Canuck Audio Mart

I really enjoyed the show. I agree many of those systems were in the wrong rooms. Room acoustics or improper speaker position made many systems sound harsh or rolled off. Generally speaking the systems in the larger rooms sounded better. In any event the stand outs after a long saturday included: vienna acoustics, verity, black swans, tenor monoblocs, negra amps, avant garde horns, totem ones, fidelio recordings.

my favourite room was the Lamm/Verity on the 3rd floor. The watt puppy setup was not too bad either. The speakers that impressed me most were the Neeper on the 12th floor (I think) running of top of the line DCS front end units through a Rowland amp. Amazing what 5.25inch drivers can do. Not the last word in detail and very expensive but for looks and size they were a winner.

The revel salon room was soo loud I could barely stand there for 5 mins.
The tenor room wasn't bad either, I wish they didn't blow those Kharma midranges and have to use the avalons though.

By far the worst sound was in the big Kef room, what a waste of $150k speakers.

I had a good chat with the Tenor reps about those amps and they were lamenting that the Avalons didn't sound as good as the Kharmas. I thought they sounded very good indeed! Apparently the blown drivers were a fault of human error when switching amps and not the fault of the amps themselves.

I thought those Kef speakers looked silly and the sound didn't justify the exhorbitant price.

It's always fun to check out some excellent equipment in numerous systems that have been assembled. What I come away with is usually a bagful of questions and a handful of vinyl and cds of music that I've heard on the systems at the show (played by hosts or other attendee's audition discs). Loved the Simon Yorke turntable, the giant Harbeths, the sonus faber cremona M with Ayre. A Janus with Rockport speakers with Cachaito Cuban Jazz sounded great. I agree that many of the systems were playing too loud for me to want to stay in the small rooms as they just sounded bad. On the other hand, I went into the Sonus Faber Stradivari room several times to actually hear something loud and they were usually playing classical music too quietly. Wish they had some variety to really hear what those speakers can do. Also, love the chocolates and mints. Good to meet the man behind PS Audio.
Lot of people playing Madeline Peroux and CatPower.

The plan didn't pan out, had to work...
Pics anyone????

The impressive-sounding horn speakers that a couple of you have referred-to were the Avantgarde Acoustics speakers from Germany, which were in the Globe Audio Marketing room, located in a big Salon on the bottom floor. It was Avantgarde Acoustics' amp and preamp also, as well as an Audio Aero Prestige SACD player, a Brinkmann turntable and the RCM phono stage from Poland.
Globe had installed drapes all around the room to kill most of the very bad echo acoustics, so the room sounded very good. Other big rooms that did not so this, including the previously-mentioned Lamm room, did not sound good, as the high frequencies were bouncing all over the place, confusing the sound and irritating the ears.
If an exhibitor is going to drag a $150,000.00 worth of equipment to a show and spend a few thousand for an exhibit room, you'd think a couple of hundred bucks to sound-treat the room would be a no-brainer.
But maybe you're just supposed to love them and buy on their "reputation" alone, not the sound....

I heard a tiny, compact Denon system there (8th floor) - SACD player and receiver, hooked-up to a small pair on Denon mini monitors, that sounded better than some of the mega buck set-ups. $4,000.00 for the whole system.

Yes I thought that odd myself. Many small square concrete rooms had tens of thousands of dollars of outstanding gear with hardly any room treatments. In many cases, I tried to take the poor acoustical environment into consideration but that was difficult to say the least. Gear that I know should sound better came across as harsh and unpleasant in some cases or rolled off and foggy in others.

North Creek I think! Looked like old cabinetry

Yes, that Denon "mini-system" was quite impressive given its origins and price point. I could definitely see hooking the amp/SACD up to some reasonably efficient floor-standers or at least better standmount speakers as the Denon house speakers sounded quite congested when pushed. The buddy of mine that went with me was quite interested in this system and the Denon rep (perhaps unwisely) let him crank the volume up more than a bit...

Still, the amp/SACD dug quite a bit of info and groove out of Jorma's "Blue Country Heart" SACD, a lot more than most budget players I've heard and almost as much as the reference mega-buck players I've tried that disk on. Good job, Denon. Maybe there's something to save in that brand name yet...

somebody mentioned coherent speakers
anybody heard them there?
in regards to harbeths, what were your opinion on those speakers?

