Montreal Salon Audio / Montreal Audio Fest 2017 Show Report
Part 3 Show Report By Rick Becker

  In the AudioShop room (1238) was another fine sounding rig featuring Sonus Faber Venere S speakers ($7300) in walnut driven by a pair of McIntosh MC75 monoblocks ($10,000) along with a McIntosh C2600 preamp ($9400) and a McIntosh MT5 turntable ($8500). Along the side wall were samples of other Sonus Faber models, all with the same profile, but with different wood finishes and some with stitched and embossed leather on top, others with the black acrylic like the Venere S — all of them, very much a class act. Music from LP here was transparent, highly resolved, dynamic and well lit — a much more modern sound than old timers remember from the McIntosh of old, but still with the sense of air and dimensionality that you expect from great tube gear.

In this age when many companies are awash with cash we are seeing a lot of acquisitions and mergers. So when I walked into 1305 and saw "Bluesound" on the blue banner covering most of the front wall, I was caught a little off guard. Bluesound is a new (to me) company that manufactures high-res streamers, kind of like Sonos, only better. They handle Tidal, Spotify, Deezer, MQA, Roon... virtually everything. They also manufacture active speakers, too, since, under the Lenbrook company umbrella, they own PSB speakers and NAD electronics. Lenbrook is a Canadian based company outside of Toronto. The music here was very decent and the form factor of the rig seems to be the direction mainstream consumers approve of, keeping the equipment consolidated, simple, and easily transported. Bringing together respected companies like PSB and NAD seems like an idea that elevates the quality of affordable music. It not only creates a giant portal into the higher levels of the High End, but with streaming, creates a portal of global proportions to the music of the world. Two thumbs up! Now if we could figure out a better way to feed our musicians....

Tri-Art Audio hosted three consecutive rooms (1312, 1314, and 1316) and as usual, their bamboo based rigs are something else to behold, particularly with their open baffle speakers such as the Bam Bam 5 ($5529, show special $4423) shown here with the external crossover seen on the floor beside it. I also noted the small, coin-like cable spacers that were used to keep their moderately priced cables orderly. They use a super tweeter which is the small black dot between the coin-size tweeter and the larger midrange driver. They claim this breaks up the air in front of the speaker allowing the music to flow through the air with greater clarity. My host used the analogy of ripples generated on a pool surface that allow a platform diver to see the surface of the water during a dive. Interesting. I also noted repetitive clusters of three different size holes drilled in the Plyboo backbone of their open baffle design. I seem to recall that the backbone was a lot more like Swiss cheese in the past. It's a lot more Zen-like, now, with the wiring to the individual drivers inlaid into the backbone. Their power amps have always been Class D, but now they feature a tube buffer that is adjustable from a dial on the front of the chassis. This gives the music a greater sense of weight and spatiality as well as allowing you to tune it to your room.

Tri-Art is also the manufacturer of Goo, a paint-your-screen-on-the-wall kit that will cover 50 square feet, enough to do a 140" diagonal 16:9 screen. The screen they were using for a demo was about an 80" diagonal so most folks could probably paint a screen on the largest wall of their home. There is a white base that is applied first, then a grey reflective coat that competes in the top three imagining technologies in the world. The kit retails for $269 but was offered as a show special for $229. I haven't been paying close attention to video or home theater in recent years and I thought Goo had disappeared from the landscape. Not true. This is a very impressive solution. The flip side of the coin is that video projectors have made large gains, too. I will certainly want to revisit projection technology before I invest in a 4K TV. Kudos to Darrell Swanson for bringing me up to date here.

Niveau Grands Salons // Grand Salon Level
Taking the elevator to the lower level, finally, I hung a right and ducked into the Frontenac room to taste Sennheiser's $70,000 HE-1 headphone rig. Set in what looked like a marble base with a black box on the top left side to house the headphones when not in use, it had a stark, contemporary look. On the right side of the marble base was another black box with silver-topped tube shields encasing eight tubes that are variations of 12AX7 made specifically for Sennheiser by the Polish tube manufacturer, J & J. These tubes were just the preamp section of the rig. Class A mosfet amplifiers are built into the headphone cups allowing for the shortest possible connection to the electrostatic drivers. A built-in DAC utilizing ESS Sabre ES9018 chips handles digital sources, including DSD. I listened to portions of a few familiar cuts available on a nearby laptop, including "Hotel California" by the Eagles. The music was very good, as you would expect, but the competition in headphones and dedicated amplifiers has risen considerably in recent years. Visually and sonically, the HE 1 was nowhere near as inviting as their iconic Orpheus state of the art headphone set in 1991.

