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.
Driving the speakers was a 200Wpc…
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…
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…
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.
"Our primary focus will be on the launch of the new Angela Yeung–Gilbert Yeung line of audio equipment. Most—in fact almost all—of the production line will be on display. At the moment…
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…
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. Pasha (that's what I'll call him) lived in one of them. A friend of my father's, he turned out to be a wiry character in his early 40s with a toothy smile and the darting eyes of a collector. He led us through his sparsely furnished, rundown one-bedroom…
One of the privileges of being a reviewer is being able to live with a wide variety of components. For the past year and a half, I've been listening to LPs using solid state, high-gain phono preamplifiers like the Parasound Halo JC 3+, the Sutherland Little Loco, and the Lejonklou Entity, which I've come to admire for their coherence and resolution. While I was reviewing the Entity, Ken Micallef brought over his Tavish Adagio, a tubed phono preamp with a great-sounding moving magnet section that we paired with my Auditorium 23 SPU step-up transformer. The combination didn't always sound as…
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.
I was played two tracks, one from a scene from the movie The Greatest Showman and the other Elton John's "Rocket Man." A word about the .0 designation in 7.0.4. That digit refers to the…
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.
You want to hear about something else that was completely different? The Ilumnia magister speakers ($34,000). They're a one-of-a-kind design featuring an inverted spiderless, surroundless floating midbass driver suspended by an electromagnet, over which projects like a shooting star on a metal beam a directional silk-dome tweeter.…
And now for something completely different, Part 3.
Ever heard of a monophonic integrated amplifier? An amp that includes a single amplification channel along with its single channel preamplification stage? I hadn't until I visited manufacturer Eon Art's room, which was demoing a pair of such a rare, in fact, one-of-a-kind, beast, called the Boson ($72,537/each).
This 250W amp is particular in other ways, including that it's a dual hybrid: it's both a tubed and solid state design and a linear and switching one, employing a combination of class-A and class-D circuits. And if those…
