Toronto Audiofest 2025: Complete Show Coverage, Biggest Gear Reveals, And Best Demos
What happened, what to buy, special highlights, plus our best audiophile gear picks!
Toronto Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

Artysan
Right behind the banner is where the door to the Knightsbridge room should be, so I suspect this table displaying Artysan cables was the presentation. From their website, this appears to be a new company from Quebec. You can get a glimpse of their cables online. Hopefully, they will be further along at the Montreal show next year.

ANKits For DIY

It looked like the guys from ANKits were still in line for coffee downstairs. Usually, the tops were off the amps, and the guys were a fountain of information about these well-known high-quality kits.

Audio Sensibility

Steven Huang was ready from the opening bell, and his booth was busy every time I passed by. In addition to his broad line of cables, he makes a number of specialty cables, such as for DC power supplies, grounding systems, and brands with unusual connections. His website is well worth exploring. He's been around a long time and has an excellent reputation for customer service.

New at this show was an upscale distribution box with 12 Ga. OCC silver wiring for $3,500, manufactured in Canada.

Six Acoustic And The Speaker Shop

I slipped up on covering this presentation last year when I failed to recognize Six Acoustic as a small manufacturer of entry-level amplifiers from Oshawa, Ontario. That's Steve Maszlenyl of Six Acoustic on the left, and Frank Fabian of The Speaker Shop. The Speaker Shop does all things speakery for the DIY crowd and people in need of repairs, or even just advice. They're in Scarborough, Ontario, on the east side of Toronto.

The Six Acoustic X400 integrated amplifier looks pretty basic, but when you read the small print and learn it is a dual mono design, you begin to pay attention. Bass, treble, and bypass functions add interest, and when you see the price, you may really become interested. This was the World Debut of the X400, which looks like it deserves further investigation.

While at this table, a videographer whom I had seen earlier at the show appeared with this interesting homemade rig. It turns out it was a portable setup for broadcasting live on YouTube. It took me back to the early ‘70s when I built a camera mount for filming POV from my motorcycle, years before Madison Avenue picked up on the idea, and the mid-70s when I helped pioneer ENG (electronic news gathering) with the first portable color video equipment. Today, I get by with my digital still camera, thank you.

All That Jazz

All That Jazz has 7 locations within a 50-mile radius of Barrie, Ontario. A little more signage might help spread the word.

---> Next Page.