UHF No 70 (Net).indd - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Feature
Montreal 2004
This is no small show. See the
crowd in the picture above?
No, those aren’t the visitors
to the Festival du Son et de
l’Image, Montreal’s immensely successful
annual show. Those are the exhibitors,
milling about at the official cocktail
party at the end of Day 2.
Of course we were exhibiting as well
as fi nding a few minutes to run about
and cover the rest of the show. On the
page across is our own system over in
Delta 317. It was composed of our new
Linn Unidisk player, Van den Hul Array
preamplifi er and monoblocks borrowed
from our Audiophile Boutique (audiophileboutique.com),
and the Reference
26 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
3a Royal Virtuoso speakers reviewed in
this issue, sitting on Foundation stands.
At right you can see Reine, faithfully
taking orders for books, magazines,
recordings and accessories.
Despite the usual dense crowds in
our own room, I did take advantage of
some breaks in the fl ow to check out
other rooms at the Delta, and also the
larger halls in the Four Points across the
street.
What you see below left is the
dramatically-styled Chord CD player,
though I should add that its innovation
doesn’t stop at its looks.
Notice the two loops of cable
at the rear? The Chord Blue
transport actually passes
on an incredible 64 bits of
data…which means 32 bits
per cable! With a pair of
Chord 500 watt monoblocks
and large Neat MF7 speakers,
it sounded superb.
I made a note to ask for
the long-awaited McCormack
UDP-1 universal player. It
sounded very good with
SACD when I heard it, and it
was no slouch with conventional
CD either. I listened
to it with McCormack electronics (of
by Gerard Rejskind
course), and a pair of speakers that
were new to me: ASW, which stands for
“Accurate Sound Wave.”
Among other large speakers I heard
and appreciated was the Focus Audio
FS 888 (shown below), much larger than
the (also excellent) FS 688 that was on
the cover of UHF No. 68. Then there
was the Rega R9, dramatically styled (not
unusual with Rega) but well-engineered
as well. And over at Pierre Gabriel, I got
to hear the new Master Series speaker,
which I had seen in prototype form, but
not heard until now.
Also large was the Verity Audio
Lohengrin, a four-way speaker of most
impressive performance. The Lohengrin
consists of a three-way module which
includes a ribbon tweeter, plus a tall base
that contains a potent 38 cm polypropylene
woofer. Now here’s the amazing
part: the woofer and enclosure together