Perhaps the most unusual speaker at Toronto Audiofest 2018 was Bryston's whimsically-named T-Rex Model T. It's a stacked pair of Model Ts, the top speaker upside down. I was reminded of the Double Advent system popular in the 1970s, but the T-Rex goes well beyond the Double Advent, with substantial bracing joining the speakers, a layer of rubber between them, and Bryston's DAX-1 digital crossover included. The total price is $18,000/pair (unless otherwise noted, all prices in this report are CN$), which represents something of a bargain for all this hardware.

Once upon a time—October, 2011, to be exact—there was a show called TAVES (Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show). Reading my report on the show, and looking at the photo accompanying the first installment of the report fills me with a certain sadness. The photo shows Suave Kajko, Simon Au, Sarah Tremblay (left above), and Michel Plante (right above), whom I described as "a winning team," and, indeed, that show could not be described as anything but a complete success. For several years, the annual TAVES events were on an upward trajectory.

And then something happened.

Doug White, of Philadelphia-area retailer The Voice That Is, has been a fixture at US audio shows the past few years, where he always gets great sound using loudspeakers from Tidal Audio. (There is no connection between the German audio manufacturer and the music-streaming service owned by Jay Z and Sprint.) In early 2017, Herb Reichert, Jana Dagdagan, and I visited White and spent a delightful afternoon listening to Tidal's then-new Akira loudspeakers. I promised myself to review the Akira, which costs a wallet-straining $215,000/pair, when my schedule opened up. As things turned out, it was more than a year before that opportunity presented itself.

Register to win a 1M pair of Coppertone RCA interconnects, a 1M Coppertone USB digital cable, and a 2.5M pair of Coppertone speaker cables (Total value $649.84) we are giving away.

According to the company:

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[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]