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

Carlton Corby's Audio
Frank Fazzalari stretched the limits of Coherent Audio again this year with a giant horn speaker.

It uses a vintage JBL 2441 4" compression driver with a 2365 31" square horn and a TAD 1801 18" driver that had its magnet changed over to a field coil assembly. The crossover was in the neighborhood of 350Hz. This one uses a vintage off-the-shelf horn but Frank said he was looking to make them out of carbon fiber. Priced at $55k USD, he is aiming at the Asian market where he already has a dealer in Singapore who is interested in hearing it. The sound was transparent and dynamic as you would expect, but I had the feeling it should have been next door in the larger Corby's Audio room to give it more space for the sound to develop. Frank said he only had about 75 hours on the system and expected the bass to tighten up even further. Such is the nature of shows when creativity encounters a deadline.

Atop the Tough Nut rack was a Kuzma Stabi turntable with a Kuzma Safir tonearm and cartridge. Below it was a Tektron 300B KT2 with 8 Wpc, but the speaker was only using ~1.5 Watts. An Allnic H-5500 phono stage was working with the Kuzma and a Saturn power conditioner was on the bottom shelf.

Bristol A Corby's Audio
Next door in the much larger Corby's room was a familiar rig with the speakers he premiered last year.

What was very intriguing was a special carbon fiber wall-mount rack made for the Rega Naiad turntable on a tough nut rack that was specially designed to accept the wall-mount rack. I'm a big fan of wall-mounting turntables if they are of reasonable weight. I can literally jump on my joisted floor without causing the cartridge to skip on my Charisma Audio Musiko non-suspended turntable. The market for Naiad turntables is likely very small, but I like the concept of a carbon fiber wall-mounted shelf if it can be more universally applied.

Below the Naiad turntable was the sleek Rega power supply.

Derrick Francis talks with an interested customer, explaining the technology embedded in his fine Tough Nut racks. I noted a couple of new improvements over last year's initial presentation. They are a flexible blend of metal, fine woodworking, and attention to vibration-canceling technology.

The Blue Zone over by the record collection caught my eye. In my world Blue Zones are specific areas around the world where there is a high concentration of people who live to be 100 years or more. In this room, the Blue Zone is where stand back, away from the LPs. In my house, there is no such Blue Zone. My goal is to live long enough to listen to all my LPs – and then buy more if I run out. And my guests are welcome to peruse the bookshelves.

Here's a look at the prices in this room if you're curious.

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