Montreal Audio Fest 2018

I started my Sunday by visiting Plurison, the Canadian distributor for Focal, Naim, Rega, Musical Fidelity, Devialet, Music Hall, Wharfedale, Cambridge, Astell&Kern, and others (and, under the name Audio Plus Services, the US distributor for some of those same brands). As they did last year, Plurison set up shop in the Ville-Marie room—one of the Bonaventure's largest, having been carved out of what used to be the hotel's main restaurant—and presented their products in a mix of active and static displays, with a degree of visual refinement that few other exhibitors matched, and none exceeded.

On Saturday morning, the Montreal Audio Fest seemed to get crowded in the blink of an eye: One minute I was stepping out of my room in the Hotel Bonaventure, the next minute I was excusez-moi-ing my way into one SRO room after another. I confess that, for one very brief moment, I wished I was back with the howling old owl in the woods.

Homesickness was dispelled the moment I heard the system in the first of three rooms sponsored by Motet Distribution of Toronto, this one featuring Triangle Australe speakers ($CAD5500/pair), driven by a VTL S-200 stereo amp ($CAD17,500) and 5.5 preamp ($CAD11,200), with a laptop and an iFi Macro portable DAC/headphone amp ($CAD780) as the source.

The venerable Japanese firm Luxman and the German turntable manufacturer Acoustic Signature—whose President, Gunther Frohnhofer, I had the pleasure of meeting on Friday—shared a room in which Raidho C3.2 and D2.1 loudspeakers (respectively $US37,500/pair and $US44,00/pair) were driven by Luxman M700u power amps running in mono ($US8995/pair), in turn driven by a Luxman C700u preamplifier ($US8995), fed by a Luxman EQ500 phono preamp ($US6495) and Melco N1ZH v2 music server ($US5000). LPs were played on Acoustic Signature Double X ($CAD5500) and Storm turntables ($CAD9000), both fitted with Acoustic Signature TA2000 tonearms ($CAD3400).

What the Hegel system did was turn a live recording of a guitar-shredding Chicago blues player into an explosive, hotel-room-filling event. The sound was dynamic as all get out, head-bobbingly propulsive, and though slightly coolish in character, excitingly expressive. The gear recipe to this musical fun-romp was a Hegel Mohican CD player (CA$5999), Hegel P30 preamp (CA$8999), 350Wpc Hegel H30 amp (CA$17 000), and PMC MB2 SE 3-way, stand-mount speakers (CA$38 500/pair, stands included), with XLO cabling throughout. A frenzied drum solo sounded so viscerally real that I almost expected to be hit by a flying drum stick.

I was thrilled to be back to cover the Montreal Audio Fest for Stereophile with my partner in crime Art Dudley, Eager to start roaming the hallowed halls of the Bonaventure Hotel, Art and I quickly drew up the lines of our respective coverage territories in the program's exhibitor floor plan and went our separate ways.

First room on my route belonged to Gershman Acoustics, who was showcasing their sizable new flagship speaker, the Posh (above left), which, as its name suggests, is poshly priced at (US)$129 000/pair...