Part 3: Montreal Audiofest Chronicles 2024
Investigating the 2300 Hallway at the Montreal audiophile show.
Montreal Audiofest 2024 Show Report By Rick Becker

2328 GCI Distribution
Across from the Artist Cloner room was a room that is often missed, being tucked in a corner. Emmanuel Le Quere has been an acquaintance for well over a decade and now runs GCI Distribution in Montreal. He was showing a rig comprised of Bricasti electronics from the Massachusetts company that manufactures products for both pro audio and the high-end market. Unfortunately, the music here was a bit lackluster because of a technical problem. He was only able to play one channel through an M28 monoblock to drive both speakers – essentially a mono system. This was unfortunate as Bricasti is one of the top-tier companies in the high-end. A Silver Circle Tchaik6 power conditioner (~$10k USD) was seen behind the rack.

The speakers were Tidal's entry-level speaker, the Piano – still, a very expensive, top-tier speaker that has earned a Best Rooms award at previous shows.

2333 SPL

The room here featured a PMC Fact 12 speaker ($35k) driven by an SPL monoblock seen beside it on a 1.75" thick amp stand from Canopee Audio, as was the component rack beside it, featuring very interesting character markings. And once again we see the colorful cables from Luna Cables.

Atop the rack was a Music Hall mmf-5.1 turntable sitting on an Isoacoustics zaZen shelf. Below was an SPL phono stage with front panel adjustments for cartridge loading, and the matching preamp.

As it happened, my local PMC dealer in Rochester, NY, was having an event with PMC speakers, Advance Paris amplifiers, and a handful of additional high-end brands. Lance Shevchuk of Forefront Audio had asked me to help out, but obviously, my commitment to Montreal took precedence. The Fact 12 ($35k CDN) seen above was one of the PMC monitors he had on active display.

2334 Studio Economik

Studio Economik, from right here in Montreal, was a new vendor for me, perhaps venturing into the high-end from the pro audio side of the business. The control device on the round table was a Grace 905, a studio version of a preamp with built-in speaker-switching capability and DAC – more useful to recording and mastering engineers who refer to it as a monitor controller. However, because the Weiss DAC 204 ($4475) is such a popular model for Studio Economik, they were using the Weiss instead.

On the left was an active PSI Audio A17M red monitor ($2690 ea.) from Switzerland and a PMC6 active monitor ($8150 pr.) from Great Britain. The 28" Target stands used here were $429/pr. Aside from their studio orientation, active speakers have achieved increased exposure to high-end audiences at shows in recent years. There are sound technical reasons for mating the power amp with the speaker, though it may take some of the drama out of the audiophile game... just as does combining a streamer, DAC, and preamp into the same chassis.

PSI was previously unknown to me.

On silent display were a pair of active Genelec G Two monitors ($762 ea.) with modest-sized active F One 'subwoofer' ($1273). Genelec has been a popular brand going way back to the 1900s. The black unit was a heavy-duty precision speaker wall-mounting device, more likely to be seen in studio use.

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