Toronto Audiofest 2022 Show Report Part 2
Thirst for more on the third floor.
Show Report By Rick Becker

  Room 356 was a second room presented by Erikson Consumer Home where music was pouring forth from Revel speakers driven by a rig from Mark Levinson, which is not surprising given both companies are owned by Harmon International. The Revel F228BeSIL ($15k) is in their PerformaBe series. In addition to black, white, and metallic silver, there is also a walnut finish. Aside from the 25mm Beryllium dome tweeter, the 5.25" midrange and two 8" woofers have ceramic composite-coated aluminum frames and cast baskets. On the rack were the Mark Levinson 5105 turntable, 5802Integrated Amplifier for Digital sources, and 5101 Network Streaming SACD Player and DAC. Everything combined for a very pristine presentation.

Moving on to the first Trends Electronic room, 358, I encountered two sets of ELAC speakers. The mini-monitors ($850) on the stands captivated me. One of them has two 50-Watt amps — one for the speaker and one that powers the other speaker, connected by a cable. Inputs include TosLink optical, RCA, and phono input. Most importantly it has an HDMI ARC (room correction) connection which allows you to replace your typical soundbar which has little channel separation to get better stereo imaging.

There is also a full-bandwidth subwoofer output. Steve Rice also pointed out that when hooked up through the HDMI input, your TV remote will control the sound. Black, blue, and wood finish — take your pick. ELAC is a German company, but they have offices in Germany, the United States, and Canada, where they also have engineering staff. This was the Canadian premiere of this new speaker. And I was impressed.

Next door, in 360, Trends Electronic presented another simple system with a Cambridge Evo 150 ($3800 on Holiday Special, reg. $4150) all-in-one streaming from Tidal into a pair of passive ELAC floorstanders ($2800). There was a lot of value in this minimalist approach. It made me think back to all the gear I compiled in a $5k USD entry-level system for an article many years ago. The industry has come a long way in the past decade.

In 363 I ran into my long-time friend, Bernard Li, of Charisma Audio, seen here with his personal TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck, talking with a customer. A couple of elegant Codia Acoustic Design racks, 3000 BAB in black ($4950 USD) and the 3000 Diagon in Titanium Gold (($7000 USD), (both of which I have reviewed), held a wide variety of brands Bernard imports and even manufactures. Like the Charisma Audio piano black Musiko turntable ($4225) and tonearm ($3575) which I use as my new reference. It was playing with a Charisma Signature One cartridge ($5185) which was noticeably better than the Charisma Reference One that I use.

On the other rack, below the Well-Tempered Lab Amadeus Junior turntable ($5230) with Charisma ECO cartridge ($1090) was the Audio Exklusiv P 2 Phono stage with gold knobs and white granite faceplate — very stunning! On the other rack was a Kinki Studio EX-M1 integrated amp ($2833 USD) and a pair of EX-B7 monoblocks ($4132). A GigaWatt Power Control conditioner and PowerSync Ultra cable ($9320) were in use.

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