Toronto Audiofest 2023 Show Report
Part 2... The Third Floor
Show Report By Rick Becker

  Dropping down to the 3rd Floor on the elevators to keep the flow in ascending room numbers, I jogged to the right beginning in Room 321. Only two of the three elevators were operational during the show, which was sufficient as the wait was never long throughout the weekend.

Room 321  Altitudo Audio and Tri-Cell Enterprises
There was a conglomeration of respected brands in the room of this retailer from Winnipeg, Manitoba. That's Leonid Yamborko riding herd on a Lumin streamer with Youn Sun Nah doing a very nice cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" with the signal sent to the DAC in an Aesthetics Janus CD player. A pair of ModWright KWA 99 monoblocks ($9000) were driving either the Audio Physics Midex ($12,649) floorstanders from Germany or the Elipson Legacy 3210 monitors ($4781) from France with an AMT tweeter and a ceramic coated aluminum woofer.

I also noted handsome equipment racks from Tri-Art which is famous for their electronics and speakers made with Plyboo. Numerous damping accessories from HRS, which is famous for its superbly engineered component racks, were seen on several components. The black components and turntable were from Goldnote in Italy.

The Elipson speaker was exceptionally smooth with a good sense of air and a very nice bloom with this female vocal recording. I liked the interesting use of multiple materials in this design. Those were Tri-Art speaker stands that had a unique look for someone who is design conscious.

On the floor, but not in use was an interesting looking Galion tube amp atop an amp stand from Tough Nut (yes) which I will be covering in more detail in a room on the 2nd Floor.

Room 325  Vinyl Sound
Next door, in the Vinyl Sound room there was another eclectic rig that was rocking out with Dire Strait's "Walk of Life" being played on the newish Thorens direct drive turntable (~$24k). An Accuphase integrated amp was driving Fleetwood Sound's high-efficiency horn speakers which were sounding just as good as when I heard them driven by a tube amp a year ago at a dealer up in Pennsylvania.

It was equipped with an Ortofon SPU Classic cartridge that features a nude spherical stylus. The original design dates back to 1959 and the slightly updated Classic came out in 1987.

The Fleetwood Sound DeVille, manufactured by Oswald Mills Audio in an old factory that used to manufacture Cadillac DeVille, has a mid-century modern vibe, kind of like a miniature Klipsch speaker, but of course, there were no stereo stand-mounted monitors back in the 1950s. This may have been a special dark walnut finish on this pair. It's a very unique, rich design that requires matching with the right high-quality amp.

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