Toronto Audiofest 2023 Show Report
Part 4... The Second Floor Booths And Rooms
Show Report By Rick Becker

Room 219  Audio Research And American Sound
I've heard Rethm speakers over the years, but nowhere have they sounded as sublime as in this room. The reason is that they took the time during the past two years to redesign the entire line, moving the woofers to the front baffle and redesigning the internal labyrinth to strengthen the lower midrange. There are actually four woofers in each speaker using an isobaric configuration. A 400-Watt Hypex Class D amp is used in each speaker to drive the woofers. The original names of each line have been returned, and the top three models all look very similar. I hope this does not cause too much confusion going forward. Perhaps a Mk II moniker would be in order?

The 6" wideband driver at the top is supplemented with the two woofers seen below and two internal woofers to create an isobaric configuration. What a magnificent driver from this company from India.

Kent   Sennheiser
Sennheiser had a table full of listening stations for their well-known headphone line, which was predictable and well-attended.

Ascot  Sennheiser
The Sennheiser room next door was a presentation of their three-model soundbar line that features holographic sound. I should have taken time to listen here but didn't. I'll try and catch them next week at Capital Audiofest.

The Conference And Meeting Rooms
Starting from the elevators this time and moving around the Atrium clockwise:

Plaza B  Bliss Acoustics
Bliss Acoustics in Ottawa is not a top-of-mind retailer to me. They work by appointment only and represent a very large number of highly regarded brands.

That would be the speaker designer with the big smile on his face — and for good reason as this is a very good-sounding speaker. This Audio Nec Evo 2 ($58.5k) is just one up from the bottom of the new Evo Line. The entry-level is comprised of one woofer module plus the white, nearly full-range driver that runs from 400Hz to 40kHz. And yes, that's a round super tweeter top and center. The woofer just below the white driver (which vibrates in a horizontal direction) is a smaller diameter than the one below it. And only the smaller woofer seems to be ported.

A larger model includes the same woofers mounted above the white driver creating a D'appolito configuration. Above and beyond that you can add a tower of four even larger diameter woofers to each channel. The model heard here did quite nicely even in this large room, though not at concert level. In this price range, I would expect custom colors to be available.

Multiple racks of equipment were spread between the speakers. On the left was a Gryphon Ethos DAC/CD player ($55,720) and the Commander preamp ($93,800) with its separate power supply below.

To the right of the Gryphon rack was a Taiko Audio Extreme music server ($45k). Below that was an Aurender Rubium Master Clock ($22,400), and under that was an Aurender N20 Music Server (Network Transport). The Gryphon Essence stereo power amp ($32,840) was on the bottom.

On my first visit to this room, the action was centered around this Modulum rack ($11,643) with a J. Sikora Reference turntable ($64.5k) fitted with a J. Sikora KV Max 9" tonearm ($16,450) and a couple of shelves worth of Nagra Classic components that included the preamp ($24k), phono stage ($26.5k) and a power supply that served both ($21k). A Nagra Reference cartridge was listed at ($24.5k) which might explain why the music was so good here. The cabling was high up the ladder in the Nordost line if not the very top, and that would have helped, too.

Leonard Cohen gets a lot of play at the Canadian shows and he's a favorite of mine, still, as I made music videos (film, actually) of some of his early songs. They played a cut from this album that spoke deeply to me as well as revealed the excellence of this rig.

In a more conventional form factor, off to the side was the Kl Kroma Atelier Mercedes speaker ($145k), the new flagship of this company from Spain that created waves of praise in Munich earlier this year. They will be at CAF this year and I will certainly be looking forward to hearing them.

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