[quote="shion_ca"]North Creek I think! Looked like old cabinetry


thanks i think you are right. the advanced ribbon technologies. i agree the wood did look old. i could see people putting clothes or books on it and not realizing it was a speaker. i can't say i liked the sound but it certainly didn't sound like a box

This was my first time attending an Audio Show and I was surprised by all the BAD sound. I know some of the rooms where hard to deal with, but come on,,, you guys are supposed to be the pros, if you can't get it right, then who can? The only company taking advantage of the room limitations was Audio Excellence demonstrating the Lyngdorf Auto EQ Room Correction System. That EQ was very impressive, A lot of rooms there could have used one

On a positive note I really like the big AvantGarde Acoustic Horns in the basement. They truly disappeared when you closed your eyes. I also really liked the RL Acoustique Lamhorns on the 11th floor. I have never heard of these speakers before, but they really impressed me. The large Mission Speakers with the Ribbon Tweeters powered by Simaudio sounded nice, and so did the Dynaudio / Simaudio combo.

I was surprised by how good the little Totem Bookshelves sounded (Totem Ones I think). They really benefited from the room treatment in their display. Nothing too fancy, just some shag carpet, and sound panels all the way around the room. Totem was one of the few companies that put some effort into sounding good. The free T-Shirt was a nice touch too.

The Tenor 350M with the Kharma Midi Exquisite was by far the most amazing sound at the show regardless of cost!!! This room should havewon best sound hands down. Forget about the audiophile stuff- soundstage, depth,width, height.What was important was that the sound made you believe that a jazz trio or female singer was really in the room. This is tough to pulloff in a normal listening enviroment but the Kharma pulled it off amazingly well and in show conditions. It helped that the gear was top notch- Tenor 350M, Prototype Tenor Preamp and cables I believe where Kobala Sosna,probably the emotion series. It's too bad that the general public was not able to hear them.I was lucky enough since I was there helping one of the speaker manufacturers(not Kharma) and got to hear them Wednesday night before the show.

Yes...it is true.The Avalons did not sound as good which surprised the heckout of me since I used to be an Avalon fan and owned the Ascendants.

Another good show this year.

Lots of different exhibits.

I don't know how many people got to the 12th floor to hear the Neeper speakers. I think they were in room 1224. Really nice sounding and very coherent speakers. For my personal tastes, I found the SPL's overdriven there but the sound was obviously distortion free. Very much reminded me of the Dynaudio Evidence Temptations in a smaller room. They were using the new DCS reference digital stack ($70 000) with a reference Jeff Rowland amp directly into the Neeper speakers. All cabling was Transparent Audio Reference (a lot of this cable in systems this year, most of it courtesy of Coup de Foudre I believe). I really felt that this system has the potential to sound very convincing in the right conditions. They clearly proved that even at very high volumes, there was no room interaction in the low frequencies and mids and no breakup in the highs. Very good coherence but fatiguing. $22000+ for the speakers ... probably the cheapest component in the system.

I'm glad I made it to the Mutine rooms this year. Great people who love music. The room with the bigger speakers was a rare example of sheer beauty, elegance and refinement from a sonic point of view. The Duevel speakers coupled with the Audiomat/Mimetism equipment sounded very beautiful. There was some low frequency boom present ... maybe due to the room or speaker design ... who knows? The only shortcoming for me (other than that one) was the fact that they were very cautious about letting people hear their own music. I was surprised at that, but all the music they played sounded very nice indeed and no doubt accounted for the very good tastes on their behalf. The smaller Planets also managed to sound very pleasant, even at the modest $1500 price tag ... that says a lot about these speakers which were initially meant for home theater.

The Avantgarde room. Last year they exhibited with Emm Labs as a source, cables were QED if I remember right. This year it was Audio Aero and Brinkmann, cables were the Nirvana's, and they (Avantgarde) made their own amps too. I felt it sounded really poor both years. Severly colored horn sound and just simply anemic bass. Someone happened to put Copland's FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN while I was there. It was the Eiji Oue version which I also own. Man, I felt sorry for the guy who brought it. You get all the jump factor that horns can render in the midrange without the drive and sheer power of that piece. It's like eating bones instead of real meat. Very dissapointed.

The big Coup de Foudre room with the Wilson Puppies. Every year that is their biggest room. This year they finally unleashed the TA Opus cables early on during the show. A much better presentation than last year when they used the Avalons with Valhalla cabling and VTL/Jeff Rowland equipment ... sounded more like the Avantgarde room above. This year they displayed good ability to sustain dynamic power at high volumes in a large room. That's about it. Unatural sound. No effortlessness, no ease, no flow, average soundstaging. Source was the Audio Aero Prestige for digital (same as the Tenor, Avantgarde and Lamm Horn rooms) and I think they were using the the VTL preamp also with the external Wilson crossover in there somewhere with the 2 Wison Watchdog subs. Coup de Foudre did put together one of the best rooms at the show, but it was on the 9th floor with the Rockport speakers and Pathos electronics.