I read on the bryston forum that they will have the CLX on demonstration driven by Bryston 28B sst2 monoblock, BP26 pre-amp and their BCD-1 cd player. Would really like to attend the show to listen to this. Too bad I can't make it this year.
Montreal hifi show 2009
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tonepub
Senior Member
Montreal is one of the nicest shows on the circuit! Really nice people there too!
Will take some photo and will try to post some when i came back. I have a pair of spire driven by a 14b sst2 and bp26, really want to see how it compare between the two system. The room will be different of course, but want to hear how much better it can be.
radicalsteve
Active member
Show overview and CLX demo
Although it is only a two hour drive from Ottawa, this was my first time at Son & Image. Frankly I was underwhelmed by the exhibitor turn out; in reality this is a very local affair driven by Quebec retailers and some Ontario distributors. The show is at the Sheraton, well located in the downtown area, with easy parking and access to amenities. The admission was well organized and the Sheraton is a nice hotel, but has a limited number of large function rooms and the bedrooms are smallish rather than expansive.
I only spent a few hours at the show really just to hear the CLX's and perhaps find some nice music on vinyl or CD. There were a couple of vinyl and CD sellers - I managed to pick up an oop Ernie Watts 'Unity' XRCD plus a couple of other items, but there was nothing really earth shattering or special in the software available at the show and one would be better off going to your specialist store. I will give a plug though, for aux33tours who had a small selection of interesting vinyl at the show, just a miniscule offering of what is available in their Montreal store.
The ML room was our first port of call ('us' includes my long suffering wife - who haboured not so secret thoughts about shopping on nearby Sherbrooke Street instead of traipsing around a Hi-Fi show). While it might not have the absolute best room in acoustic terms the Son Ideal space for Martin Logan was quite big and gave plenty of latitude to set the CLX's and accompanying stereo subs in the optimum position to get the maximum performance from these large panels. Kudos to Robert deKoninck, owner of Son Ideal, and his team for creating a decent listening set up in a hotel function room.
All ancilliary electronic gear was Bryston, using either CD or laptop for source thru the Bryston DAC, preamp, powere conditioners out to the the new 28B monoblocks. One always wonders how much of the audition is the electronics and in this case Audioquest cabling, or the speakers and or the room. Having previously owned Bryston 7BSST's I am familiar with the Bryston house sound. Brystons are very capable of driving difficult loads with great low end control, I am not convinced they would be my ampsof choice though for the CLX's. The weak spot for Bryston has always been their uni-dimensional texture and layering. The company has been listening to the feedback regarding a less than delicate top end and so I sensed these amps are voiced to mimic a tube like sound, but for me they miss subtle nuances. For the record, I am driving my (newly acquired this weekend) reQuests with Spectron mono blocks and there is way more air and texture at first blush - more to follow on that in another post.
My wife and I settled down in the sweet spot seats while Robert put my choice of the Gladiator soundtrack to work. Before even commenting on the sound, it seemd that the sweet spot was very narrow in the horizontal plane and off axix seating gave a fair bit of channel beaming. I don't know if that was the room or it is an inherent facet of the CLX design. I don't get anything like that localisation from my reQuests, where in my room the sweet spot is 3 seats broad and these were 2 seats broad at best. Nevertheless, as soon as the orchestral elements of the music hit the panels there was an instant WOW and a recognition that these speakers can rock your boat with power, finesse, dynamics, detail and deep soundstaging.
When we started the Gladiator soundtrack the room was empty and by the end of track 1, the sound had attracted a whole host of interested listeners into the room.
Moving on through acoustic jazz, small group jazz and classical, there was an overiding sense of "being there" great soundstaging and depth and provided one stayed in the sweet spot, defineable stage localisation and placement of instruments voices and orchestra - all three dimensional and very believable. There have been more detailed reviews of the CLX's than this so I will say that I was very impressed and so was my better half, who used to refer to my ESL 63's in Arcici stands as "those room dividers" and who admitted that as large as the CLX's are, they were not ugly at all. Now, she did not go far enough to say that she wanted a pair in the living room at that very instant! The CLX speakers arre imposing, but elegant in stature and worthy of being in your room for that special sound. Having experienced the narrow sweet spot, these are a product I would need to know worked with my room to get the best out of them.
We also compared the ML listening experience with the Wilson room and the Focal Grand Utopis demo. The Focals were ridiculous in my mind - for $100K plus associated gear around $150k and up, I expect to be highly impressed and really I was not. For starters, no one is going to listen to these monsters at concert level very often and they just seemed totally incongruous to be in anyone's home, no matter what the size of the space. I was a bit peeved that the Focal session was behind closed doors - which was OK, but the description and presentation was all in French; not a real issue for me personally, but it indicated the local & parochial nature of the show. Hardly likely to encourage a wider audience.
