Montreal Salon Audio / Montreal Audio Fest 2016 Show Report
Part 3 By Rick Becker

Lifetime Achievement Award
The Industry Cocktail Party at the bottom of the escalators was understandably foreshortened this year but the Lifetime Achievement presentation was perhaps the most heartfelt presentation of that award, ever. Michel Plante called select people up to the platform one by one and the individuals passed the microphone around, each giving an account of the impact John Banks, owner of the Audio Centre stores, had on their personal and professional lives. It was all (or mostly) in French, but I could read the faces and sense the sincerity of all who spoke. Even John choked up a bit at receiving the award, a hoodoo totem made of river rock. In the end, there were a lot of smiles passed around.

After the ceremony I hit the streets and headed for the local chicken shack at the train station. By the time I finished it had turned dark and the streets of downtown Montreal were lit up so I opted to soak up a little neon in spite of the cold air. Of particular note was the use of second floor windows for additional advertising.

Turntables have hit the front windows of Main Street and there was even a "professional" model from Audio Technica to transfer your vinyl to digital for those who wish to swim against the current. Breakfast at McDonalds in the train station across the street revealed signage to address the needs of a multi-lingual dining venue. Mine was breakfast #369 that morning. The big cultural event in Montreal was the Pompeii exhibit at the Musee des Beaux-Arts. Unfortunately, all my time was committed to the show.

In one of three rooms sponsored by Coup de Foudre I spoke with Peter Walter who told me Graeme Humphrey is really getting behind the Triode Lab/Finale brand. This boutique tube amplifier brand, which I've raved about in numerous reviews, is getting serious about becoming a more mainstream company. Up ‘til now, they have been very much a custom order company working very closely with their customers to design an amplifier for their specific needs, taste, and budget. They will be tightening the line to facilitate small batch manufacturing with greater economy and building a Canadian brand name without actually waving the flag. Lake Louise Blue will be one of their color offerings, for example. That brings back fond memories of a bicycle ride from Banff to Lake Louise and back, several decades ago. The color of that glacial lake under sunlit skies is iconic for travelers from all over the world. I think this new direction will spell even greater success for this very fine young company.

The white speaker here is a single driver Vivace Mini ($3000 CDN) created by Robert Gaboury formerly of Gem Audio and now working under the brand name, Arteluthe. It was driven very nicely by the Finale EL-84 integrated amp that I reviewed some time ago. The music had a top-to-bottom coherency that you would expect from a single driver speaker, and went much deeper than you would expect from such a small driver. Rest assured this is more than a simple white cabinet with a full-range driver.

In the VPI room once again I found Jeff Joseph spinning vinyl, this time on a high-end VPI Avenger turntable with dual 10" 3D printed tonearms and a jazzy company logo. A Soundsmith Sussurro cartridge with ruby cantilever graced one arm. Jeff showed me how the separate power supply for the motor starts out at 115V to get the heavy platter moving, but drops down to 102 volts where the motor runs quieter for a blacker background when actually playing a record. It also switches from 33 to 45 rpm. The rig included a Sim Audio Moon phono stage, integrated amplifier and DAC. Cardas cables united everything from the VPI turntable to the Joseph Pulsar stand mounted monitors ($7700 US).

The Pulsar uses the same tweeter as the Pearl I heard the previous day, and the woofer uses some of the same technology as the Pearl's woofers, but it's designed for the smaller box with particular attention to bass articulation and extension. The sound here was excellent, but I was really having so much fun talking with Jeff and Mat Weisfeld that I didn't listen for long. It's always good sound when Jeff sets up a room and while I might prefer his speakers with tube amplification, they certainly sing with quality solid state such as the Moon here. Jeff reinforced my conviction with a cut designed to display acoustic bass timbre and depth. Mat has taken over as president from his father, Harry, who founded VPI, and they've been doing some very exciting things the past couple of years. I was particularly excited to see the Nomad back in production, now with some very significant upgrades. It is still a plug ‘n play design with a built-in phono stage optimized for the Ortofon 2M Red cartridge that comes with the package. It still has a built-in headphone amp. But now, the phono stage can be defeated and the signal sent to an outboard phonostage.

