Second Floor: Toronto Audiofest 2024 Show Report
Savoring the fantastic sound systems on the second floor.
Toronto Audiofest 2024 Show Report By Rick Becker

  The 2nd Floor opened up with a balcony surrounding the atrium on the ground level. There were booths around the balcony and rooms of various sizes that you could enter from the balcony. There were also a couple of sleeping rooms along a hallway you could access near the elevators. I hope you didn't miss those. That's where I'll start.

Room 219 Audio Eden
This room was a real treat, mating Nagra electronics with a Harbeth 40.3 XD speaker for the first time in my experience and with excellent results. The current XD series has a much more contemporary sound with greater resolution and a more transparent sound than Harbeths of yore. It is still warm enough with a full body to sound very inviting to me. The 40.3 is the kind of speaker I could recommend to a friend who wanted to get serious about music without ever having to upgrade their speaker. Off to the side was a small Harbeth XD P3ESR monitor for smaller rooms that I heard on my sweep at the end of the show – also excellent, but not going as deep, of course.

While the XD 40.3 presents a relatively easy load of 6 to 8 Ohms, with 86dB/W/m sensitivity it needs sufficient power and the Nagra had no problem delivering a smooth sound with total control of the speaker. Music was streamed here but there was the new Exposure 3510 CD player with a sliding door on top on the upper right corner of the rack. Not reviewed on this side of the pond, expect it to be around $3200 USD.

Nagra is from Switzerland, hence expensive, and still sports a design aesthetic that harkens back to the days when I used their industry standard tape recorder when making films. The knobs have the same tight feel that gives you confidence that this gear will last forever. I will come across their gear in another room shortly.

Ascot Room Bricasti Design And GCI Distribution
Emmanuel Le Quere of GCI Distribution in Montreal, at the right, encountered technical misfortune at the Montreal show earlier this year, but he bounced back with superb sound here with a rig full of Bricasti Design gear. That was Damon Gramont, Director of Sales at Bricasti on the left. The sound here was exemplary coming through the Tidal speaker and this room was a contender for Best Rooms.

On the top left was the M19 Reference SACD / CD transport with I2S, AES, and S/PDIF outputs ($14,400). On the right was the M20 Dual Mono Line Stage ($22,600). On the next level on the left was the M21 dual mono DAC with independent PCM and DSD as well as network ($22,500). Next to it was the M1 Series 2 dual mono without network ($17k). And on the bottom shelf were the M28 Monoblocks (narrow size) with 200 / 400 / 800 Watts into 8 / 4 / 2 Ohms, respectively ($21,400, each). I noted that Bricasti takes their footers very seriously – those were not aftermarket footers. Note the different finishes some of their components offer. Not having heard them side by side or even on the same weekend, the Bricasti electronics were sounding very competitive with Tidal gear.

Plaza B Bliss Acoustics
In the Bliss room, I got to watch this guy do his video Tai Chi as the music played. This year they had the Kroma Atelier Irya speakers ($252k) in the rig that must have topped out around $M. Like last year with a different speaker, the music was pretty extraordinary, giving the impression that I was actually in the room with the musicians. The actual size of this large room made the illusion quite believable. If you closed your eyes, the equipment disappeared – but only if you closed your eyes.

On the outside of the racks were the rather large Pilium Kratos monoblocks. The rack on the right was the analog front end from Nagra with their relatively new turntable. (A less expensive one is in the works I had been told at Montreal 2024 show.) The third component down looked like a DAC. On the left rack was a Nagra Classic PSU power supply along with the smaller silver unit. Below that was a Luxman CD player, possibly being used only as a transport. And below the Luxman was the Pilium Olympus preamplifier with dual power supplies.

Beneath the platter of the turntable, I noticed the dual motor belt drive with an extra set of pulleys to further stabilize the speed and enable more belt contact with the sub-platter. The pillars at each corner house the suspension system. The carbon fiber tonearm was one-piece with the headshell built-in and it appears to be a uni-pivot design. The cartridge was Nagra's own, though coming from Switzerland it wouldn't surprise me if it was outsourced to one of their neighbors.

Rather than spend time to write out all the prices I figured I'd let the photo of their price list either entice you... or scare you away.

While these two guys are blocking the view of the suave contemporary lamp illuminating the turntable, you can get a better glimpse of it in the lead photo further above. What you see at the extreme left in the photo directly above is a large banner for that lamp with the hook reading "What superior sound looks like." While I get by with the Reliable Uberlight gooseneck model that many others use, I know you can always buy something with a more sophisticated design if you shop around. Try searching "task lamp" but make sure it won't tip over and take out your tonearm and cartridge.

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