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The 2019 Montreal Audio Fest has opened at the Hotel Bonaventure across the street from the city's main railway station and even at the opening time of 11am, there was a long queue at the registration desk. The show, which runs until 8pm tonight, 10am–6pm Saturday, and 10am–5pm Sunday, has a theme celebrating both the Woodstock Festival's 50th anniversary and the 50 years since John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's infamous bed-in in Montreal and the Fab Four's last live concert. (There is a Beatles exhibition in the hotel's St. Laurent 2 room.) I will be covering the show live for Stereophile, along…
At 1:00 on Friday I spoke with Sarah Tremblay (above), co-organizer (with Michel Plante) of the Montreal Audio Fest. The 2019 show had opened only two hours before we ran into one another, and already over 4600 attendees had pre-registered and 1400 of them had arrived on-site. (Admission is free, but the organizers ask of each attendee their name and gender, and whether they'd attended previous Montreal shows.) Tremblay told me that approximately 50% of registrants so far were first-timers: an excellent sign.
Indeed, at 11:00am on the dot, as I exited a pre-show press conference, I was…
Even sans Justin Trudeau, who last year escorted me to the show in a Ferrari-red Airbus helicopter (not really) I was feeling good about this year's edition—its 32nd—because for months I’d been seeing Facebook posts announcing the return of major brands that previously had bailed on Montreal's Fest. This time I drove myself to the venue in my rusting-but-freshly-spray-waxed 2009 Dodge Journey—bit of a letdown after last year—but the knowledge that the show would be themed in honor of Woodstock's 50th anniversary reassured me that organizers Sarah Tremblay and Michel Plante were keen on…
I thought I would start my day by exploring the Hotel Bonaventure's ballroom exhibits, and on my way to the Westmont 2 room, where British company PMC was presenting the North American debut of their flagship Fenestria loudspeaker, I heard some unambiguously live harp music, played by the young lady in the photo, Isabeau Corriveau. A great way to start the day and one that emphasized the show's focus on music of every kind.
PMC started off manufacturing monitor speakers for recording studios in 1991 but branched out into the domestic speaker market in the mid-1990s. These days,…
Continuing my exploration of the Sonor-Filtronique room, which began in my first Montreal Audio Fest report, I spotted across the room a brand whose distinct appearance—I'd characterize it as a blend of modern and retro—is instantly recognizable to most audiophiles: Nagra. On static display but beckoning me to snap a photo were Nagra's 100Wpc solid state Classic Amp ($CA20,995) and tubed Classic preamp ($CA20,000), which has five line level inputs, including a XLR balanced one, and a headphone jack.
Sitting stoically beside the Nagra gear was the GEM Dandy PolyTable turntable ($…
I suppose I'm odd man out for not liking Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, which has sold over 45 million copies since its release in 1973 yet for me remains a monument only to the hazards of excessive marijuana consumption. Too bad for me: On Friday, the sounds of that album blasted from what seemed every third demonstration, and by the time I approached the door of the room sponsored by Montreal retailer Son Ideal, I was hearing DSOTM for literally the fourth time since the show opened. Quiet desperation, indeed.
And here, it sounded grainier than I like—but that may have been…
A perennial exhibiter at the Montreal fest, Quebec-based importer / distributor Goerner Audio usually puts together a wonderful-sounding system built around a turntable, but this year’s setup was one of my favorites of theirs in recent years, and it included no vinyl. Rather than fuss around with LPs, the affable Reinhard Goerner was sitting leisurely in the corner of the room doing what most other exhibitors were doing: stabbing a finger at the screen of a tablet to choose the next piece to play.
I wasn't complaining, since the sound I heard was captivating, courtesy of a complete…
This one's for Herb Reichert: the booth outside the huge room where Solen Electronique was demming what they described as "The Ultimate Experience" system (CDN$115,435) featured parts and components from Solen and The Parts Connection/Dayton Audio. This box of NOS tubes would have had Herb drooling!
Inside the room, the 4-way, 97dB-sensitive Ultimate Experience IV v4 loudspeakers (CDN$9995/pair) were being driven all-Bryston electronics—BDP-3 server BDA-3 DAC, BP173 preamp, pairs of 28B and 7B3 monoblocks—all hooked up with Solen cables. A track by bassist Marcus Miller filled…
A few years ago, the Hotel Bonaventure (formerly the Hilton Bonaventure), long the site of the Montreal Audio Fest (formerly Salon Son et Image), turned its sprawling restaurant into a sprawling ballroom called the Ville-Marie salon. For the 2019 Montreal Audio Fest, that room was home to Focal Naim Canada (formerly the distributor known in Canada as Plurison, and in the US as Audio Plus Services.) Daniel Jacques (on the left, with me, in the photo above), who founded Plurison/Audio Plus in 1983, has now sold that company to Vervent Audio Group, which owns Focal and Naim; those brands,…
What would a Montreal show be without snow? The first day of the Montreal Audio Fest was bright and sunny, but as walked from my sleeping room to the ballroom to continue my reporting on Saturday morning, this is the sight that greeted me. "That's nothing," snorted native Quebeçois! (And I still find it weird to see trees growing on the top of a tower block—show venue the Hotel Bonaventure is 12 floors off the ground.)
First stop Saturday was the Audio by Mark Jones room, which was featuring the world premiere of Magico's M2 loudspeaker ($57,000/pair plus $7600/pair for the…