Industry Dinner And Lifetime Achievement Awards
Enjoy the Music.com congratulates all award recipients!
Toronto Audiofest 2024 Show Report By Rick Becker

Lower Level
A flight of stairs led to four medium-sized rooms on the lower level that had interesting and very worthwhile presentations.

MacKenzie  Kevro International
This room was the presentation of Kevro International, the folks who garnered the Lifetime Achievement Awards on Saturday night. They were to be commended for presenting the new Monitor Gold 500 6G ($9,500) rather than their higher-priced Platinum Series or the flagship Hyphn, which is a world-class speaker. You could easily imagine the Platinum series being a bit better, but at a higher price, or even consider stepping down to the Silver series if the Gold was too dear.

The rig was comprised of a Rotel Michi Q5 Transport / DAC ($8,500) and Rotel Michi X5 Series 2 integrated amplifier ($10k). Audience cables were used throughout.

Also available in satin white and gloss black, the gloss finish in the Macassar wood veneer was gorgeous. Free air efficiency is 88.5dB/W/m and it is rated at 4 Ohms, never dropping below that in the audible range. This is a very fine-sounding, reasonably priced speaker that will play into the mid-20Hz range. Leonard Cohen's voice came through with great clarity and a chesty resonance as it should.

I was excited to see the smaller rig in this room as I had read the press release on the new Studio 89 monitor ($3k) from Monitor Audio, a unique speaker, not part of a new series. The Rotel RAS 5000 ($4k) integrated amplifier had just won an EISA Award for Best Streaming Amplifier and did a very credible job with Bob Dylan singing "Man With the Long Black Coat."

The Studio 89 monitor features an amt tweeter and a pair of 4.25" mid-bass drivers in a D'Appolito configuration. The resolution was very good and the mid-bass was surprisingly sufficient on the bass line in Dylan's song. Frequency Response, In-Room (-6dB) is rated at 48 Hz to 60 kHz, which is decent for such a compact monitor. It has been highly praised in the British press. I believe this was the North American debut. I'll certainly keep an eye out for it at Capital Audiofest later this week. And did I say it was very elegant?

They fired up the Monitor Audio Anthra W12 sealed subwoofer ($3,800) with a 1000-Watt Class D amplifier for me and it blended right in with the monitors, even filling out the midrange a bit. It is said to go down to 16Hz and this was a very musical combination. The exhibit space was small, so one sub was sufficient. I expect this rig would provide an excellent soundstage in a larger space.

In the hallway, under better light, I could get a look at the fit and finish of a Monitor Platinum Series floorstander.

And, just in time for Halloween, here were some in-ceiling speakers that could slide right into your pumpkins and scare the bejeezus out of trick-or-treaters!

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