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It was a pleasure to finally meet Stereophile forum member, KBK, also known as, Ken Hotte. If you think he looks a little crazy here, you should read his forum posts.
You would never guess that just moments before the photo was snapped, Tone Imports' Jonathan Halpern was bent over, purple-faced, and teary-eyed with delirious laughter. I'm not sure what it was all about. It had something to do with "championship wood."
In any case, Jonathan was thrilled to introduce the Leben RS 30EQ phono preamp ($2595). "I've been waiting years for this," he said. Like all Leben gear, the RS 30EQ is simply gorgeous.
I know it's only the first day and I've hardly listened to any music, but my Best Music of Show Award goes to the Tone Imports/DeVore Fidelity/Box Furniture Co./Clearaudio room. I doubt there'll be any other suite at SSI where you can hear Q-Tip's The Renaissance followed by some radically bad-ass, virtuoso tabla.
Anthony Abbate builds the cabinets for DeVore Fidelity loudspeakers and also has a range of handsome equipment racks and isolation platforms. Here we see one of Anthony's racks proudly supporting the Leben RS 30EQ phono preamp, the beautifully gold-knobbed and green-…
All right, so maybe I should have followed the recommendation that passengers should get to the train station at least 30 minutes before departure. But, really, does anyone but terminally obsessive-compulsive individuals do that? The train going from Toronto to Montreal was scheduled to leave Toronto at 9:30am. I was planning to be at Union Station in Toronto by 9:15. But with this and that, and delays here and there, when I got to the Via Rail ticket office to exchange my computer printout for the actual ticket it was 9:29 by their clock.
They gave me the ticket, saying that I…
This is my first time attending a Montreal hi-fi show, and so it makes sense that I would make some new acquaintances. It is a pleasure to meet Graeme Humphrey and Danny Labrecque of Coup de Foudre, a pretty sweet looking hi-fi shop in Montreal. Here Graeme and Danny assume a sort of pirate-gangster pose. They appear pretty tough, but they're actually quite gentle.
Coup de Foudre carries a large range of new and used hi-fi components and vinyl(!), and even has a recording studio.
We listened to a system made of Avalon Acoustics Aspect loudspeakers ($8500/pair), VTL…
Lucien Pichette stands with the Avalon Acoustics Aspect ($8500/pair), introduced at January's CES. Here in Montreal, the Aspects were creating soul-stirring sound in the Coup de Foudre room.
At the 2008 FSI, the hornloaded Avantgarde speakers from Germany were being demmed in one of the large rooms in the Centre Sheraton's downstairs convention area. At the 2009 SSI, Avantgarde were exhibiting in a conventional hotel room, but the three-way Duo Grossos ($37,500/pair), driven by Avantgarde Model One monoblocks and an Avantgarde Model One preamplifier, with an Audio Aero Prestige SACD player as source and all Nirvana SX cabling, sounded more coherent than I remember from last year's Show. Playing "The Mooche" from the Stereophile Editor's Choice CD, I was struck by how un-…
The trend toward smaller, less imposing systems is continued at SSI by Verity Audio, showing their gorgeous Parsifal Ovation Monitor ($9000/pair). While Simaudio and Dynaudio were showing what can be achieved at the lower end of the price scale, Verity, Nagra, and dCS put together a room-friendly system made to slay giants.
Here we see the Parsifal Monitors sitting proud atop their new matching, height-adjustable stands (price TBD). A striking combo. The Monitors were supplemented by Verity's Rocco subwoofer ($10,000), which uses two high-power, low-distortion 12" drivers…
You get used to hearing expensive over-the-top systems at an audio Show, but the real delight is discovering more affordable set-ups that sound better than you expect. Such was the case when I entered the Bluebird Music room, where the Spendor A6 two-way tower speakers were being demmed with Exposure's 3010S integrated amplifier and an Exposure CD player, wired with van den Hul cable. The total system prices was $7500, and, again playing "The Mooche" from Editor's Choice, I was struck by how seamless the presentation was, with natural tonal qualities, well-defined stereo imaging, and…
I had enthused over the sound being produced by French company Focal's top-line Grande Utopia EMs ($180,000/pair) in our report from the 2008 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, so the first room I went to at the 2009 SSI was the room featuring the exact same pair of Grande Utopias. In Denver they had been driven by Boulder source and amplification components; in Montreal, amplification was all YBA—Passion 1000 monoblocks and Passion preamp—cabling was AudioQuest, and the source was the excellent sounding Esoteric P-01VU transport ($32,000) and D-01VU dual-mono D/A converter ($32,000), clocked…