At the heart of the system was a two-channel, 250Wpc, fully balanced, MM/MC phono-equipped, dual-mono Marantz…
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Masimo, Masimo . . . What’s there to say about Masimo—the company that owns Bowers & Wilkins, Marantz, Denon, Classé, among other notable brands—at this juncture that’s new? This: The California-based company is hosting three rooms at the Toronto Audiofest, one I have yet to visit, the second I visited but can’t talk about because its star product is under a press embargo until next Tuesday, so you’ll have to wait. And the third? I visited and was left impressed by its sound.
If the name Audio Eden conjures mental images of an unspoiled, verdant music paradise where your troubles don’t exist, then Ontario retailer Audio Eden’s room lived up to its name.
I’d never heard Nagra and Harbeth paired together before, so who knew they’d make such a perfect pair? Or a perfect trio if you squeeze in the Nordost cabling between them. Not I. But when I heard what this combination could do, I thought, “Where have you been all my life?”
The system consisted of Harbeth’s Monitor 40.3 XD ($27,000/pair) being fed by a bevy of Nagra gear, including a pair of…
All prices in CA$.
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…
What speaker design immediately springs to mind when you think of MartinLogan? If you’re like me, the answer is an electrostatic one. Which is why I was momentarily taken aback when I walked into the MartinLogan room and saw on display the more conventional-looking, three-way, floorstanding XT F100 speaker ($5999/pair) from the company’s Motion Series XT, and this despite the fact I’ve known about the Motion Series XT for a couple of years now.
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…
I saw a real live dragon at the Audiofest! It was tall and awe-inspiring and finished in Santos Rosewood. And instead of breathing fire, it breathed music! Okay, so it wasn’t an actual dragon, but Coherent Loudspeakers’ Modular 15 Dragon speakers ($58,000/pair, as configured in the photo), which I spotted in one of Corby’s Audio’s two exhibit rooms, was still impressive to behold.
Each speaker was composed of five individual cube-shaped enclosures stacked together in a column, with the enclosure in the middle housing a 3″ beryllium compression driver—I call that one the “eye of the…
Demos hosted by Canadian manufacturer Acora Acoustics invariably sound good whenever I hear them at a show, probably because the company’s speakers invariably sound good. You could probably feed them music from a Fisher Price turntable and still be wowed by the transparency to the source. With cabinets made of extremely inert materials such as granite, quartz, or quartzite, Acora speakers project a sound that is so pure, effortless, vivid, and lifelike it makes other speakers seem like a lot of the sound is still stuck inside the cabinets.
I heard that same unparalleled sense of musical…
Now that’s what I call truth in advertising, because bliss was served! What sound! What grandeur! What an exquisite example of the best that sound reproduction can offer. Retailer Bliss Acoustics’s room was presenting one of my favorite demoes at the show, proving to me, at least—and this despite the fact that I’m not immune to sometimes feeling resentful toward gear I can’t afford—that the really expensive stuff can be worth the money. It just sounds better. It sounds expensive, in the sense that you know there’s no way you can get this level of performance at a discount.
Nagra…
All prices listed in CA$.
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-…
I’ve met Daniel Qvortrup, son of Audio Note founder Peter, a few times, and what I know of his music-listening side is that he’s a diehard music fan with very eclectic tastes in music. I’m not using the word “very” lightly here. He’s the type to listen to Tibetan monk throat-singing. So, I was not entirely surprised when the first thing he played for me in the Audio Note exhibit room was a 78 RPM recording made in 1931 of a woman yodeling.
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,…
Before the beards, before the fuzzy spinning guitars, before the "Legs" video, there was an electric blues trio, that little ol' band from Texas, ZZ Top. In five years in the 1970s, they made their finest albums and found their first success. They came, they conquered, and gargantuan blues riffs—not to mention the concept of the power trio—were never the same.
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…