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Toronto retailer Star Electronics's room was offering some substantial sound, and by substantial, I mean thick toned, resoundingly harmonic, with solid, well-defined bass. Being demoed was gear by Yamaha, but this was not your daddy’s, or your youngers self’s, Yamaha, when the manufacturer’s audio products were entirely targeted to the mainstream market.

The system being demoed made music that belied its compact size. Consisting of a pair of ported, two-way, standmount Yamaha NS-800A loudspeakers ($5999/pair), a fully balanced, dual toroidal transformer-…

Needless to say, this sort of thing makes Daniel stand out from the other exhibitors, who will usually play a recording, often of a small,…

Anthologized and reissued many times since their release—Tres Hombres alone has been reissued on vinyl three times just since 2006—the band's first five albums have been reissued again in an impressive, limited-edition boxed set…

Joining the Trapeze were a trio of Fezz Audio products: a Sagita Evolution preamplifier ($2900), a 45Wpc, KT-88-based Titania amplifier ($4000), and an Equinox DAC ($3000), said by the company to be "the…

I saw a real live frilled lizard at the Audiofest. It was wide-spanning and awe-inspiring and finished in Santos Rosewood. And instead of spitting saliva, it projected music. Okay, so it wasn’t an actual frilled lizard, but Coherent Loudspeakers’ 18FC–31J speakers ($72,950/pair)—not a catchy name but there's designer reasoning behind it*—which I spotted in Corby's Audio's second exhibit room, was still impressive to behold.

The speaker's features and specs are impressive, too. About the horn part, designer Frank Fazzalari explained it this way: "The horn, which is 31…

Some systems are sleepers in the unassuming sense. They don't come in big parts, or take up a lot of space, or use a dozen components to pass the signal through. So you sit down to listen to them, expecting something good but forgettable, and boom! They wallop you in the face with wave after wave of dense, weighty, colorful, harmonically saturated sound that forces you to catch your breath as you try to reconcile what you're hearing with what your assumptions were.

That's what happened to me in distributor Wynn Audio's room, although I should've known…

Did I say “packed?” The real fun will take place October 25–27, when hallways feel at least as busy as at Munich High End. This is, after all, Europe’s…

"It's one of my greatest strengths. I know what music sounds like. I just go inside the music and let it tell me how it's supposed to be alive, how it's supposed to live in that space. I know that sounds simplistic and maybe somewhat esoteric, or pretentious even—but it's not…

After 30 sides

Playing my father's favorite song, Stephen Foster's haunting "Beautiful Dreamer," sung by baritone Leslie Guinn on Songs by Stephen Foster (Nonesuch stereo LP H-71268), the SL MK II delivered enough transparency to see the usually obscured walls and floor of the recital room where "Dreamer" was recorded using "historical instruments at the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington, DC." The MK II recovered more of "Dreamer"'s moodiness than the old SL did. This track, along with "Jeanie…

From an audiophile perspective, the speakers’ design leans in a lifestyle direction, but I’ve seen and heard them, and they look and sound very good. They’re also flexible placement-wise. They include DSP technology and these being designed for wide-dispersion, the sweet spot isn’t some little nook in the center of your sofa; walk around the…