Salon Audio Montréal Audiofest Show Report Part 1
Rick Becker's Montreal Chronicles 2023.
Report By Rick Becker

Room 1236 Studio Economik
The entrance to Studio Economik greeted me with some very cool wall-mount record jacket holders by 514 RPM for 27$(?). They seem to know their target audience! A rack displaying affordable Mogami cables fortified my hunch.

But most intriguing was the two sets of studio monitors they were using. I heard the smaller one from Barefoot that was next to the larger one from PMC.

And how often do you see a Trinnov microphone for adjusting DSP at a show?

Section 1300
Room 1301 Angela-Gilbert Yeung And Entracte Audio
Angela-Gilbert had a much more modest room than at the Toronto show. It was also musically more cohesive — to a very high degree. Others raved about the Fink Team Kim speakers (16,500$) at the Capital Audiofest, but I was much more impressed with them here. Credit Angela-Gilbert for that. Perhaps it was the proper adjustment of the damping and high-frequency controls on the Kim, but more likely the setup and the electronics.

As you can see above, room treatments were used to good effect with a well-damped front wall. The new (and very impressive) component from Angela-Gilbert Yeung was the C312 preamplifier (7k$) below, which enabled tuning of the sound to make it sound like either a solid-state amp or a tube amp. Being a tube amp guy myself, I could not be fooled. It was pretty spectacular, given the fact there were no tubes in the preamp.

Included in the rig was their SW93 speaker cable (900$), D521 DAC (5250$), BC62 power cord (600$), BC95 interconnect (375$), SP Capacitor Pack 36 (3800$), Fab Cap Fanute FCF1 (1250$) and A210 power amp (7500$). A Melco N1Z High Resolution Music Library/Streamer (7295$) was the source.

While Angel-Gilbert may have changed persona, I sense a new wave of creativity has been unleashed and more great gear is in the future from this company.

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