Le Festival Son et Image de
Montréal 2006 Show Report The Home
Entertainment and Electronics Show Report By Phil Gold
Audiopathic has three rooms
this year. Angie Lisi was a bit worried about the jeans Matt Waldron of
Escalante Design was sporting. They are standing next to the Escalante
Pinyon speakers ($7,000 Cdn) and Uinta Subwoofer ($5500 Cdn), which my
colleague Rick Becker has recently reviewed
for Enjoy the Music.com?/sup>.
In the next room Angie
introduced me to Mr. Redpoint himself, Peter Clark, who demonstrated his
line of turntables, which ranges from $10,000 up to $17,500. Most
intriguing to me is the belt. On the bright red turntable, which is a
special finish version of the base model, the belt is made of VHS tape.
Peter promises free lifetime belt replacement! You move up the line by
increasing the number of arm mounts and adding progressively more stages
of damping to the turntable. Peter was making beautiful music in his
room, Janos Starker playing the Bach Cellos Suites, unfortunately the
victim of some overloud bass from the floor above.
Readers may remember the fine performing Raysonic SP-100 amplifier as
reviewed
here. New from Raysonic this year are two single stereo ended
amps, the 8 wpc SE-20 at $2980 Cdn, and the 18 wpc SE-30A at $2680
Cdn.
Also new is a matching top loading CD
player, the CD128 at $1880 Cdn, featuring upsampling to 96k 24 bit and
an output stage using four Russian 6922 tubes, pictured here with
Cherith Tse of Harmonic Marketing and company owner Yan Wong Tse.
Raysonic products are designed in Canada and built in China. I am
looking forward to auditioning the SE-20, which looks delicious with its
complement of two 300Bs, two 6SN7s, two 6SL7s and two 5Z4s.
In the Bryston room, James Tanner proudly
displays the big Torus power conditioner, ($10,000 Cdn or $8,550 US)
with its enormous power transformer, good for 100 amps of clean power
for five components. Other models start at a more modest $2950 Cdn or
$2450 US. Coming soon from Bryston is the range topping 28BSST monoblock
amp, capable of putting out 1200 watts into 8 ohms or 2000 watts into 4
ohms, and guaranteed to keep doing so for the next twenty years of
course.
Montreal based Revelation Audio are
showing the $5000 Cdn S-5 / Sub-5 Mistral and the $7000 Cdn S-6 / Sub 6
Mistral speakers, both two box affairs, with a powered subwoofer in the
lower box. Here you see owner / designer Alain Corteau with the new S-6
Mistral, whose subwoofers use a double isobaric design featuring four
6-inch long travel woofers and a 150 watt amp for a fast and extended
bass response. Next time, Expo should give Alain an ID card with writing
on the front! Poor planning ?I saw quite a few such cards at the
Festival. Revelation Audio speakers are available in Cherry, Red Cherry,
Makore and Black Ash. Strong value on show here. Contributing to the
good sound in this room ?a NAIM CDX, a VAC Auricle Preamp and matching
Auricle MusicBloc monoblocks.
In the next room Angie
introduced me to Mr. Redpoint himself, Peter Clark, who demonstrated his
line of turntables, which ranges from $10,000 up to $17,500. Most
intriguing to me is the belt. On the bright red turntable, which is a
special finish version of the base model, the belt is made of VHS tape.
Peter promises free lifetime belt replacement! You move up the line by
increasing the number of arm mounts and adding progressively more stages
of damping to the turntable. Peter was making beautiful music in his
room, Janos Starker playing the Bach Cellos Suites, unfortunately the
victim of some overloud bass from the floor above.
Also new is a matching top loading CD
player, the CD128 at $1880 Cdn, featuring upsampling to 96k 24 bit and
an output stage using four Russian 6922 tubes, pictured here with
Cherith Tse of Harmonic Marketing and company owner Yan Wong Tse.
Raysonic products are designed in Canada and built in China. I am
looking forward to auditioning the SE-20, which looks delicious with its
complement of two 300Bs, two 6SN7s, two 6SL7s and two 5Z4s.
In the Bryston room, James Tanner proudly
displays the big Torus power conditioner, ($10,000 Cdn or $8,550 US)
with its enormous power transformer, good for 100 amps of clean power
for five components. Other models start at a more modest $2950 Cdn or
$2450 US. Coming soon from Bryston is the range topping 28BSST monoblock
amp, capable of putting out 1200 watts into 8 ohms or 2000 watts into 4
ohms, and guaranteed to keep doing so for the next twenty years of
course.
Montreal based Revelation Audio are
showing the $5000 Cdn S-5 / Sub-5 Mistral and the $7000 Cdn S-6 / Sub 6
Mistral speakers, both two box affairs, with a powered subwoofer in the
lower box. Here you see owner / designer Alain Corteau with the new S-6
Mistral, whose subwoofers use a double isobaric design featuring four
6-inch long travel woofers and a 150 watt amp for a fast and extended
bass response. Next time, Expo should give Alain an ID card with writing
on the front! Poor planning ?I saw quite a few such cards at the
Festival. Revelation Audio speakers are available in Cherry, Red Cherry,
Makore and Black Ash. Strong value on show here. Contributing to the
good sound in this room ?a NAIM CDX, a VAC Auricle Preamp and matching
Auricle MusicBloc monoblocks.