Salon Son & Image Report 2014 -- Montreal High-End Audio Show
Part 4
Show Report By Rick Becker

Solen manufactures air core crossover parts and is a resource for a huge variety of speaker drivers. Usually they have a silent room full of tables covered with parts and drivers for the DIY crowd, but here they went live with a speaker designed by one of their own, Jean Barbeau, from multiple layers of plywood built up into a chassis. The fit and finish was rather "basic" but the sound was pretty decent, coming from a rig with Ayrefront end, Accuphase preamp and large McIntosh MC2301 tube monoblocks. The speaker crossovers are in the open boxes on the floor between the speaker and the amplifier. Jean told me they also do consulting work for their customers to help them tailor their design to their equipment and their rooms. If this resonates with you, do some investigating. They also sell books on speaker building if you're so inclined. Good people.

 

Down on the floor of the Audioville room in the St. Pierre room three guys were examining the construction of some AudioQuest cables. I heard one of them exclaim "Over two, under one...hey, I can do that!"

 

The Kef Blade speakers were beautiful in the burgundy finish and driven by Chord very high end electronics they sounded much better than when I heard them introduced a couple of years ago (also with Chord electronics). I asked Steve Nicola of Audioville what the difference was and he pointed out to me that the AudioQuestWEL Signature speaker cables had not been introduced back then. The Blades sounded excellent here. The bad news is the WEL cables cost $31,200—about as much as the speakers themselves. They have solid perfect surface silver conductors and their powered shield system that saturated and polarizes the dielectric, as well as other technology. A Chord streamer that was in the rig takes only about an hour to install and is pretty much a plug-n-play unit, unlike many that are out there, according to Steve. On a table at the back of the room was a $5k rig featuring the Kef LS50 monitors with the same coaxial midrange and tweeters as the Blades. At $1500US, these monitors open the door to top shelf listening to virtually all audiophiles as long as you are willing to forgo low bass. Software was in the laptop and a Rega DAC and Rega integrated amp filled in between. Alternatively, they ran from an AudioQuest Dragonfly directly to the Rega integrated amp, it seemed, or maybe the Dragonfly was merely there for headphone listening.

 

In the St. Lambert room mblgear held sway with their entry series, the Corona line, driving the omni-directional 116F floorstanding speakers. The CD player was used as a DAC, being fed from the USB input. And I believe the C11 preamp was feeding either the Corona stereo amp or their monoblocks. The music was crisp, clear, holographic and utterly transparent, but seemed unnatural in the treble in comparison with Muraudio across the hall, though that speaker presentation had its problems, too, as I noted earlier. In the past, I've been more impressed with their mid and upper line electronics, though you pay dearly for them. Interestingly, when I did a search for mbl, their site for the United Arab Emirates came up at the top of the page.

 

  

Over in Fontaine C in the Samaudioroom I walked down the curtained entryway to find Gilbert Yeung's Blue Circle Audio gear driving LeDouxAcoustique floorstanding speakers ($21,000) in Russian cherry wood with a dark stain, each supplemented with a Subwoofer ($7000ea.) that comes with a class AB amplifier according to Sacha Deschenes. The crossover-less speakers are designed with a cabinet that performs like a musical instrument. To me, they were colored, but in a most harmonious way. I was told that after the show the subs would be going to Gilbert Yeung's to have some magic instilled in them. Overall, they were very transparent and I had little inclination to leave the room aside from the hour of the day and the specter of snowfall. I remember being favorably impressed last year in this room, and even more so this time around. (Thankfully, they improved the lighting.)

 

In the Simaudio Moon room their Mind streamer fed the DAC of their CD player. Below that in the tall stack was a phono stage which was above the preamp with a separate power supply below that. On the bottom was a stereo amp with dual mono construction and 130 watts per channel on tap to drive to drive the Audio Physics Scorpio 25 speakers. The world music playing at the time, in combination with the noisy room full of people, made it impossible to evaluate the presentation. I was told most of the units in the rack were $9,000 each, and the speakers were about the same. The exception would be the phono stage which was $13,000. The eye catchers in the room were the custom finished amplifiers on silent display (and not for sale) commemorating the 40th(?) anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and another classic album that turned forty this year. While this kind of personal customization is rare on high end audio equipment, it is de rigueur in the motorcycle world, but then, many bikers keep their rides longer than audiophiles keep their gear before upgrading it.

 

So I strolled into the Bryston room that I had completely missed last year, and plopped down into a listening chair next to James Tanner of Bryston. I said to him as the music played "You know, you've got a problem here." He looked at me askance as if I were suggesting there was something wrong with the sound. I said, "Yeah, it is hard to find this room. The doorway is obscured by the posters out front and no one sees it." There really weren't very many people in the room at that moment and he looked worried as though perhaps I were right. "Yeah," I continued, "you need to put a sign above the door." He turned his head, raised his eyebrows and looked at me as if I were a bit off my rocker. I looked him in the eye and said with a straight face, "Free beer!" He cracked a smile from ear to ear, not expecting that from someone south of the border.

We kicked back and reveled in some Dire Straits. The tall Model T in a gloss white finish sounded even better than I remembered them in Toronto where they showed the same speaker in a vinyl finish, I believe. James confided that they have switched the tweeter since late October. As it stands now, the A series and T series use the same drivers and crossovers, but the A series is in a conventional rectangular column with vinyl wrap and the T series has a tapered, shaped column with real wood veneer, except when they do the gloss white or black thing. This allows you to get on board with a less expensive speaker when you're still paying off your student loans and housing free range children, and graduate to a more elegant finish when the timing and career are right. The Model A1, for example is $3495 while the T version in piano gloss white that was playing is $7495. With a full range frequency response of 25 Hz to 20 kHz (+/-3dB) and ability to put out 118dB, this is a kick-ass speaker that will hold its own in any barroom brawl. It should do quite nicely in your living room, too. If your room or budget is smaller, models down the line will be just as big a value. The only question left to beg is "How do they sound with tubes?" And to answer that you will need to search beyond the very fine Bryston electronics. This was one of the Best Rooms at the show.

 

There was a huge elephant at the show this year: a Samsung 85" Series S9 UHD TV, a large Ultra High Definition 4K screen. I have seen the future, and just like it says, it is crisp and clear. The sound I hear though is like money being sucked away from the High End. Let's hope I'm wrong.

 

Almost every trip to Montreal has a crisis for me. Some big, some small. This time I made it to the cashier at the parking garage and couldn't find my parking ticket. I thought I had left it in the cubby in the dashboard of the Tracker. In panic, I ransacked my wallet, seemingly to no avail. Finally, after sorting the contents piece by piece, I found it stuck between two plastic health care cards. Then came Act Two: I couldn't find my VISA card. The last time I remembered using it was at McDonalds for breakfast. Oh shit. I wondered if they came to the show and bought new speakers. I thumbed through the pile of papers in my lap like a deck of cards. The cashier then chimed in, "Oh, wait! You already gave it to me!"

We broke into laughter simultaneously.

A couple of miles down Highway 20 and the snow gave way. My cell phone again became operable after crossing the bridge to USA. Life was good.

Enjoy AXPONA 2014 in Chicago this coming weekend. I'll catch up with you again in Brooklyn... God willing and the oceans don't rise.

 

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