Toronto Audiofest 2023 Show Report
Part 1... The Fourth Floor
Show Report By Rick Becker

Room 443  Hearken Audio
Matt Thomas greeted me with a smile as he knew I was eager to behold the Thai-Scandinavian Bird-of-Prey tonearm ($15k) on the Jean Nantais Ultimate Lenco turntable ($34,300) which he promised to have on hand. It was fitted with a Tzar DST cartridge ($16k). The other arm was an Ikeda ($14k) fitted with a Miyajima Infinity Mono cartridge ($4775).

Electronics included  Linnenberg Bach Phonostage ($22,750), Miyajima EC5 preamp ($9300) and OTL power amp ($23,300). Cables were by Bastanis, as was the Matterhorn speaker ($27k) with an open baffle tweeter atop a 15" woofer.

The rack was a custom hand-made piece ($4k) and there were some HRS platforms and damping plates in use, as well as some Synergistic Research tweaks including HFT High Frequency Transducers on the walls, MiG 3 footers, and an FEQ acoustic field generator. Ocellia silver power cables ($3,000 to $3,500), and Yeti Reference V3 power cable ($1900) and Reference interconnects ($3k) were bringing juice and transmitting signal. Hearken's own turntable speed controller ($2k) was employed to control the Jean Nantais table. This was a very finely tuned and curated system. Just check out the IK Audio record weight ($1325) — a lot going on there.

The Bastanis Dipole Matterhorn speaker had an alluring veneer on the front baffles, while the remainder of the chassis was black. A rear-facing passive radiator was directly behind the large woofer on the back panel.

Looking at this room and scanning their website, it is clear Hearken is focused on very high-quality gear from companies that lie beyond the mainstream. This is a shop for the true connoisseur.

Room 445  Elite Audio, EverSolo, And Perreaux

The model 200iX with 200 Wpc @ 8 Ohms, and 300 Wpc @ 4 Ohms, ($8k USD, $11k CDN) is available in a variety of pop colors for an additional $1k. It features a built-in ESS 9038 DAC.

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