October 2nd: An (apparent) oldie but goody

     Not all large speakers sound good. Make the speaker bigger, and the design problems increase by the cube of the size increase. So it’s nice to find one that is really pleasing.
The speaker at right is the Tannoy Prestige. It looks like a single-driver speaker, but that’s because it’s coaxial — the tweeter is built into the centre of the woofer. The cabinet is large, and its design is definitely old-school. but we mean that in a good way.
The speakers were mated to several Moon components, and they weren’t playing as loud as speakers in some rooms, but they were loud enough to suggest real music. Instrumental timbres, on both classical and jazz, were natural, and even the stereo image was convincing. That’s rare with wide speakers, which is why many high-end speakers are deep, but with a narrow profile.
The Prestige are $7300 a pair. That definitely means raiding your piggy bank, but they’re a lot closer to affordable than some other speakers we heard at the show.
A number of speakers we heard also sounded pleasing. We liked the Focus Audio FP 60SE, at $3900. They were being driven by a Canadian-designed TubeMagic IAM96 integrated amplifier ($4900). The result was warm and musical. Elsewhere, another pair of Focus speakers, the CJ’s, were playing vinyl from a Linn LP12. Ah…vinyl! We also liked speakers we heard from Spendor, Charisma, and the ever-reliable Audio Physic. Oh, and the expensive ($18K) but very good PMC IB2 speakers, which were playing in the Bryston room.
At the very least, TAVES showed that the belief that you can’t have a successful audio show in Toronto is unjustified. You can, and now it’s been done. Yes, there will be another next year at the same hotel.
Some distributors sat it out, waiting to see how this first show would pan out. If they get to talk to the very happy exhibitors from the first TAVES, we think they’ll want to sign up.

 

October 2nd: Stone age amplifier?

     Oh come on, these things are gorgeous. Designed in Canada (in Kingston), these Tri-Art amplifiers are stunning. Yes, that’s a stone front. The idea is to avoid microphonics (vibrations getting turned into sound), which, Tri-Art says, class D amplifiers are vulnerable to. The Block-25-SV (the cube on the left) is a 25 watt/channel amplifier with a volume control…that’s the control up top.
That isn’t all. Notice that the cube on the right has a meter? That’s because it’s a rechargeable battery, which runs the amp.
We didn’t really get a fair chance to hear what this unusual amplifier sounds like, but it got us on looks alone. Oh, and concept. If these things sound as good as they look, we think Tri-Art is on to something.

 

October 2nd: Pick your next TV

     It looked like a good idea at the time. Go to Best Buy, and you’ll see a wall full of TV sets running in torch mode, trying in vain to outshine lighting that could give you melanoma. So here’s an idea. Bring in a whole lot of sets, have them professionally aligned, and put them in a semi-darkened room with their names hidden. Let visitors bid to buy their favorite.
But we couldn’t find any visitors willing to check out more than a couple of them before walking away. To be fair, with alignment they had amazingly similar color balance. But a darkened room with a couple of dozen big screen TVs in them isn’t really dark any more. The result was that, color balance aside, they all looked similar. Boring.
But we like the idea. What do you think?

 

October 2nd: Records for sale…

     One thing you can do at an audio show is pick up some recording you won’t find at HMV. We were pleased to see Todd Garfinkle of MA Records. Todd is a perfectionist and has long made some of the best-sounding CDs available. Some are classical, some defy categories. A very few of them are in our Audiophile Store catalog, and we plan to add more. Indeed, we picked up some likely suspects at the show.
The largest sales presence was of course Liberty Trading, successor to Justice Audio and before that) May Audio. As ever, there was a huge choice of CDs, SACDs and LPs, as well as cables and various accessories. The room was large, and even so it was always crowded.
As usual.
Audio Basics was there, though they had been absent from the last two Montreal shows, alas. Found there: several Blu-ray operas for $22, taxes in.
Some shows, we should add, actually forbid exhibitors from selling anything. That’s the case of CES. Consumer shows usually don’t have such a silly rule, because one of the pleasures of attending is going home with a shopping bag full of music.

 

October 1st: On to the good rooms

     Oh, enough grousing. There were some good, even great, rooms at TAVES. This speaker is from one of those rooms.
It wasn’t the looks of the speaker that won us over, but its sound. It’s from Audio Note…the UK version, not the one from Japan. Audio Note brings a complete system, including this speaker, which is so new it isn’t yet on the company’s Web site (it looks like a larger version of the AN-J). It’s simple enough, a two-way speaker in a box. No exotic materials, and no outlandish internal damping either.
The rest of the system — CD player, phono stage, other electronics, cables — are all theirs.
It’s difficult to argue with Audio Note’s design choices, because the sound was deliciously warm and natural. This was one of the best rooms.
In the UK, by the way, Audio Note offers electronics in kit form. They’re now in Canada as well. The kits are not the same as the factory-built units, and the Canadian kits are not identical to the British ones.
We hadn’t seen Gershman at a show for a little while, but the Gershmans were there with their Black Swan speakers, as well as a renewed version of the Avant Garde. The Black Swans can play very loud, and at least some of the time they were running well beyond natural listening levels. When the level dropped, they were delightfully clean and natural.
Tri-Cell was running two pretty good rooms. In one of them Accustic Arts electronics were driving Joseph Audio speakers (Jeff Joseph had attended the last two Montreal shows, and now Tri-Cell has nabbed his speakers). And in another room a pair of ASW Genius 410 speakers (successor to the Genius 400’s we reviewed quite a while back) sounded warm and lovely. An Accustic Arts CD player was the source, and a large Unico integrated amp from Italy was providing the muscle. “Warm and lovely,” reads our notes.

