Robert Schryer

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 28, 2023  |  12 comments
I'm picturing a gaggle of cigar-chomping Simaudio execs in an office discussing what to do about the fact that their high-end amplification lines have become so successful that their names have become synonymous with the company. "In the '90s, people thought our company was called Celeste," one floor-pacing exec says, speaking for everyone in the room. "Now they think we're called Moon! How do we fix this?" After much debate, a member shouts: "We add 'by Simaudio' at the end!" The execs hoot, holler, and slap the conference-room table—and thus is born Moon by Simaudio.

A fictional account? Sure, but, as they say in the movies, it's based on a true story.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 02, 2023  |  22 comments

Finally, it snowed during the weekend of the show, on Saturday, which was disappointing. It meant I wasn’t in an alternate 'verse of the multiverse after all and, consequently, I wasn’t the Alternate Rob with a half-million-dollar hi-fi waiting for him at home.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 02, 2023  |  0 comments
Jacques Riendeau of Oracle Audio

I was running out of time.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 02, 2023  |  1 comments

As usual, I found cellist and Audio Note UK music ambassador Vincent Bélanger hosting the Audio Note UK room, but this time, Vincent wasn't alone.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 02, 2023  |  5 comments
Our fearless reporter--left--waxing eloquent in his notebook.

I have bumped into manufacturer Artist Cloner’s owner and designer, Sylvio Comtois, many times at audio shows. He strikes me as being a bit of a mad scientist. Not “crazy” mad but mad in the sense of being obsessed with a particular objective.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 02, 2023  |  3 comments

When I asked Totem's Vince Bruzzese, at last year's "static" launch of the new Bison series, what the impetus was to create the Bison range, he said it came down to wanting to create something special to mark the company's 35th birthday but also that of the Model 1, which came out in the year of the company's founding, 1987.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 01, 2023  |  7 comments

Talk about a dream triad of fabulous gear from Switzerland: darTZeel, Stenheim, Merging Technologies. The first thing I said to myself when I saw this simple, sharp-looking spread in Toronto-based retailer Sonic Artistry's room was, "Damn, this is an attractive group!".

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 01, 2023  |  4 comments

What did the Hearken and Art et Son rooms have in common? The Graham Audio LS8.1 speakers ($13,300), so it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that I heard a similarly, though not identically, engaging intimacy in both systems' presentations, the kind that made me just want to relax in my seat and listen through whole albums.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 01, 2023  |  0 comments

"Are you sure there are no tubes in the chain?" I asked On a Higher Note's Philip O'Hanlon, North American distributor of the BBC-inspired Graham Audio speaker line, in Montreal retailer Art et Son's room. Philip was sitting with me listening to an LP of Belgian singer Mélanie De Biasio.

Robert Schryer  |  Apr 01, 2023  |  0 comments

MartinLogan's Motion F200XT in the Planète Haute-Fidélité room wasn't the only speaker in town to employ a Heil Air Motion Transformer tweeter. So did Monitor Audio's 3-Way Platinum 300 3G (for 3rd generation) floorstander ($22,000).

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