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(All prices are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.)

The Lemay Audio room comes with a sweet story and a giant killer.

First, the sweet story: François Lemay, Tenor Audio founder and now owner of Montréal manufacturer-retailer Lemay Audio, remembers the moment vividly, even though it happened nearly 50 years ago, when he was a budding audiophile in his early twenties. "I was shopping for speakers when I heard my first pair of Dayton-Wright electrostatic loudspeakers," François told me. "They were incredible, like nothing I'd ever heard, and I promised myself…

(All prices are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.)

I like how Yamaha, a brand not known for audiophile products, has, in the last few years or so, been making audiophile products. I find it flattering, in a Sally Field kind of way: "You care, Yamaha. You really care."

And by all the signs, they do. Several of the company's high-end products have received good press lately, including in Stereophile, so I was happy to get a chance to listen to a few of those well-reviewed products in the Yamaha–Luna Cables room.

You want serious audio-purist…

(All prices are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that every single audiophile, in that moment when they heard the news that PS Audio was coming out with a loudspeaker—not just any speaker, but a statement product—felt a combination of incredulity and curiosity, for a couple of reasons: PS Audio doesn't make speakers. It's an electronics company. In its almost 50-year history, PS Audio has never made a speaker. And suddenly it has, in the aspen FR30 ($40,000/pair).

However, those in the know know that the aspen…

The Music First room was playing some tasty music with eye-popping gear, including the Hungarian-made Bayz Audio Courante loudspeakers ($60,000/pair US with carbon fibre construction), a unique, patented, omnidirectional design. The main, 2" x 8" cylindrical dynamic driver radiates 360° sound, for a sweet spot that encompassed all of the chairs placed in front of them in this listening room.

The rest of the system comprised the Netherlands-made Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra streamer ($30,000 US) (see our review of the Pink Faun 2.16x in the December 2020 issue of Stereophile, two MUTEC…

(All prices are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.)

You want magic? I'll give you magic. It won't cost you your soul, but it may touch it.

But first, the location: Montreal retailer's Art et Son room, where I met Philip O'Hanlon of On A Higher Note, North American distributor of the BBC-inspired Graham Audio speaker line. Meeting Philip is always a magical experience, and this time was no different. He explained that Graham Audio took the "thin-wall" concept devised by the BBC for its speaker panels and made it better by adding a layer of bitumen-loaded felt…

(All prices are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.)

Maybe the earth-toned, smoke-spewing phallus standing in the back of the room had something to do with it, but as I listened to the system in the Acora Acoustics/Audio Excellence room, I felt a deep connection to my species—more specifically, to ancient human tradition. No doubt a lot of that feeling had to do with the music I was listening to at the time—Gary Karr's Adagio d'Albinoni—but it also certainly had a lot to do with how the Acora system was able to preserve and convey to me the emotional core of this…

I never really got the sound of Klipsch speakers at past shows, but I did this time, in a big way, in the Capital Sound room, where the Klipsch La Scala III ($17,500) was making seductive, sophisticated music. So what was up? Synergy, undoubtedly, obtained with a brand I'd never heard of before but that apparently has been manufacturing audio products for other companies for 25 years. That company is Slovakia-based Canor, which is so new as a non-OEM brand that exact pricing for their products in North America hasn't been…

Holmes sent three made-in-China DYLP Audio cartridges: the MC Ruby-1, the MC100 Mk II, and the Mono. All are part of the…

Switching to The Electric Recording Company's reissue of Coltrane's My Favorite Things (ERC 060), from the original mono tape thought lost but recently found, the timbral picture shifted completely, from bright clarity to…

You want sound that's narcotically intimate? Seductively expressive? Molecularly textured? The kind of sound that, once your ears and brain have latched on to it, makes you struggle to let go, even if you have a show report to do, because the sound is so hard to resist?

I submit to you this room, a collaboration among Canadian distributor Tri-Cell and two dealerships—Montreal-based L'Atelier Audio and Hearken Audio of Kitchener, Ontario—which delivered all the qualities above and was one of my favorite rooms at the show. Plus, I had one of my long-held biases shattered. More…