Canuck Audio Mart

Did the IASCA circuit from the beginning to mid/late 90's, went thru boxes of trophies and other stuff a couple of months ago...well the good olde days...

Back to the show...yes lots of cash for vinyls and cds.
I like going around early less traffic, more time to sit and enjoy. The (in)famous ONE is on my agenda!

I will be there as well, Friday and Saturday

Going every year is just too much. The same people/equipment are there every year and, with a few exceptions, the sound is mediocre. I also much preferred the old Delta Hotel to the Sheraton that is now being used. Maybe next year.

I have to skip this year due to a conflicting playing date, but I would have gone.
Always something new and exciting to discover, and so may products under one roof.
Forget about poor sound conditions, but if it sounds good there imagine how good the component really must be?
Take in the Montreal night life, visit some clubs that have live music, vist some great restaurants.
And by all means, have a smoked meat sandwich(or 6)and bring some home for the wife and kids.
I'll bet she'll ask you to go next year.

sqchris

Who is the(in)famous one?

Its nice to see a few people will show up.
The rooms are indeed small, its very hard to setup in rooms that are concrete boxes of 12' by 18', like some members mentionned before, if we can make it sound relatively decent in such an unfriendly enviroment
its already not bad i guess, the rooms where better at the Delta i agree.
I am hoping to bring the new APL NWO 3.0 CDP at the show this year, the first 211Hz/32bit CDP ever produced, still not 100% certain though.
Nuforce electronics, reference 9 V2 amps.
Usher D-2 Horns
Usher "Tiny dancer" Be-718.
For now thats the lineup, i am a bit worried about making the D-2's sound good in the room.....thats my main concern right now!They are Huge!!!

Well a past SQ car audio afficionado yah. Signed on to judge IASCA in 2004, took the training and tests and passed. Never actually judged a local event cus there weren't any I could get to that year.

So if that's the Steve N you're taking about ya thats me..lol

Hello,

Just wondering which rooms impressed you this year?

I went down on Friday for the day and had a good time. Yes many rooms are small and yes there is a lot of over the top prices. But you don't have to buy anything and at least you get a little taste of many things you can't otherwise hear.

I made it to all the rooms for at least a little bit. My faves were: Opera Audio Consonance in room 1102. A little too much bass from the subs but otherwise very nice. The Charisma room 1022 was also very good and my best of show goes to Planet of Sound 909, where the Harbeth's, AR gear and Simon Yorke turntable were excellent.

For poor performance, I think every room with a music server all stood together. On a basic computer running Adobe Audition you can get the same sound as the lifeless junk the servers offered at big prices. This technology is probably the future but like the Class D amps it's not there yet.

My pics for cool and interesting rooms, was the hemp audio room with speakers for 500 bucks that sounded very nice wherever you were in the room. The Fidelio audio recording room, they had the nagra mono's and preamp with Verity audio speakers. Thought the sonus faber strad's and ayre electronics sounded enjoyably relaxing and detailed. Also very much enjoyed the new vienna accoustics speaker they were showing off.

The ARC Ref 3 was a pretty popular Pre in the various rooms, and generally the rooms that sounded very good. I was looking forward to hearing some BAT equipment but didn't see any of their amp preamp combos. I thought that a few years back when I went the BAT/Von Schweikert rooms was one of the better small sounding rooms there were.

I was generally disappointed with the rooms that used the Avalon speakers, at best they tended to sound ho hum to me. I also thought the 350W tenor's would have had much better bass control over the avalons in such a nice room.

Anyway just a few random thoughts and criticisms.

I was only able to visit on Sunday so I only got to check stuff out on that day but I certainly agree with the earlier poster who said that Gunnar's room on the 9th floor was one of the best (Harbeth/Simon Yorke).

I also really enjoyed the all Quad setup that Coup de Foudre was running. They had some cello pieces playing that were mindblowing.

I know I might get a little scorched but one of the setups that truly impressed me was the McIntosh/Levinson/Revel combo. I know that the total sticker price for those suckers would probably cost more than my house but if I was a millionaire I would have walked out with the whole kit and kaboodle.

I was there on Saturday and had a great time, my first time attending this show. I was impressed by the fact it never took too long to get a good listening spot in most rooms. Many systems were too large for these tiny rooms and suffered as a result. I expected more rooms to sound great but there were several factors at play, the most disconcerting was that many "hosts" played the music way too loud and in some cases beyond the region best suiting the gear, not to mention my ears. I walked in many rooms and walked out just as fast because of the instant ear splitting sound of a too loud violin concerto or similar, many of these systems didn't get a fair shake because of this.
My favorites of the day were the Verity Audio room, the Harbeth room...with the big 40's, and the Omega room, oh...those huge horns downstairs sounded pretty cool too. At around 5pm we went back downstairs to give another listen to the huge Gamut speakers and the room was nearly empty, we sat and listened to a bunch of stuff and just giggled at how crazy those things were. The host had them cranked up quite high and when those six big woofers were all pumping at once it just made me laugh with joy, amazing.
Next year I want to spend more time in each room and revisit some a few times, one day is not enough time to barely hear a small impression of most systems that I would like to hear more of. Oh...I was loving the fact that around 80% of the rooms had nice vinyl rigs running.

I wholeheartedly agree that the Planet of Sound room was the best, those Harbeths are hauntingly beautiful (thanks Berry(?) for the t-shirt)... I also liked the Son Ideal (with the Rogue Audio integrated and the B&Ws) and those huge German (?) horns on the first floor. The worst was the B&O display playing the Eagles Hotel California on DVD, it was so freakin' loud and harsh (I guess it doesn't help that I hate the Eagles), also those awful, enormous, silver, shaped like a woman speakers by (????), I didn't like them one bit.

Was anyone else as impressed by the Audiomagus room as I was? I went with the intention of listening to and buying the Glow Amp One. We listened to it through the Lotus bamboo speakers and I was amazed, especially given the price. I bought it and can testify that it easily betters the Trends TA 10.1 through my old Klipsch Lascalas. It is the quietest thing I've ever encountered and is my first home tube experience.
dna

I agree the Audiomagus room was very good. Probably the only affordable priced set-up in the whole show and it sounded very sweet.

What was the name of the huge ribbon speakers that sit against the wall with a big sub underneath? That was an odd sounding and looking set-up

there was so much to like..
my favorite room was the Nagra/Verity setup - it truly sounded wonderful to my ears anyway. I agree with Shion in that the hemp acoustics room sounded really decent considering that a) his speakers were ~$500 and b) he was using a tiny d-amp to power them...
lastly, i really liked the lammhorn room which was running consonance monoblocks and a vacuumstate svp1 - real nice!