In fact, I listened to the Orpheus at this very show back in the mid-1990's when it was at the Delta Hotel. I seldom use the word "awesome", but I remember the experience to this day. The Orpheus was awesome. And at least visually, it remains so today. As I said, the level of the competition has risen. The price, however, will guarantee owners of the HE 1 a substantial degree of exclusivity. At the other end of the table were Sennheiser HD800 headphones plugged into a Sennheiser HDVD 800 amplifier that took either balanced headphone inputs or standard phone jacks. This rig sounded very good, too.

In Fontaine B (?) was the Foire du Vinyle or Record Fair where Pleko Vinyle, Explosive Groove, Zorgal Musique, La Vielle Picouille Disquaire and one other seller whose name I couldn't decipher on the poster, were set up on tables to sell primarily used vinyl.

In Fontaine C I revisited the Yamaha presentation and spoke with Nico Boucher of Yamaha Canada Music to get more details on their rig. The $18,000 speakers were the NS 5000 model, and they were driven by the A-S3000 100 Wpc integrated amp ($9000). The front end was a CD-S3000 CD player/USB DAC ($7000). Nica told me they are working on a high end power amp specifically to go with the NS 5000 speakers that should appear in 2018. The panels behind the speakers were actually from their piano department and are used to tune high frequency, but in this case they were simply cosmetic — to block the bright lights behind the speakers. Nico expressed appreciation to the folks from Luna Cables for their help in maximizing the set-up of this room. As I mentioned in Part 2, this rig sounded noticeably better than what I remembered from TAVES last fall.

Tru-lift had an arresting display with an array of their automatic tonearm lifting devices ranging from really short to 8" tall for Triangle turntables. The 8 incher was in brass to go with the gold trim on a Triangle turntable, but presumably you can get any height version in brass. Obviously it is a modular design in which you connect different pieces to achieve different heights. I was embarrassed that I haven't gotten around to testing and writing about the review sample they gave me at TAVES, but I assured them it will get prime time mention eventually when I take my Linn Project to the next level — hopefully within a year. Little did I know that I would spot one of their little gems on a very prestigious turntable in the room directly behind their display. I chided them that now they have mastered the lift, they need to move on and develop a tonearm. Looking at the lineup in the photo, they could just as easily move into the realm of chess.

So into the Fundy room I went, a room outfitted by Toronto retailer Sonic Artistry who has been doing business for 25 years, working by appointment only. It was a familiar collection of equipment in a much larger room than they had at TAVES last fall. The Dohmann Helix 1 turntable ($52,000) from Audio Union immediately caught my attention. It was fitted with a Schroder CB 12" tonearm ($5720) and a Charisma Audio Reference Two MC cartridge ($3820). I have high regard for Charisma cartridges, having reviewed the Reference One MC and the newer 103 MC phono cartridge, and bought both of them. The more affordable 103 serves as my "daily driver". The Helix 1 is a suspended design and the blackened wood block on the left in the photo is merely a balancing weight on the tonearm board for a second tonearm. Frank Schroder's tonearms are usually seen with wood arm tubes, but Frank has joined the Audio Union and the CB tonearm was developed for the Helix 1 turntable. The 9" version of the tonearm comes with a wood arm tube, but the 12" version seen here comes with a carbon fiber arm tube. And as you can see, there is a brass Tru-lift affixed to the tonearm board — not a bad endorsement coming from a $52,000 turntable. I also noticed that the platter is driven by two belts seemingly of different diameter.

The turntable and electronics were on a Massif Audio Design Dogma 3 shelf equipment stand made with Jabota wood ($4140). A Thrax Audio Orpheus Phono Stage ($26,000), Dionysus Line Stage (also $26,000) and Teres monoblocks putting out 300 Wpc into 6 Ohms ($39,000) were the electronics. The speakers at the time I visited were the Thrax Lyra two-way ($26,000) mounted on Massif The Speaker Stand also in Jabota wood ($1200). Very expensive EnKlein cables connected the components and a BIS Maestro 6 outlet power strip was in use ($1,120). A pair of DavoneThe Solo speakers ($9,995) was standing at the side of the room, and I remember having a very favorable impression of them at TAVES. I was not familiar with the LP playing during my visit so I will withhold any comment on the sound of this rig.

I walked into the JVC/Kenwood home theater demonstration across the hall in Fontaine E and caught a glimpse of some Angry Birds. Cute.And a very bright image on the screen.

I've got more of the large rooms to cover and a handful of more photos, but they will have to wait for Part 4, hopefully in just a few more days. Thank you for your patience and willingness to return to my coverage of the Montreal Audio Fest show.

---> Continue to part 4 of our Montreal Salon Audio / Montreal Audio Fest 2017 show report.