The arm is now the same arm as on the Scout Jr. which is a better arm than before, and the new arm is now upgradeable. It is also very durable as Mat illustrated when he pulled it off the table and beat it against the wall. (Shades of Heavy Metal, here?) The wall wart power supply is also gone and the deck has an IEC socket. The mdf platter with a Jacobs bearing is also upgradeable to the Scout Jr. aluminum platter. The machined conical feet with rubber tips from the Scout were also brought down to the Nomad to improve isolation issues. And if black isn't your color, hang on. Colors are coming! That's quite a lot of upgrades, but equally important are the upgrade pathways incorporated in the design. It is no longer a buy it and trade-it-in proposition; now you can buy it and grow with it as your interest in vinyl grows.

In one of two rooms sponsored by the Montreal retailer Audiophonie, I met up with Robert Gaboury showing off his new Arteluthe Cadenza two-way speaker ($24,000 CDN) with a high frequency driver with 110 dB sensitivity from FaitalPRO in Italy mated to a custom fabricated wooden horn dressed in a handsome burl veneer. The 8 wpc coming from a gleaming white Finale EL-84 integrated amp with blue accented transformers really made the music jump. An external crossover was lying open on the floor, but will eventually be enclosed and rack-mountable with adjustments for phase, level, bass reach and tweeter. Essentially it is a four-slope crossover that acts as tone controls. It uses modern versions of oil can capacitors that were designed in the 1930s. Red and black hook-up wire connected the crossover to the compression driver with clip on connectors, and to the Cardas binding posts for the 18" woofer. A Unico CD Primo tube CD player was the source. Looking like an artist's interpretation of an Altec Voice of the Theater speaker designed for the finest homes, the Cadenza had transparency and dynamics that bordered on being there. This was easily the most exciting presentation I heard at the show. It may not have been the most "audiophile approved" system I heard, but it's the one room I've been thinking about for the past month. Of course the electric blues playing here might have had something to do with that, too.

Bryston had a more modest rig playing this year with their stand mounted  Mini T 3-2ay "bookshelf" speakers ($3370 CDN) sitting on Target MR50 speaker stands ($549 CDN). Electronics were from the new Cubed Series amplifiers including the 4B(3) stereo amp putting out 300 wpc ($5695) claiming a 20dB improvement in common mode noise rejection. I thought the music sounded particularly clean this time around—even better than the floor standing speakers shown at TAVES last fall. The fully balanced preamp was the BP-26 ($3295 that included a separate power supply, optional phono stage and DAC, as well as a headphone output. A remote is optional. This preamp package seems to be a particularly good deal, except—oops! the power supply is an additional $1865 CDN, putting it up above $5000, playing with the Big Boys, where it rightly belongs. DC outputs on the preamp power additional add-ons and future products. A new product (to me) was the BIT-20 ($3295 CDN), an isolation transformer that keeps out the AC mains noise and provides surge protection and 10 outlets.

Bryston has previously been showing with Torus isolation transformers, but apparently they've developed their own model now. Another item in the rig was the BDA-3 DAC, a PCM unit with 384 kHz/32 bit capability, as well as DSD up to DSDx4 ($3495 CDN). And finally, there was a BDP-2 Digital Audio Player ($3295) in the stack. The new Cubed Series power amplifiers have a new faceplate design and a mat silver finish, not unlike the Constellation brand. I tried to capture the difference in a photo, but succeeded only modestly. The older finish is a satin finish that has a little more shine than the new mat look. From what I heard here the new amps seem noticeably quieter, but I don't know if that improvement will carry through with the rest of the line as it evolves. A new BCD-3 CD player with dual AKM 4490 balanced mode DACs and a metal Sony transport was on silent display and will be about $4000 when it becomes available. And last, but perhaps most interesting to younger folks, was Bryston's new BDP-Pi, (sorry, my keyboard doesn't seem to do the symbol for Pi) running on the Raspberry Pi and HiFiBerry to bring an affordable digital player capable of up to 192/24 PCM to market. No price was mentioned.

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