Fourth Floor Part 1: Toronto Audiofest 2024 Show Report
Featuring Nordost, Thorens, Chord, Audiovector, Audiolab, IsoAcoustics, Executive Stereo, Geshelli Labs, Tri-Cell Enterprises, EverSolo, and more.
Toronto Audiofest 2024 Show Report By Rick Becker

  With the need to finish this Toronto show report before the Capital Audiofest 2024 (show report) coming up on November 8 through 10, I'm compelled to focus on fewer rooms this year. I was able to visit all the rooms and revisit them briefly at the end of the day on Sunday, but for some rooms, I will only be showing a photo or two without deeper content. The awards for the Best Rooms at the show will be at the end of the show report.

Room 437  Nordost
A variety of Nordost cables were stashed along the floor. That's an Audiovector floorstanding speaker. The music here was not particularly notable, but the rig was not likely warmed up.

The Nordost power strip and power filter plug-ins were conspicuously placed in front of the equipment rack. I noted the Sort Kones isolating the power strip off the floor and similar Sort feet on the bottom of the rack behind it. There was no room sheet with a list of components and prices, so I moved along.

439  Executive Stereo
The Thorens TD 1600 TP 160 suspended turntable ($6699) in high gloss walnut immediately caught my eye and it impressed me with its fine fit and finish as well as the music coming from the Thorens TAS 1500 mc cartridge.

Note the hinged lid and the unipivot tonearm with a replaceable headshell for easy cartridge swapping. And that's a separate power supply on the left. Think of this turntable not as a poor man's Linn but rather as a reasonable man's Thorens.

Below the Thorens turntable was a Chord Ultima Integrated amp ($16,250) with 125 Watts per channel (Wpc), featuring the classic Chord architecture. Below that was the acclaimed DAVE DAC, headphone amp, preamp ($20,700), and a small Chord HUEI mm/mc phono stage ($2300).

Further down were a Chord Hugo TT 2 DAC, headphone amp, preamp ($7,600), and Chord Hugo M Scaler ($6,700) for upsampling and filtering your digital signal before sending it to your DAC. I heard this unit when it first came out and it created a noticeable difference in sound quality. Due to connectivity, I believe it is only compatible with certain DACs, so investigate it carefully. Substantial Show Specials were offered on new versions of the models used at the show that would have paid for your trip to Toronto from almost anywhere.

On the bottom shelf was an Audiolab 9000N wireless streamer ($4,499) with an Audiolab 9000CDT CD transport ($1,749) for those traditionalists who still prefer to spin physical media. And yes, that was a laptop on the chair to the right.

On the left was the Spendor D7.2 ($10,500) and on the right was the Spendor Classic 1/2 ($12,500) stand-mounted monitor. A Show Special until Wednesday, October 23rd on all Spendor models was also offered. This was an uncommonly good offer, but you needed to be at the show to learn about it.

The music, coming through the Spendor Classic 1/2 was very inviting with a warm tone and plenty of bloom. As the name suggests, it was classic.

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