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I’m tempted to write in my report on the Charisma room that the sound of its demo was full of charisma! It wouldn’t be a lie, but I know it would sound forced and insincere, wordplay meant to be clever but that would ultimately sound lazy and induce a cringe-reflex in the reader.

So, I’ll stick with a more sensible approach. Charisma Audio is both a dealer of products made by other companies from around the world and a manufacturer known for its low-output MC cartridges designed by company owner and chief designer Bernard Li, who was helming the exhibit. The…

The thing is, I’d never heard this particular model, which, since 2023, was in its Generation 2 version, along with its stablemates in the series…

Each speaker was composed of five individual cube-shaped enclosures stacked together in a column, with the enclosure in the middle housing a 3″ beryllium compression driver—I call that one the “eye of the…

I heard that same unparalleled sense of musical…

Nagra…

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…