October 1st: And then there’s plain stupid

     We all make mistakes, but there’s one increasingly common mistake none of us would be likely to make. Take a look at this picture, taken in a room which, through pity, we won’t name (shooting at ambulances is against the terms of the Geneva Convention).
What you see here is a tone arm base which, instead of being attached to the base of the turntable, is sitting separately on the table. We saw a similar gaffe at the Montreal show, and when we wrote about it, we got an angry outburst from the table’s “designer.”
Look, here’s what it’s all about. A turntable, arm and cartridge are a vibration-detection device, something like a seismometer. Ideally, the vibrations detected by the stylus would be due entirely to the excursions of the record groove. That’s why you want the system to be as rigid as possible. In this setup, the table is part of the system, and a tabletop is anything but rigid.
We’re generally fairly indulgent with exhibitors who are doing the best they can. Not here. Setting up a tone arm like this is a sign of gross ignorance…if we’re feeling charitable. If we’re not, the “S” word seems to apply.

October 1st: Oh, all right…

     Sure, we’ll show it to you. This is the NBS amp. How can a power amplifier require this many chassis? And that’s only one channel. And why doesn’t it sound better than it does? It has a sound only a mother could love. And only if she were deaf.
However we heard other expensive amplifiers that made the day look brighter. The Burmesters, for one. Driving ELAC speakers (which now have a new distributor), it sounded restful. We don’t mean dull, but restful because the sound didn’t make you furrow your brow all the time. And there was a set of Electrocompaniet electronics too. Driving a pair of Thiel speakers, it was one of the pleasures of the show.
To be fair, there was a good number of rooms that made us want to sit and listen for a while. And not many that made us want to flee. And that’s good.

 

 

October 1st: The perils of exhibiting

     It’s no secret that it can be difficult to get the best possible sound at a show like TAVES, and if you have a huge room, like that of American Sound of Canada, the problems only pile up.
The big amplifier you see here is the Strumento no4, from Italy. It was on the Saturday that we heard it. American Sound’s Angie Lisi had invited us to return after a brief listen that was, frankly, horrifying. Was it the Basis turntable? No, a CD had the same horrible sound. The guilty party was an expensive multi-chassis amp from NBS, a company known for costly cables. The speakers were Sonus Faber Paturas, and we had never before heard Sonus Fabers sound edgy. The next day the Strumento had been installed, and the Sonus Fabers were closer to the sound we expect (and admire) from this company.
We thought it was courageous of Angie to bring a new and (manifestly) untested brand like the NBS to a major show. Fortunately the second and (presumably) third days were much more pleasant.

September 30th: Atoll goes dramatic

     If you’ve thought of the French brand Atoll was okay but rather ordinary in looks, get a glance at the new series. Dramatic styling, to say the least.
On the bottom is the IN400 integrated amplifier ($6299), offering 160 watts/channel. Atop, its curves matching those of its partner, is the top-loading CD400 ($6799). You probably know that we no longer recommend standalone CD players that don’t have digital inputs, but the CD400 does, both coaxial and optical.
The pair was matched to ELAC speakers…one of two rooms with ELAC. It’s no secret that we like the ELACs, whose Heil-inspired Jet tweeters sound especially smooth.
What may seem odd is that the Canadian importer for Atoll is Audio d’Occasion, a Montreal store which is now reaching out beyond retailing. The store name, you probably know, means “second hand audio,” but it has been selling new high end gear for decades now.

 

September 30th: Michel and Sarah in the field

     When the Toronto show was first announced, it seemed that the organizers would be Michel Plante and Sarah Tremblay, who have been doing an exceptional job running the Montreal Salon. Not so in fact, but they did bring with them their knowledge and the organizational technology they’ve developed. The result was that the show hit the ground running.
But a lot can go wrong during a show, and problems need to be dealt with quickly. It was impossible to go into the central area (where the registration desk was located) without seeing either Michel or Sarah.
In our picture is Michel. The woman, who may be recognizable to visitors to the Montreal show, is Anne Bisson, who was launching her new album, Portraits and Perfumes, on both CD and LP. She says sales were brisk. And every evening she was playing and singing at the King Eddie’s piano bar.

