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SHOW REPORT: MONTREAL FESTIVAL SON & IMAGE
2006:
Crème De La Crème
Page 3
There
were several other premiers of new designs at
FSI, including these 45 inch wide dispersion
monopole ribbon speakers from Canada’s Newform
Research (R645v3 at $2971 delivered). With
dual ScanSpeak midrange drivers, these
speakers were very coherent and detailed,
especially getting sax tone just right up top.
They were driven by Dolan Audio electronics,
their hybrid linestage preamp ($9500) and
analog switching monoblocks ($10,000 pair).
This room had nice bass definition and a true,
clean sound; impressive for such a small
reflective room, and a lot of involving sound
with easy to drive ribbon technology for the
price.
 Another
wonderful premier at FSI was this gorgeous
Edgarhorn Titan II 3 way horn system, with
wood finishing and veneering by Middle Branch
Furniture of New York ($9,500 a pair base
level finish, sold direct). The Titan has a
straight horn, a round horn with a JBL
compression driver and a bullet horn tweeter
above 10Khz. This was companioned with the
Edgarhorn Seismic sub, ($3,500) a horn loaded
subwoofer with a JBL 8.5 foot long horn
exhausting out its bottom. Driving these were
the Cyrus Brenneman Audio Plus Cavalier amps,
15 watts per channel output ($3500 direct).
Also in the mix here was a prototype phono
preamp from ModWright Instruments with a tube-FET
based design ($3995; $2595 as stand alone
phono and $2200 as line stage only). Music in
this room was intimate, without any detectable
colorations and just plain convincing and
engaging in every way.
 Nearby
to the Edgarhorn room was another speaker of
large dimensions, the graceful Black Swan
(36,000 Canadian) by Gershman Acoustics of
Canada. The Swan is a
beautiful creature, highlighted by its
separation of tweeter and midrange from the
woofer with a time-aligned movable sub section
within its single speaker body. I treaded
carefully into this beast’s midst, waiting to
be trampled upon by bass bloat and
reverberations. Ah, but very little of this
was heard in a room where obvious care had
been taken in setup and texture, detail and
weight were all heard in great dynamic
fashion. The Black Swan is clearly a music
maker of great depth, power and finesse. It
was driven here by Linar Audio Electronics of
Canada, with its elegant Class A amp ($3995)
and Linar 2 preamp ($2995) shown here. All
cabling in this outstanding room was from
Magnan Audio, their thin copper ribbon
signature cables.
As graceful
looking as the Swan was, the winner of
aesthetic beauty at FIS had to be this Sonus
Faber Homage Amati Anniversary loudspeaker
($26,000) displayed elegantly in a large salon
space. The craftsmanship in the design and
finish of this Italian wooden vessel was
fabulous to behold. Unfortunately, it was
completely lost in this large room, where even
the Ayre Cx-5 CD player ($6,000), K-1 preamp
($9,000) and V-1 amp ($9,000) driving this
wondrous speaker could not give it involving
life. I guess I will have to wait another day
in a better setup and room to hear the Amati’s
virtues, beyond its magnificent visage.
 Beauty
and grace in sound was duly achieved, however,
in the quintessential East meets West room of
Montreal based Mutine Audio. Here superb
timbre, textures and detail immersed me in a
system comprised of CD player, and amps from
the French company, Mimetism, partnered with
Cabasse Riva monitors speakers and BIS
cabling. Here is a photo of the Mimetism
integrated CD player, the 20.1 ($5990) as well
as the unique wooden sound diffusor crafted by
local craftsman, Marc Philip (http://www.inovaudio.com)
in this room.
 Finally,
we cannot leave an audiophile show in Montreal
without a visit to the venerable Jadis and
Pierre Gabriel Room. Here is a photo of the
Grand Master, ($60,000) a hand crafted
loudspeaker comprised of six cabinets,
including a ribbon tweeter unit. The front end
of this system was the top of the line
CD-transport from Jadis, their JD-1 with
outboard power supply ($25,000) with their
JS-1 converter (also with outboard power
supply) ($40,000); the preamp was the Jadis
JPS-2 dual mono preamp ($15,000); amp was the
JA 500 amplifier designed in Class A
(providing 170 watts per channel (with 4
chassis)($40,000) with all Peter Gabriel
signature cable through out. Playing Odetta in
this room brought the many local audiophiles
to their feet, clasping their hands,
expressing the usual “Mon Dieus” at the beauty
and immersive nature of this system. We all
exited the FSI with a yearning to hear the
real thing, live music, perhaps in one of the
local jazz haunts here in Montreal. A Bientot!
Nelson Brill
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