Salon Son & Image Report 2013 -- Montreal High-End Audio Show

Part 4

In an open office in the hallway I was reminded that before the days of High End audio, there was sports car racing.

 

The entrance to Fontaine F looked like an invitation to the Twilight Zone with a hallway cordoned off with curtains and a darkened listening area where your view of the equipment was thwarted by bright LEDs coming at you from the black curtain behind the gear. The blue circles coming from some of the pieces gave away part of the secret but I had to ask about the speakers. Ledoux Acoustique, I was told in a heavy French accent. I think I understood that their Diva speakers were $30-40,000 and the 12" Gaia subwoofers were $5000 each. A separate Class AB power amp (1000 watts @ 4 Ohms) with adjustable crossover comes with each sub, accounting for the gear below the Blue Circle components on the rack. Sunday traffic was very light in comparison with Saturday, so I took a flash photo which seems to reveal a preamp with separate power supply. On the right side of the top shelf is a USB DAC sitting on special footers utilizing large O-rings. I've heard Blue Circle gear in a personal listening session with Bob Neill of Amherst Audio in Massachusetts and I can attest to the outstanding quality of the top end of their line. In this room at Montreal, with the unusual lighting, even when I closed my eyes, it was difficult to concentrate on the music. It was at least decent with lots of transparency, fast attack and no clipping, but it could have been a lot better than that for all I could tell.

 

Back across the hall in the Jacques Cartier room I heard Tannoy speakers driven by a Linn Akurate DSM which is a very flexible combination of streamer and preamplifier. A most intriguing feature is the volume control for digital sources that works partially in the analog domain for gross adjustments and in the digital domain for fine adjustments. Analog sources remain in the analog domain entirely.  Headphone input included, phono stages optional. The power amp below it was also from the Akurate series. The new Definition DC10A is the top of the contemporary Definition series featuring a dual concentric driver in a finely finished cabinet that yields 93dB efficiency with 8 Ohm resistance. While I'm usually driven out of the room by all-Linn rigs, the inclusion of the Tannoy speaker here made for very pleasant music. Perhaps the room treatments from Primeacoustic hanging on all four walls had something to do with that.

 

In the Dynaudio room, due to impeccable timing, I was sparred yet another audition of their wireless Xeo speaker and treated to the Confidence C1 Signature on their new Stand 6 which appeared to be about 28" tall. The C1 in the Signature finish go for $8500 and includes the Birdseye maple veneer with the clear gloss finish over either mocha (dark brown) or Bordeaux stained cabinet as shown. With 85 dB sensitivity and 4 Ohm impedance you might not expect to hear this speaker driven by tube gear, but the powerful Octave integrated amplifier ($8300) from Germany with 110 watts into 4 Ohms from KT120 tubes, combined with the T + A DAC introduced last year, made for a very pleasant listening experience in spite of the rather large room size. In a more intimate setting, I'll bet this would be superb. Very handsome pieces, all the way around, here.

 

AIX Records took the large Verdun room and set up a theater setting with large screen and projector. I couldn't make out the speakers in use, but the electronics were from Bryston and the presentation was immersive. The structured presentation (into which anyone could walk into at any time) consisted of demonstration of the three perspectives embedded on each of the AIX music concert recordings. Most basic and familiar was the stereo soundtrack with all the music and environmental cues coming from the front two channels. But in the 5.1 surround mode you have a choice of an audience perspective where the musicians and music are coming from the front three channels and the ambient theater cues are in the surround mix (my preferred mode of surround sound) or a stage perspective where you are acoustically on stage with the musicians and the music comes from all five channels. The latter is the preference of Mark Waldrep, the multi-functional and multi-talented head of AIX, who perhaps not coincidentally, is a musician. But he is also keenly aware of the needs and preferences of his customers and embeds all three perspectives in each DVD, selectable with your own hardware. Great sound, great picture, plus it is a very useful educational experience in this room with a table full of all kinds of music DVDs for sale in the hall.

 

In the St. Laurent room Nordost was holding cable comparison demonstrations. Not to snub them, but to preserve time, I passed on this room. From previous experience with this kind of demonstration in general and Nordost in particular, I can tell you that they are convincing and instructive and basically come down to the automotive speed shop adage: "How fast do you want to spend?" If you are new to the hobby, or are in the market for the particular kind of cable (interconnect, speaker, power) that they are comparing, this type of demonstration can be very valuable and I heartily recommend attending. Upstairs on a table in the lobby of the hotel, they were selling cables and their Sort Kones. Tom was thinking of buying some at the sale price they were offering, but with the tax added, they came out to be about the same price as we have back in the States.

