest, held at the Westin Toronto Airport Hotel from October 22–24.

You've got your 2001: A Space Odyssey speaker, which of course is a tall, black, featureless monolith. Then there's your wooden "Who's buried inside?" speaker, your "R-I-C-O-L-A" speaker, your enema bag or double-inverted enema bag speaker, your menacing hooded-Klansman speaker, your "looks like a robot, praying mantis, or Transformer" speaker (mine), and your "Does it leave a slime trail?" speaker (looks like a snail). You've got your "Is that a room divider?" speaker, your "looks like you stepped on a duck's head" speaker, and your "whipped cream dollop suspended in time" speaker.

I've got a music problem. Specifically, I've got a rock music problem.

It's a true cliché—that is, a cliché that happens to be true: Rock music, in almost all its forms, is young people's music. It's about new, fresh experiences—new love, new sex, consciousness sought or attained, rebellion, drugs—and when you've reached a certain age, those experiences don't feel so fresh anymore. That's a fact about which it's hard not to feel some regret. You don't have to share their sentiment to realize that there's a reason Pete wrote, and Roger sang, "Hope I die before I get old."