TAVES Consumer Electronics Show 2015 Show Report 
Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show Part 5

Next door in the much smaller Whitchurch room was the Woo Audio headphone emporium which was busy as usual. Jack Woo was readily available to people to answer questions and offer advice. Among the full spectrum of their tube headphone amplifiers was the latest iteration of the tubed portable unit Jack has shown me at the past couple of shows. I listened to Pinetop Perkins sing Anna Lee from this "Back on Top" album. It took me into the Deep South. The caption for the last photo above reads: "No, son, Daddy is not buying you $3000 HiFiMAN HE1000 headphones until you graduate from college."

A while back I remember reading Art Dudley saying one way to improve the sound of a system is to put everything on one table. Well, in the Monitor/Kevro room in Newmarket, next door to Jack, they did just that. Typically the small chassis Cyrus gear is stacked vertically in a unique contemporary style metal rack where it indeed looks very cool. But this time they spread it all out along a roughhewn slab of dark textured wood which contrasted the contemporary silver chassis, side lit with a small spotlight. It not only looked great, but it sounded better than I've heard it before, though perhaps that had something to do with the gorgeous new Monitor Gold 300 speaker in piano ebony veneer with its ceramic coated aluminum/magnesium drivers. Also of interest in this room was a pair of in-wall speakers, 400 Series using their Gold Series technology with a cast aluminum baffle on the left, 200 Series using their Silver Series technology with polymer baffle on the right. Both styles had switches for midrange and tweeter attenuation as well as boundary compensation. These looked so high-tech that I thought about getting out my axe and taking out some drywall when I got home.

Stepping across the hall into the Plurison display in the Oakridges room I was greeted with a visually appealing display of what is becoming a frequent combination of a Devialet all-in-one component system paired with a Focal loudspeaker. Not that I'm complaining – it is invariably an excellent presentation. Michel Plante should know how to put together a good room, having been the director of the Son-Image show in Montreal for many years, and on this occasion he mated the Devialet 400 amplifier with the new Focal Sopra No.2 ($15,000 CDN) which was introduced two months earlier. (Sopra No.1 is the stand mounted monitor.) At 89 dB efficiency and available in six finishes, it features a beryllium tweeter with a patented horn-shape cavity behind it to effectively eliminate back pressure on the tweeter, as well as a new midrange and two new woofers. The cones are a sandwich construction with outside layers of polypropylene and a secret material in the middle. This sandwich design is the next generation of the flax cones that were such a success in their less expensive Aria 900 series a year or so ago. Seemingly a case of trickle-up technology!

Michel told me a lot of research went into the new motor and the new suspension of the woofers as well. The Sopra has already received rave reviews as well it should, falling just below the Utopia III series in a much more affordable and room friendly size. Yet it was even more elegant in style and contemporary design than the Utopia series which depends more on its larger size to impress. Vincent Belanger, the cellist I mentioned earlier in my report, arranged for me to hear some of his work in progress. I could really hear the instrument and feel the music through the Sopra. It didn't matter in the least that the Devialet was a solid state amplifier. Unfortunately Vincent's crowd funding effort did not meet his goal, but he is still working hard to bring the project to completion. I'm really looking forward to the LP, and hoping that it sounds as good on my reference rig as his raw material sounded in this room. This was easily one of the Best Rooms at the show. Focal speakers never fail to impress me, and I've even grown to appreciate the Devialet products over the years in spite of my bias for tube gear.

Outside the Plurison room was a kiosk set up to A/B two pairs of speakers, one of which was set up on IsoAcoustics' vibration absorbing stands and the other on solid blocks to equalize the listening height. In the open hallway, it was difficult to draw any meaningful conclusion. A few feet away was a very handsome Queen edition of an updated Rega RP1 with updated bearings, updated motor, updated tonearm, and updated anti-skating, making it almost an RP2 (which doesn't really exist.) I believe he said the first run of the Queen edition had been sold out, but another should be available…perhaps already. I must say the Queen edition would look quite smashing on one of the painted mannequin stands seen at previous Canadian shows, but alas, it seems the ladies have been retired.

The Bryston exhibit in the Aurora room was easy to find at TAVES this year and James Tanner, seen here in the closest chair, had the active rig positioned on the long wall as usual. A large selection of other Bryston gear lined the perimeter on inactive display. A set of new phono gear, derived from their full width BP1.5 Phono Stage included the TF-2 Step-up Transformer ($1250 USD), BP-20 MM/MC Phono Stage ($1750 USD) and the correlate PS3 high current, low noise DC power supply ($1000 USD) that works with the previously mentioned units as well as the BMM moving magnet phono stage ($1000 USD) and the BMC moving coil phono stages that were not displayed. They also had on display (as well as in the active rig) their new BDA-3 DAC ($3495 USD) with dual mono 32-bit DACs with 10 digital inputs including four HDMI inputs and a 4K video pass-through.

It does DSD up to 256 and offers user selectable variable upsampling. It also features balanced inputs and outputs. Bryston also makes an assortment of other gear that seems to have roots in the pro-audio side of their business including the external passive speaker crossover shown here.  The room sounded very good with pristine detail coming from the BDA-3 DAC fed by a Bryston Player delivering the usual rock classics. The music was played through their flagship Model T floorstanding speaker ($7895 per pair USD) easily driven by 7BSST2 monoblocks (600 Watts each into 8 ohms) which will be replaced shortly by the new SST3 (cubed) series of amps in 2016. I look forward to hearing those amps at Montreal in the spring. There is always good music in the Bryston room, but my time was about out and I had to move along to catch a private listening session.

Lo and behold, there was yet another room in the lower level of the Sheraton, much further down the hall hosted by Erikson Consumer, a large Canadian electronics distributor who sells, among others, all the brands from the Harmon Company. They distribute to large chain stores as well as high-end independents, and are themselves, a subdivision of an even larger Canadian company, JAM Industries, who sell everything from musical instruments to consumer electronics to pro-audio and lighting. Let's just say we're talking deep pockets, here, which translated into another very fine sounding room with music coming out of Revel Ultima 2 Series Salon 2 loudspeakers ($33,000 per pair). Being medium efficiency speakers with a nominal 6 Ohm load, they were driven by floorstanding Mark Levinson monoblocks which easily handled their magnesium cone drivers and a beryllium dome tweeter. The electronics were all Mark Levinson, save the laptop which apparently held the music. This late in the day, I was remiss in picking out all the details and prices. Even at this hour the seats were all taken, which says an awful lot, so I didn't have a chance to sit down and give the rig its due. I heard some vintage female vocalist, and some very familiar Stevie Ray Vaughn which told me I need to pay more attention here the next time around. In looking at my photo I noticed the rugged simplicity of the equipment rack and imagine how easily it might be duplicated with a little help from a lumber mill... like I need another project?

That's All Folks! TAVES was bigger and better than ever this year as they cast a wider net beyond the borders of High End audio. More families, more women, more kids, more fun. I say more power to them! Hopefully the synergy will pay off.

I'll end with my apology for not wrapping up this TAVES coverage much sooner, but my life got very complicated around the holidays this year. Hopefully this final segment will whet your appetite for the CES coverage that others will be sending your way very soon. All the best in 2016.

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