 

Next door in the St Pierre room I encountered Steve Nicola of Audioville, a retailer that has been in Montreal since 1977 and supporting this show since before I started coming here back in the last millennium. Steve told me they are moving to St. Denis Street from their current location. I hope their move bodes well for them. I found Totem Metal speakers (~$13,000) being driven by a Chord system comprised of  the new DSX1000 high-performance digital network streamer, their Red Reference CD Player, CPA 5000 Reference preamplifier and SPM 5000 Mk II stereo power amplifier. The streamer incorporates a new version of their proprietary DAC which has been very highly regarded. I heard a favorite Joni Mitchell song sounding lovelier than the music I heard last year when the more expensive KEF Blade was being driven by Chord in this same room. Chalk one up to system synergy, I guess.

 

Back in the hall, a dozen paces to the left of the Audio Sensibilities table was a table full of Furutech power cords and ADL (Alpha Design Labs), a division of Furutech that makes small headphone amps and DACs. New at this show were the ADL-H118 headphones ($295).  I heard them with music coming through a Meitner ma 1 dac into the ADL GT40 headphone amplifier ($500). I'm not a headphone expert, but from what I've heard at recent shows, the ADL phones seem very competitive at this price.

 

In the hall outside the mbl room (St Lambert) I talked with Jeremy Bryan who showed me the C21 stereo amp (300 wpc @ 4 Ohms, $9200 USD) that is their linear amplifier switching technology that incorporated a toroidal transformer-based linear power supply that feeds an analog switch-mode output stage. This design developed by mbl avoids the problem with typical Class D amplifiers where a switch-mode power supply interfaces with a switching output stage and suffers from timing errors inherent in the interface. (My thanks to Paul McGowan's "Paul's Posts" series on amplifier designs for helping me understand this stuff here.) The sleek aluminum chassis conceals a compartmental steel sub-chassis that properly spaces and shields the various switch mode output stage and power supplies which is so critical in Class D amplifiers.

Inside I picked up on the Shun Mook Ultra Diamond Resonator on top of the preamp along with three Mpingo discs. The Mpingo were also placed on top of the tweeters of the mbl 111F ($42,000) speakers from their Noble series that were being driven by the new Corona series monoblocks (500 wpc, $25,000/pr.).  As I looked around the room, there were Mpingo on all the walls and even on top of the clock on the wall. No wonder the room was one of the Best Rooms at the show and surpassed my experience of the Corona series playing here last year, though to be fair, that was with the integrated amplifier in the series, and less expensive mbl speakers. I stuck around for an exhibition of live cello playing with recorded cello, and while it was harmonious, there was still a small but obvious difference, even with my eyes closed. Still, it was interesting to hear how close they were.

5 o'clock arrived too soon. I didn't get back to the Mont Royal room to photograph and inquire about the re-emergence of Acurus and Aragon amplifiers I had seen on silent display, or hear the Definitive Technology speakers in that room. I wanted to check out the Plastruction table outside that room, too. I totally missed Fontaine A, B & C with a lot of mid-fi and entry level high end gear. Whereas at TAVES last fall I tied up a lot of time in a seminar, here I indulged myself in listening to a lot of analog and learned a bit about tonearm and cartridge differences that would have otherwise escaped me. Having completed my off-the-shelf Linn mods, I can now turn my attention to the tonearm and cartridge to optimize my analog playback. No matter how hard I try, I just can't see and do it all. But I hope in some way I've enriched your appreciation and knowledge of this hobby if you couldn't be there, or filled in some of the gaps you may have missed if you were.

On the way out I thanked Michel Plante for his hospitality and he confided in me the difficulty presented by the Chicago show just before and the New York show coming just after the Salon Son Image. It has made life more difficult for retailers, distributors and manufacturers as well as the people who organize the shows to have so many events in such close proximity both in North America and in Europe. Clearly, it exposes high end audio to more people, but I hope and pray that more people buy into the hobby to achieve the critical mass necessary to support so many shows. There are a lot of good people, there is a lot of good product, and there is a lot of good music in this world. I hope the industry can work toward a win-win solution.

Safe journey and thanks for reading my Montreal 2013 show report.

 

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