The Festival's opening day
     And here we are at Day One! As always we were exhibiting, with a system that some visitors told us was one of our best sounds ever.
     You can see our system in the picture. The big black speakers are ASW Genius 400's, from Gersmany. Yes, that's a side-mounted woofer, and yes it is meant to fire right into the equipment stand. These beautiful monoliths are from Germany, and frankly they sounded downright gorgeous.
     The preamplifier is one of our Copland CTA-305's. Just above it is the Linn Unidisk 1.1 universal player. And above that is the Harmonic Reimyo player, a US$15K machine that has been widely praised. But we didn't run it today. A first listen the night before the show confirmed that the break-in period was not what we had been told. This player's got talent, and we'll be eager to hear what it's like tomorrow.
     The power amplifier on the second last shelf is a Van den Hul S-1 stereo amp. borrowed from our Audiophile Boutique division. Nice sounding. The Inouye SPLC filter is at the bottom. Interconnects are from Pierre Gabriel, and the speaker cables are Atlas Ichors.
     Since we ran somewhat shorter hours than the show, we got to see a little more of it than usual.
     ProAc was showing a new speaker in its Studio series, the 140. The squarish look very much said ProAc, but the price tag, at C$3800, was not what some other ProAcs this size have been known to cost. And they sounded good in a surround sound setting.
     Also showing home theatre fear was Linn, with its Komponent series. The speakers look very high tech, with cabinets of extruded aluminum and a base of cast iron. The base can be removed for wall mounting. The subwoofer looked rather like a small hassock, and it can be wall-mounted too. We liked the effect...but then the source, a unidisk like ours, was not too shabby!
     Some of the most "gigantic" sound at the Festival was at the JMLab room, where the very large Nova Beryllium speakers (at right) were being driven by the recently upgraded YBA Passion 1000 power amplifiers. Those speakers are a handful, and they require this sort of electronics. The source was the new Esoteric X01 SACD/CD player, clearly a rather good one.
     Another very large speaker at the show was the Dynaudio C4, accompanied by Simaudio's most upscale effort yet. The new electronics, intended to eclipse even the W-5/P-5 duo, consists of the W-8 (the power amp, of course), and the P-8 two-box preamp. The source was from the same series, the Andromeda player. Simaudio describes it as an all-out assault on the state of the art.
     Chinese manufacturers are more and more present at such shows, though they sometimes bear familiar names. The Wharfedale Opus 3 speakers are nothing if not gorgeous, with a lacquered finish the Chinese do so well. Canadian list price is $6400, less than a domestic speaker like this would cost, we'd guess. The rest of the gear was from Quad, which now has the same Chinese owner as Wharfedale. (Wharfedale, by the way, is a small town in the UK). Even the rejigged Quad II tube power amps are Chinese. The overall sound was more than pretty good.
     So was that of the gorgeous Sonus Faber Stradivari Homage (shown at left). But then that Italian company usually gets things right. Check the finish. Very Italian, and we mean that in the best sense.
     There are, of course, lots of home theatre systems on display. The most unusual: a front projection screen that comes in a can. Yes, we know, it sounds like a joke. This Canadian invention is a two part paint that can be applied to most surfaces including a wall. There are several colors available, including dark grey, the one we saw, meant for very bright projectors. The product is called Goo ("all systems are goo" is the motto), and it looked rather impressive.
     Over at Antique Sound Lab, the Flora preamplifier looked as though it might be mounted in a cast aluminum chassis (below), though that was partly an illusion. The preamp is certainly not ordinary, however. Instead of using a potentiometer volume control, or even fixed resistors, the Flora changes taps on a transformer. This is much like ASL's old passive preamp, except that this is an active device...with tubes, naturally.
     Not far from the Flora was a new Reference 3a speaker, the Veena. This slim two-way speaker uses a carbon fibre woofer slightly smaller than that of the MM De Capo, but will cost slightly more. The final price and shipping date are not yet set.
     Last but scarcely least is the Gershman Black Swan. Gershman Acoustics is known for large speakers, and the Black Swan doesn't disappoint. Ely and Ofra Gershman, shown below with their new baby, have just received a patent for the SSAS (Separate Subwoofer Alignment System). Note the two sets of feet on the speaker. The bottom part is the subwoofer, and the upper section straddles it without touching.
     The sound? Dynamic! Well, it was loud, actually, driven by two large Linar amplifiers (fed from the excellent McCormack player), but when volume dropped it became delightfully sweet and delicate. This is a good sign.
     We were surprised to see that the gershmans hadn't brought theit acoustic panels (being reviewed in our next issue, by the way). The reason: they had brought these humongous speakers by car, and there wasn't room left for anything more!
     We're back on tour tomorrow, April 2nd. See you then.

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