Boston not being so far from Montreal I have over the past couple of years traveled up there for Son et Image.
The show used to known for a fair amount of participation by diyers but with Montreal DIY Day that is no longer the case.
The show was more useful for introducing me to new music than anything else, most of the equipment is so expensive as to be beyond my not inconsiderable means.. $22K turntables, $30K+ speaker systems - you get the picture.
Discovered Oregon "Crossing" on vinyl and Marcus Miller M2 on CD.
The most palpable if not overall best bass sound quality probably goes to the Solen room on the album M2 mentioned above.
The most familiar sound probably to the Tannoy room with their Canterbury's.
Wilson Audio introduced their latest speaker the Sasha II, which was one of the better sounding speakers at the show which it should be at nearly $30K..
There were quite a few rooms with good vinyl playback hardware - the ones that caught my eye particularly were the Kronos Sparta with its counter rotating, torque canceling counter rotating platter (it's a suspended table) - it sounded very good in the two systems where I heard it, the Hanss, and the Acoustic Signature also beautifully built and good sounding - all at a very unaffordable price.
Two of the tables had either a VdH Grass Hopper or a VdH Calibri depending on room. (I don't remember exactly which was which, one IRRC was on on the AS, and the other on a Kronos respectively.)
There were a lot of big PP tube amplifiers some of which I will cover in another post. There were no SE amps except for the little Elekit which IMO was quite nice in UL mode. There was one DHT based line stage from Manley - the Neoclassic 300B RC running into a pair of Neoclassic 250s..
The show used to known for a fair amount of participation by diyers but with Montreal DIY Day that is no longer the case.
The show was more useful for introducing me to new music than anything else, most of the equipment is so expensive as to be beyond my not inconsiderable means.. $22K turntables, $30K+ speaker systems - you get the picture.
Discovered Oregon "Crossing" on vinyl and Marcus Miller M2 on CD.
The most palpable if not overall best bass sound quality probably goes to the Solen room on the album M2 mentioned above.
The most familiar sound probably to the Tannoy room with their Canterbury's.
Wilson Audio introduced their latest speaker the Sasha II, which was one of the better sounding speakers at the show which it should be at nearly $30K..
There were quite a few rooms with good vinyl playback hardware - the ones that caught my eye particularly were the Kronos Sparta with its counter rotating, torque canceling counter rotating platter (it's a suspended table) - it sounded very good in the two systems where I heard it, the Hanss, and the Acoustic Signature also beautifully built and good sounding - all at a very unaffordable price.
Two of the tables had either a VdH Grass Hopper or a VdH Calibri depending on room. (I don't remember exactly which was which, one IRRC was on on the AS, and the other on a Kronos respectively.)
There were a lot of big PP tube amplifiers some of which I will cover in another post. There were no SE amps except for the little Elekit which IMO was quite nice in UL mode. There was one DHT based line stage from Manley - the Neoclassic 300B RC running into a pair of Neoclassic 250s..
Attachments
Here are some shots of tube amps I saw at the show..
Lots of McIntosh monoblocks - some solid state, some PP, all quite high powered (300W)
The Solen speaker system was extremely inefficient and I witnessed the power meters pegged at 300W a lot of time. The bass from the Solen room was audible in some of the adjoining rooms which was not optimum to put it politely.
Lots of McIntosh monoblocks - some solid state, some PP, all quite high powered (300W)
The Solen speaker system was extremely inefficient and I witnessed the power meters pegged at 300W a lot of time. The bass from the Solen room was audible in some of the adjoining rooms which was not optimum to put it politely.
Attachments
I have one too, and I have put it next to one of my turntables in honor of the one I saw in Montreal.. 😛
I guess the one other thing I should mention is that I felt no compulsion to buy anything but music, and feel no envy over anything I heard - I did learn that my sense of aesthetics and industrial design are pretty bad compared to some of the really nice stuff I saw there.
I saw a lot of Asus Zonar dacs at the show this year, and a lot of J River media player software installed on laptop based media servers - a big improvement over the huge number of iTunes based set ups I heard last year.
I saw a lot of Asus Zonar dacs at the show this year, and a lot of J River media player software installed on laptop based media servers - a big improvement over the huge number of iTunes based set ups I heard last year.
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