September 30th: Inspectors at the ready

     When you sign up to exhibit at a show, you sign a contract that does not fit on a single page, and that’s possibly an understatement. Well before the Toronto show, exhibitors were worried, not to say terrified, by a clause saying that they could not plug in any gear unless it was safety-approved. Did that mean CSA (Canadian Standards Association) approval? Might it mean that TAVES would be an all-static show? When we saw the NAIM display, we figured that had happened. Everyone would be unplugged!
Not quite. The display above actually shows NAIM’s wireless hard-drive system, and it was definitely plugged into the power line. So was everything else.
Now we should mention that CSA approval is not optimized for high end products. You submit your product to CSA along with a small suitcase of money, and the inspectors detroy it. If it doesn’t pass, you correct the flaw, and submit a new product, along with more cash. That’s awkward for anyone making a limited-edition $50,000 amplifier.
Things went a little more smoothly than that. There were indeed inspectors at the King Eddie, and it was necessary to pay them something, but they were giving permits for the show, not full CSA or UL approval. Some exhibitors paid, but the inspectors didn’t get to see everyone.
All was well, finally. And not a single piece of gear caught fire!

September 30th: Posh surroundings

     When it was announced that the first Toronto show in decades would be held at the King Edward hotel, we heard negative comments. This was an aging hotel that had seen better days. It was built in 1903, after all.
But so are many of the world’s greatest hotels. Clearly the King Eddie has been kept up.
In fact, even in this photograph you can tell that this is no fleabag. Indeed, the hotel’s rates tell the story: $300 a night, plus $40 for parking (exhibitors got a break on the first item, though not the second).
The show occupied just two floors of the hotel, but this is a big hotel, and there was a lot of space. Actual room size varied, and there seemed to be no two rooms alike.
Co-organizer Michel Plante, who is CEO of the Montreal Salon, says a show like this takes 18 months of preparation. And so you can expect a show next year, same hotel. So far so good.

September 29th: Hello King Edward

    As we write this, our office is closed, because we’re on our way to Toronto (from Montreal) for TAVES. It’s being held in the King Edward Hotel, one of Toronto’s long-standing upscale hotels.
     It’s been there for a while, as you can probably tell from this, an old postcard of the King Edward. There are streetcars on King (of course, Toronto still has them) but there are only three automobiles. Say, is that a Union Jack flying atop the hotel?
High end shows need to operate on reasonable budgets, and that much is obvious. The hotels with the most affordable rates are out near the airport, and that’s a lousy place for a show. Downtown is great, but upscale hotels don’t want exhibitors who will make noise and perhaps even make holes in the walls. Traditionally, the better hotels wouldn’t even return calls by show organizers. And that even applied to big shows with money behind them, like CES.
However the economy is not what it was, and everybody is a little hungrier. Getting a downtown hotel, we’ll wager, is easier than it once was.
By the way, the very first in the modern series of Montreal shows, the one in 1984, was held at the Mont-Royal hotel, right downtown. It was definitely upscale, but the following week the demolishers were coming to turn it into a shopping mall. Want to demolish a wall? Save us the trouble!

September 28th: Finally…a show in Toronto!

     How long has it been? For countless years the high end audio and home theatre show in eastern Canada has been the one in Montreal. Toronto audiophiles, and exhibitors too, were quite willing to hit the 401 and visit. The general agreement is that, for more than two decades, Montreal’s Salon Son&Image (as it’s now called) has been a hit.
But Toronto is Canada’s largest city, so why doesn’t it have a show of its own?
Truth is, it once did. In the early days of UHF Magazine, in the early 1980’s, there was a show called Airwaves, which would draw perhaps three dozen quality exhibitors. It did have a down side, namely that it was held in a hotel near the airport. However it was held at the same time as another show, catering to mass market junk products, held in a hangar at the same airport. There was a shuttle between the two, and so a lot of people made a day of it. It all went well until the year when it was held on the weekend of the Jewish new year…and not at the same time as the show at the hangar.
     Somewhat later came a new show, organized by a woman who had been involved in the show at the hangar, who was also associated with a magazine named for a human body part. That show had its ups and downs, mainly downs. It mostly set up in inaccessible hotels. One year it did move to a hotel next to the Toronto Convention Centre, but the economy was weakening (fortunately that hasn’t happened since!), and the show was hard hit. A major Japanese manufacturer had booked a huge space but cancelled at the last moment. The show, whose contracts apparently had no non-cancellation clause, was forced to give it the space for free rather than have a giant hole in its exhibits. Of course, the other exhibitors learned of it, and many vowed never to return.
And they didn’t. The show moved farther and farther away (the last one was in Markham), and it could be toured in 20 minutes.
Exhibitors from Ontario who came to the Montreal show long urged the show’s organizer, Marie-Christine Prin, to do a Toronto version. But the show was a part-time venture for her, and she declined. However the Montreal show’s current owners, Michel Plante and Sarah Tremblay, have made shows a full-time business, and they had their eye on Toronto.
They are consultants, however, and this is not their show. A number of exhibitors are skeptical, which is normal enough. Some are sitting it out to see whether this show is better than previous ones, and some are exhibiting, but plan not to return unless the show succeeds. So there’s a lot riding on this first show.
Us? We hope it works. There’s a room for a second Toronto show, if only it can get past the jinx of the failed shows of the past. Fingers crossed!
TAVES, as it’s called, opens Friday at the King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto, at 37 King St.