Le Festival Son et Image de Montreal 2007 Show Report

By Rick Becker
Page 4

Saturday Night

     

This year, in place of a buffet for presenters and press, the Festival put on a concert, which was unfortunately quite a distance from the Sheraton Centre. Linda and I choose to have dinner again this year around the corner at the award winning Le Piment Rouge, renowned for its Szechuan Chinese food and outstanding selection of 600 fine wines. Linda loved the crispy spinach, but we passed up the opportunity to enjoy a $1000 bottle of wine in favor of a nice little headphone amplifier and a DAC for dessert. Besides, I still had to hike back to the car and then drive us to our hotel-designated driver, you know. The food here was outstanding and the 17’ high glass wine cellar in the middle of the restaurant was daunting.

 

Sunday, April 15^th

I dropped Linda off at the Sheraton Centre and drove up the hill to park the car. As I approached the rear entrance to the Centre I spotted this Ford pick-up truck left unattended in the drop-off zone. Three things immediately became apparent:

1) G-d was in the building.

2) G-d lives in New Hampshire.

3) When you’re G-d, you can park anywhere you want in Montreal.

 

    

After re-registering Linda deep down on Level B, I started with the rooms down there while Linda went back up to Starbucks to get us each a booster-cup. The first room I entered was a confusing mix of tables full of high-grade audiophile parts and accessories, and two large complete systems. I was immediately drawn to the music playing on the smaller rig. Audio Note electronics were driving an Accentus A-102 SE Mk II loudspeaker (4 Ohm, 90dB/W/m, 28Hz to 40kHz, rear port, ribbon tweeter, gorgeous Lace Wood finish with a gloss black front). The Audio Note Conquest monoblocks rated at 18 watts, Class A with zero feedback are a parallel single ended triode design with a pair of 300B tubes, each. They retail for $13,920/pr CAD and had no trouble driving these loudspeakers even in this large room. The upstream Audio Note gear was equally high priced, but the simplicity of their design does not intrude on the décor of the listening room, nor does it interfere with the excellence of the music reproduction.  I took the lone listening chair and admired the music that rose above the shuffling and small conversation of people. Even the fact that the rig was off-set far to one side of the room did not seem to diminish the listening experience. At $8699 CD, this loudspeaker appears to be an excellent value, especially being so tube-friendly, as this keeps your amplifier options open for the future. As I wandered around the room, I was greeted by a familiar face and realized that I was in the AuDIYo room hosted by the Gang of Four. As the story goes, they have taken on the distribution of Accentus in Canada from Ontario east, a big step up from their parts and accessories focus in previous years. We gathered the Gang together and took our perennial photo, handing my camera to a complete stranger. From the left are: Ed Jong, Patrick Fung, Linda, Grand Accentus, Rick, Ray Li and Simon Au. The larger rig in this room with the Grand Accentus speaker was powered by solid-state gear, as I recall, and was reportedly not as musical as the Audio Note/Accentus rig that gets the nod as one of the Best Rooms at the show.

Next door to AuDIYo was another fine room spinning vinyl on the new Avid Acutus Signature turntable, one of the most beautiful on the planet, and a personal favorite. This table was introduced at $10K a few years ago, and now starts at $13K, what with the devaluation of the US dollar and inflation. The Signature version is obviously more with its huge separate power supply. In the groove was the Mobil Fidelity Sound Lab Carbon 3.5 hand-built cartridge from one of the great Japanese masters. I was afraid to ask the price. I was also afraid what might happen on a warped LP — this cartridge hugs an LP like a hovercraft on water — but I suppose if you can afford one of these, you don’t own warped LPs. The phono stage, I believe was a Moon.

  

The sound, I thought, was sumptuous, playing through a pair of Avantgarde Acoustics Uno horn speakers with a conventional subwoofer mounted at ground level. That was when Sam Gonshor came in and sat down with us. We had met him briefly in the halls on Saturday. Sam, at the urging of his wife to "get a life" has taken on the task of creating TAAS, the Toronto Area Audio Society. Living in a place so rich in manufacturers and importers, this group has the potential of developing into a first class audio society. If you live in that area, check out their website and get in touch with Sam. He's a very knowledgeable and likeable guy.

Getting back to the story, Sam asks the host to put on a CD, which contains a killer bass track, which did indeed reveal serious shortcomings in the woofer unit. Having once seen an Avantgarde for sale on eBay with a special heavy-duty aftermarket support system, I went up and grabbed the square tubular frame of this stock loudspeaker. Sure enough, I could feel a real buzz. Knowing what I’ve learned about vibration in this hobby, I suspect there is the potential for a much greater loudspeaker from Avantgarde, good as it may be already. The system included Audio Valve black widow preamplifier and stereo hybrid power amplifier. An EMM Labs CD player handled the digital format.

 

 

Avid makes some more affordable turntables that were also on display. Their Volvere Sequel is considerably less money that the Acutus.

Up one floor, Melody Audio had a couple of interesting looking pieces. The first was the affordable tube SP-3 integrated amplifier for $1099 CN and the second was the CDM-10 CD player with a tube analog output stage for $4400. Three tubes protruded into a circular opening on top, but the unit is actually a front loader.

