Salon Audio Montreal / Audio Fest 2019 Show Report
Part 2
Salon Audio Montreal / Audio Fest 2019 Show Report By Rick Becker

  Audio Note Music set up a premium rig with their speakers in the corners which is their usual practice. They also had their music ambassador, cellist Vincent Belanger, on hand for live vs. recorded comparison. I've heard this at previous shows, and the rig is very convincing, for sure.

Vincent, on the right, is shown here with Daniel Qvortrup, head of Audio Note Music. Audio Note UK Ltd had another, slightly smaller room next door which I came back to on Sunday for a very special encounter. Room 2425.

You really can't go wrong with Focal speakers so with a little time to spend before meeting up with Tom I wandered into the Focal Naim Canada expose in the large Ville-Marie room just off the top of the elevators.

There was a large display with knowledgeable presenters for the Vicoustic acoustic panels.

A couple of years ago I noted exceptionally good sound coming from modest powered Focal studio monitors and thought how interesting it might be to review them in the contest of a home stereo rig. My bucket list over-flows the bucket. The monitor shown here was set up for the live presentation of the Anne Bisson Trio and likewise caught my attention though it is larger and more traditionally styled. As I started to take photos one of the hosts came over and gave me the full scoop. A new model, it will be called a Trio 11 Be for Beryllium used in the tweeter. It can be used vertically or horizontally (in which case you remove four screws on the tweeter/midrange module and rotate it 90 degrees.) It can be used as a two-way or a three-way, switching back and forth with a foot pedal — a feature more useful to the pro-audio crowd. Drivers are trickle down from the Utopia series, I'm told. On the back were parametric adjustments for all three drivers as well as an adjustment for the input sensitivity. Price was unavailable at the time. Later, at the Cocktail party multiple sets of these speakers were in use for the band that played and I was told several people at Focal do, in fact, use these monitors at home. Hmmmm. Another drop in the bucket?

The extensive headphone bar had multiples of many styles playing through a variety of headphone amps. It was shoulder to shoulder on several trips to this room. Prices for each model were clearly shown and special show pricing was offered. Did you say you needed to save $1000 on the Utopia QP2R? You got it!

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