The final day of the Salon
     Four of us were touring Montreal's Salon Son&Image on the weekend, and sometimes as many as three of us were in the same room. That was partly because we had been trading some recommendations ("oh, you absolutely have to hear...") and partly because the show isn't so big that we can hide. By Sunday, the last day, we had pretty much heard it all, but we were eager to revisit some our favorites.
     There was concensus: this was possibly the best consumer audio show we could recall seeing. It was very well organized, with an array of signs and indications as good as we've seen anywhere. The Bonaventure hotel was a popular choice, with atmosphere -- check the view out the window behind the registration desk. And remember that the hotel is right downtown, high atop a building bigger than the great Pyramid. It has a layout that most visitors found easy to navigate.
     And then there were the exhibits themselves. The Salon was rich in really good rooms, even great rooms. Perhaps just as important, it had relatively few truly toxic rooms, the kind that make visitors flee and congregate in the hallways, trading laments on the sad state of high end audio.
     One room that drew the three of us at the same time on Sunday morning was the one featuring Wilson Audio's new Sasha speakers, successors to the phenomenally successful Watt/Puppies. As in last year's Wilson room (set up by Montreal store Coup de Foudre), the speakers were driven by a pair of massive Pathos monoblocks. In the bird's eye view at left, you can see that the heat sinks make a name plate redundant (though, inexplicably it had one anyway). They powered the Wilsons to realistic levels effortlessly, and that was a good thing, because such levels were called for.
     Recording engineer Peter McGrath, who is also sales director for Wilson, was catching an afternoon plane, but was still playing some of the many classical tracks he had recently recorded. He had some other recordings on his MacBook Pro laptop, and he played some of those as well. This was one of the very good rooms at this year's Salon.
     Another room worth revisiting was that of Vivid, whose B1 speaker is shown at right. This unusual speaker, molded as a single unit, features coupled woofers front and rear. Though its designer is British, the factory is in South Africa. We spent some time in the room, once the considerable crowds had dissipated. The electronics and the CD player were from Luxman. The Vivids are, however, a serious investment, at $15,000.
     At the opposite end of the scale are the small Leema speakers, which can be had for $1300. You can see their picture in our first day report -- they were the ones damaged in transit. At $1400, they have a broad appeal that the Vivids and the Wilsons cannot really aspire too, but their price was not the only drawing card. Albert was touring with an invited visitor, and his guest wanted to spend more time in the Leema room as well.
     The Joseph Audio room, which had seemed impressive on the first day of the Salon, seemed just as superb on the third. By the end of a show you know you've heard about all that you absolutely need to hear, and you just want to enjoy some music. That was one room to do it in.
     There was a special reason to revisit the Lafleur Audio room, where the cables had been changed and a little tweaking done to make the $6000 Lafleur MX1 speakers (at left) sound as they should. They were, by that third day, sounding truly excellent, with a particularly pleasant bottom end. On Jennifer Warnes' Way Down Deep (from the album The Hunter), they sounded like larger speakers, though with the finesse of a small one. The MX1 is only just being prepared for production, so a little waiting is in order.
     A number of rooms were running Verity loudspeakers, including of course that of Verity itself: a pair of Sarastros in a very large room. They were accompanied by some solid hardware -- the dCS Scarlatti ensemble, the new Oracle Delphi MkVI, and an Audio Research Reference 5 preamplifier and Reference 210 monoblocks (that's one of them at right). Seen but not heard was a brand new one-box DAC from dCS, the Debussy. It's billed as an "economy" product by dCS standards, just $11,000.
     The Delphi wasn't playing in that room, but we heard it elsewhere, with a Moon 700i integrated amplifier (Simaudio is busy rejigging all its model numbers), a Moon LP5.3 phono preamp, and a pair of Thiel CS2.4SE speakers. On Harry James big band direct-cut LP Coming From a Good Place, the brass was brash and spectacular, and the dynamics were heart-stopping.
     We ended with one more turntable, the new TD309 from Thorens (you can get it in black if bright red is not your thing). It has a clever suspension, adjustable from the top, an electronically-controlled DC motor which can be adjusted for optimum belt tension, and a tone arm all its own. An Audio-Technica cartridge is included, to make it pretty much plug-and play. An interconnect is included, but it's easy to substitute your own. We heard it with Cyrus electronics and the new Klipsch Palladium speakers, playing the Beatles' Love album. It sounded pretty terrific for its price, $2000 all included. We've requested one for a review.
     And so it ends, but the hotel has been booked for two more Salons, in 2011 and 2012. The exhibitors we talked to were delighted to hear it, and we can expect them to return.
     Good hotel, good organization, big crowds...it all bodes well for the future. To Michel Plante and Sarah Tremblay...good work.
     

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