We saw the Fatman iPod rig numerous times at the show, but the proof was in the listening in the KEF room where I believe it was very effectively driving a couple of iQ1 bookshelf speakers with the Uni-Q coaxial driver. The Fatman is absolutely darling with a quality look. The etched “fat man” on the front of the chromed amplifier chassis is a stroke of genius, eradicating any fear of tubes with its whimsical caricature. The third tube at the back of the amplifier dances with the voltage demand of the music, animating the listening experience. It comes complete with headphone jack for late-night dorm listening and a remote control. $729 CD, $649 US, plus whatever you want to spend for loudspeakers or headphones. Like everyone else in the whole wide world, I like it, not only for what it is, but also as a bridge to both the High End and tube amplification.

The main attraction in the KEF room (Salon Joyce) was the new Reference Series 205 loudspeaker ($13K CN). It was driven by an all-Chord system, most of which was of to the side of the room. Only the intriguing monoblocks shared the front floor with the KEFs. The Chords put out 750 watts per channel, and triple down to 3000 watts at 2 ohms, requiring $59K CN to own. With such high power and their glowing internal blue light, it was difficult not to think of them as small nuclear reactors. Unlike previous models I’ve seen, these were fairly low, requiring a large footprint, which probably aided with ventilation. I don’t understand the architecture with the rows of cylinders running down the sides, but the complexity of the design and the low profile made it uniquely attractive. The ceiling of this room featured an endless stream of colorful light disappearing into the right front corner, but otherwise the room was quite dim, allowing us to focus on the outstanding sound in this room. KEF was making a big splash at this show, covering the doors of elevators with their signage and buying major ads in the program for the show. It is always possible to miss a room at a big show spread out over many floors with conference rooms located in strange places. If you found it to this one, you heard one of the Best Rooms at the show; proof-positive that KEF is back in the Big League once again. Chord, on the other hand, has pretty much been there all along. 

The Salon Jarry, right next door was another visually stunning room with a large oriental rug hung on the front wall behind the huge Musical Fidelity kW monoblocks that powered the PL 300 in Monitor Audio’s new Platinum Series. This $11K CN loudspeaker had an unusual, but attractive, set of cable connectors and a pair of ribbed rear-firing ports. Most unusual, however, was a series of bolts on the back that presumably tension the front baffle made from anti-resonance composite. On the front side were a ceramic coated aluminum-magnesium ribbon tweeter, midrange and two bass drivers. The beautiful gloss lacquer finish revealed the curvaceous cabinet that seemed to have no parallel side surfaces. Book-matched Santos Rosewood veneers coming from the same tree were used for each pair. The front baffle of the loudspeaker was covered with leather. This loudspeaker performed at a much higher level than any Monitor Audio loudspeaker I’ve encountered in the past. Likewise, the Musical Fidelity system performed better than I’m used to hearing, indicating good synergy here. Closer inspection revealed that this room was especially well treated, acoustically, and the music here was certainly in the realm of Best Rooms at the show.

Moving down the line to the Salon Hemon I found Moon electronics paired once again with Dynaudio loudspeakers. This was a big-buck system with the Moon Andromeda CD player ($13.5K CN), P-8 preamplifier ($12.9), W-7 monoblocks ($18.8) and the Dynaudio Evidence Temptation ($50K) all connected with Cardas Golden Cross cabling. The music playing when I visited was a little bloomy and the treble was a bit shrill. Perhaps it was the Paul Simon recording, but I had the feeling that more could have been done in the way of acoustic and vibration treatments in this large salon. I’ve certainly heard gear from all these folks sound much better in other settings.

My first visit to the Totem Acoustiques room was at the wrong time. Vince Bruzzese was speaking to the tightly packed crowd in French, but when he put the music on, the language became universal. In a seemingly modest system with a Halcro preamplifier and stereo power amp, he compared his Mani-2 Signature stand-mounted monitors with a new version of his wall mounted Tribe 3 that incorporated a mid-woofer that Totem has designed and built from the ground up. He only had one of the Tribes and was forced to manually switch the speaker cable leads each time he performed the comparison. Actually, there was no comparison. The lone Tribe loudspeaker was so smooth, clean and holographic that it could set the music industry all the way back to the age of mono. Hopefully, for the New York show he will build another one so we can experience it in stereo. In a moment of intuition, I doubled back to the Totem tent and caught Vince alone where he explained everything to me in English. He showed me a sample of the new raw driver and explained the intricacies of its design. It is designed specifically for the Tribe 3 and fits in without a crossover, mating perfectly with the tweeter. The thought crossed my mind that this driver might make a number of his models obsolete, but since it is a very expensive driver to manufacture, that may not be the case.  The Tribe 3 will cost $1500 CN for each loudspeaker, so any of the Totem models in that price range might be candidates for acoustic renewal. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a photo of the raw driver, but I’ll try and fight my way into his room in New York to get one. Most likely New York show goers will not get to experience the Totem tent with its canvas rooms with Indian and environmental wall hangings that allude to the importance of the listening room and the environment. Vince and I wave the same peace pipe on both those counts. Linda came up with some very nice photos that capture the ambience of the Totem space.

 

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