The Hegel Room
Without further ado, let's jump right in, starting with the system in the Hegel room, which was bright, clean, and crisp—and that was just the room.
Robert Schryer
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Le 33ième Montréal Audiofest
Oh, là, là! It’s back!: the North American audio show with the Euro flair, the Montréal Audiofest—or as I like to call it, the sexy audio show. It’s at its usual illustrious spot, the Hotel Bonaventure. Boy, did I miss it—and miss covering it for Stereophile. It’s always a fun event to visit, and it’s my hometown show, the one I’ve been going to for thirty years—until the Big Bug stopped it. The show runs from March 25 to March 27.
Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G loudspeaker
When I learned that I was to review the new seventh generation of Monitor Audio's Silver 500 loudspeaker ($3200/pair), descendants of the original Silver-series products launched in 1999, I thought back on what I knew about the company and then refreshed my memory. Monitor Audio was founded, in 1972, in Teversham, England, a town bordered by farmland located some three miles from the epicenter of its more famous neighbor, Cambridge.
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Final Words
Let me break it down. On the one hand, handshakes were replaced with fist and elbow bumps, real smiles by eyes smiling over masks, whispers by conversations at regular volume. There were fewer attendees than at prepandemic shows, and fewer exhibitors. That situation will surely improve with time.
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Off the Well-Trod Path
Olga Oreshyna is an artist who makes, as she calls it, "non-traditional art." She begins by collecting old wood, “with scratches, cracks, knots, and other imperfections that are similar to real life." She carves it into pieces, dries it, colors it with acrylic paint or stain, and “fits [it] to a specifically designated position” among other wood pieces to create a mosaic sculpture.
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EQ Audio Video: Musical Fidelity, Focal, WireWorld, Norstone, Aragon, Audience, AudioQuest
I generally avoid home theater rooms at an audio show because typically—and reasonably—they’ve been set up mainly with the cinematic experience in mind rather than the musical one. So I hesitated before entering the two adjoining EQ Audio Video rooms because they had screens. But with a little prodding from company owner Ed O’Hearly—he assured me that the systems in the rooms were strictly stereo—I acquiesced. I’m glad I did.
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The Kennedy Hi-Fi Room: PSB T600, NAD M33, AudioQuest
Do your speakers that go low and tight in the bass?
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Acora, Audio Research, Transrotor, Dynavector
Who knew I’d meet Paul Simon—the Paul Simon, pop star, the shorter half of Simon and Garfunkel—at the Toronto Audiofest?
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The Simaudio Moon 40th Anniversary Limited Edition System
It's not often that I come across a piece of gear at an audio show that I pine to own. The Simaudio Moon 40th Anniversary Limited Edition system is in that category, but I'd better hurry: Production is limited to 40 systems.
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Gershman, Krell, ExaSound, Cardas
In a near-repeat of my visit to the Gershman Acoustics room at 2019’s Toronto Audiofest, I got the chance to meet up with the Toronto-based company’s Ofra and Eli Gershman and also Krell COO Walter Schofield.
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