Part 1 — 1200 & 1300 Hallways: Montreal Audiofest 2026 Show Tour And Sound Impressions
Exhibitor room and gear reviews, technical observations, and practical notes for serious listeners and music lovers.
Montreal Audiofest Show Report By Rick Becker

1218  Lemay Audio And Grimm Audio
This second room from Lemay featured a minimalist system from Grimm, including a MU2 streamer/DAC/preamp driving the active Grimm speaker with subwoofer. The black box on the floor beneath the speaker is the woofer unit. This room drew lots of attention, as well it should. I've heard the Grimm system sound very impressive at Capital Audiofest. I was a little less impressed here, possibly because of the smaller room, but more likely because of the music playing at the time, which didn't portray the outstanding bass that the system is capable of producing.

Obviously, it is a very contemporary design, but also notably compact. A larger Entreq ground box was used here, along with another Modulum rack—one of several styles they offer.

1221  Solen
Solen sells a lot of speaker parts and accessories, including tubes, which I will come to later on the lower level of the show, but they also had a room demonstrating a decidedly entry level rig with a WiiM streamer / DAC / preamplifier feeding a pair of small Fosi Audio V3 Mono power amplifiers putting out 240 Watts @ 4 Ohms that drove a pair of stand-mounted two-way monitors supplemented with a pair of subwoofers parked in the front corners of the room.

On a table at the back of the room was a trio of colorful speaker cabinets for the DIY crowd.

Below the entry-level gear was a very fine KR Audio KR-880 tube integrated amp, which I had hoped to hear. I doubled back near the end of the show on Sunday with hopes I might convince them to plug it in, but in retrospect, it was probably just as well they didn't because the speakers in the room would not have done it justice. I've reviewed several KR amplifiers earlier in my career, and they are one of the reasons I became such a fan of tube gear.

On a shelf at the back of the room were some of the many tubes KR manufactures by hand with a special type of hard glass. These are artisan tubes of high quality, made in the Czech Republic, not mass-produced machine-made versions from Russia or China. From the left were a PX4, 2A3, 45, a small signal tube?, PX25, and 300B.

1231  Hearken Audio
Matt Thomas has put together Best Rooms for several years now, typically comprised of esoteric components that are seldom seen, much less heard. Directly below the turntable, for example, was a Serblin and Son Frankie Plus integrated amp (5400$) with a remote control that was especially attractive looking. The Serblin, here, is a nephew of the son of the late Franco Serblin, who is carrying on his father's speaker business.

Of particular interest to me was this Jean Nantais Mighty Mite Super turntable with an Origin Live Silver tonearm and Nagaoka MP-700 moving iron cartridge that was the source for the fine music I was hearing. The turntable features a much thinner plinth than typical JN turntables, yet still houses a heavy-duty Lenco drive system. A thinner platter to which some metal has been added is also used. The table alone is only $3500, which makes it a steal for a rim-drive turntable of this caliber. What can I say about the whimsical record clamp without personally reviewing it? Well, for starters, it doesn't complement the vintage-looking stain and finish of the plinth, and you can take it from there.

The Club 27 Kurt speakers from Bastanis ($13k) featured a 10" wide-bander driver with a folded horn that exited out the bottom of the speaker. It was supplemented with a horn tweeter.

On silent display was this Found Sound Davio DAC, a moderately priced tube DAC that falls below the entry-level tube DAC from LampizatOr.

Matt put an X by the items that were actually in the system, although I can't say I heard the digital front end.

From the sequence of my photos, I believe this Northstar Audio price list was also in this room. Northstar seems to be an upstart company in Kitchener, Ontario, that works by appointment only. (Hearken Audio is also in Kitchener, Ontario.) There was no room listed for them in the PMA program for the show, but I also snapped the next photo, which seems to suggest they were there.

This new Westminster integrated amp was on silent display.

And here are the specs and price.

My next photo was of this all-in-one Serblin and Son Performer Net streamer / DAC / Phono stage and 60 Watts per channel (Wpc) in Class A/B integrated amplifier for 3150$, which would have been in the Hearken Audio room. Sometimes life confuses me.

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