EN 
FR Jonson Lee
As an audiophile and a voracious listener of all kinds of music, Jonson believes that the experience of being immersed in music is often something spiritual. Born and raised in Korea, he cut his teeth on western music mostly through the music of the 80s and the 90s. As of today, names that make his heart beat a little faster include Vladimir Horowitz, John Coltrane, Youn-Sun Nah, Francis Poulenc, Leonard Bernstein, Tannoy, and Magnepan. Jonson also runs a podcast and a YouTube channel about language learning, called SpongeMind.
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Prices listed in CA$. As always when I enter an audio showroom, my eyes fall first on the speakers, as they did in the Corby’s Audio room. And the speakers there looked stunning. I would put them in my living room even if they made no sound. But they did make a sound, a glorious…
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Prices listed in CA$. So many people! I screamed inside. The Hearken Audio room was packed all the way to the main corridor, with people bustling to get inside. The room was also narrow, with only a few seats. I waited my turn and got inside to see what all the fuss was about. The…
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Prices listed in Canadian dollars. Chord Company makes cables and is not to be confused with Chord Electronics known for making bestselling DACs. And Chord Company’s cables have quite the following, which includes me. I have tried 16 pairs of various interconnects and would include their Anthem cables in my top 3 cable products. In…
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Prices listed in CA$. Norway-based Hegel has been steadily gaining popularity with its great-sounding and elegantly-styled products. Of the two rooms they hosted at this year’s Montreal show, one presented a static display of several of the company’s successful products, while the other had an active demo that included a pair of MoFi SourcePoint 8…
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Prices listed in CA$. The two most common questions Essentia Technology’s Scott Pugh received from visitors who heard the distributor’s demo when I was there were: 1) Is there a sub?, and, 2) Are the prices in US dollars? The answer to both was no—no sub, and prices were in Canadian dollars. It was one…
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Prices listed in CA$. Filling up a humongous room is always a challenge for an audio system. And Lenbrook’s was probably the largest room I’d ever seen at an audio show. The PSB Synchrony T800 Premium loudspeakers ($16,999/pr) looked tiny against the front wall even though they weren’t small. They were placed so wide apart you could have…
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Prices listed in US$. When I looked at the price sheet taped on the wall in the Emotiva room, I blinked. I couldn’t believe my eyes. An audio show doesn’t showcase entire sound systems for $4796. But that was the total cost of the system in the Emotiva room (excluding the cables). The all-Emotiva system…
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Prices listed in CA$. As soon as I walked into the Brooklyn Audio room, I started to worry. ‘Oh no,’ I thought. “They have electrostatic speakers!’ Don’t get me wrong, I love flat panel speakers, like the planar-magnetic Magnepans I have at home, but both planars and electrostats are dipole designs, meaning they project sound to…
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Prices listed in CA$. PureAudioProject speakers are offered through an interesting business model: the company sends you all the speaker parts and you assemble them. It’s a kit. But the speaker is an open-baffle design, so it costs less in parts than a conventional speaker, and since there are less parts, and they “snap” into…
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Prices listed in CA$. Like in all the other rooms, the Motet room was playing music when I walked in. I waited to take the seat dead center and when I did, I slipped on my critical listening hat. Right after the song that was playing ended, as luck would have it, the next two…
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Prices listed in CA$. Passion Audio’s demo was fronted by Wolf von Langa’s 12639 SON speakers ($27,000/pr). One can already see a lot of this speaker’s potential strengths on the spec sheet. First, its tweeter section is a dipole design which, in my experience, tends to give you more sense of space in the soundstage.…
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Prices listed in CA$. Magico and Linn need little introduction to audio aficionado. Both brands are formidable forces in the audio industry, and products from both these companies were being demoed in the Audio by Mark Jones room. Those products were the Magico S3 Mkll speakers (62,000/pr), whose frequency range is rated as 24 Hz…
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Prices listed in CA$. At the Montreal Audiofest, there were quite a few rooms with systems costing in the six figures. The system in the Audio Group Denmark / Wynn Audio room wasn’t one of them, despite sounding like it could cost that much. It included a pair of Børresen X6 loudspeakers ($30,000/pr), a 100Wpc Axxess Forté…
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Bowers & Wilkins 800 speaker series has a long history, and the D4 is the latest line in that series. According to the company’s own description, its flagship 801 D4 is the most advanced 801 it has ever produced, and its “Signature Series” version ($55,000/pr)—the one demoed at the Audiofest—is an optimized version of it. Driving…
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Prices listed in CA$. I loved the ArtistCloner room, the simultaneously industrial, psychedelic, and archaic decor, the whimsical outfits of the two hosts, designer / owner Sylvio and his colleague / wife Isabelle. ArtistCloner stood out, not just aesthetically, but sonically. Their room sounded amazing. The sound was warm yet tight. It was colourful, fast,…