On the other hand the Wilson MAxx speakers are certainly not pretty to look at, but they can sing with the best. Graeme Humfrey and his partner Jennifer of Coupdefoudre audio video had set up a great room both visually and sound wise with a pair of Wilson MAXX driven by the new Pathos Synergy and Adrenaline gear. Looked like a cool $200K's worth of audio exotica here! There was also a humungous Wilson centre sub 2 15" drivers pressuring the room as well. Despite the fact that the room had lots of folks wandering in and out and a ton of audio jewellery lining the walls, the Wilsons just handled that milieu of humming distraction by belting out whatever Graeme put on the table or took from his master tapes and yet were sublimely clear, non fatiguing, accurate and just damn impressive. Standing next to the speaker cabinet, about as tall as moi at 5'10, there was not even a hint of resonance on the outside of the cabinet. Most startling of all was that these speakers were hugely dynamic at relatively modest listening levels - not loud at all - but the immediacy and impact of a drum thwack was sharp and fast - as it should be for a C$70K product.
So the best sound went to the Wilsons, but the best 'bang for the buck', by far went to the CLX's. As my wife said "she liked the Wilsons most, but she would buy the ML's first" and I have to agrre with her and so my goal is to get a pair of CLX's into the house as soon as I can afford them. In the meantime, those pristine reQuests I picked up on Sunday afternoon at C$2K just seem like the bargain of the century!
Honorable mention also has to go to the (small) Gradient room, where the Helsinki speakers had the best spatial intelligence presentation of any speaker at the show I heard and also the room where the PS Audio new PerfectWave Dac was sounding very open with no digital hash. I noted that Esoteric was the ubiquitous player or DAC choice for many systems and there were very few turntables in use. Worst demo was the Solen room where they had these monsters I assume you can build yourself with massive 15" woofers pounding your chest and the rest of the drivers completely unintegrated. Did it catch your attention - yes, could you live with it - absolutely not, unless that is you like hockey stadium sound!
Overall, I was glad I went to Son & Image, although dissapointed the show was very regional in nature, but delighted I had the opportuity to hear the CLX's and I wll pay a visit to Son Ideal to hear then in their new room they are setting up in their store. I envy all those fortunate CLX owners out there - you really couldn't wish for anything else. :bowdown:
Steve
Although it is only a two hour drive from Ottawa, this was my first time at Son & Image. Frankly I was underwhelmed by the exhibitor turn out; in reality this is a very local affair driven by Quebec retailers and some Ontario distributors. The show is at the Sheraton, well located in the downtown area, with easy parking and access to amenities. The admission was well organized and the Sheraton is a nice hotel, but has a limited number of large function rooms and the bedrooms are smallish rather than expansive.
I only spent a few hours at the show really just to hear the CLX's and perhaps find some nice music on vinyl or CD. There were a couple of vinyl and CD sellers - I managed to pick up an oop Ernie Watts 'Unity' XRCD plus a couple of other items, but there was nothing really earth shattering or special in the software available at the show and one would be better off going to your specialist store. I will give a plug though, for aux33tours who had a small selection of interesting vinyl at the show, just a miniscule offering of what is available in their Montreal store.
The ML room was our first port of call ('us' includes my long suffering wife - who haboured not so secret thoughts about shopping on nearby Sherbrooke Street instead of traipsing around a Hi-Fi show). While it might not have the absolute best room in acoustic terms the Son Ideal space for Martin Logan was quite big and gave plenty of latitude to set the CLX's and accompanying stereo subs in the optimum position to get the maximum performance from these large panels. Kudos to Robert deKoninck, owner of Son Ideal, and his team for creating a decent listening set up in a hotel function room.
All ancilliary electronic gear was Bryston, using either CD or laptop for source thru the Bryston DAC, preamp, powere conditioners out to the the new 28B monoblocks. One always wonders how much of the audition is the electronics and in this case Audioquest cabling, or the speakers and or the room. Having previously owned Bryston 7BSST's I am familiar with the Bryston house sound. Brystons are very capable of driving difficult loads with great low end control, I am not convinced they would be my ampsof choice though for the CLX's. The weak spot for Bryston has always been their uni-dimensional texture and layering. The company has been listening to the feedback regarding a less than delicate top end and so I sensed these amps are voiced to mimic a tube like sound, but for me they miss subtle nuances. For the record, I am driving my (newly acquired this weekend) reQuests with Spectron mono blocks and there is way more air and texture at first blush - more to follow on that in another post.
My wife and I settled down in the sweet spot seats while Robert put my choice of the Gladiator soundtrack to work. Before even commenting on the sound, it seemd that the sweet spot was very narrow in the horizontal plane and off axix seating gave a fair bit of channel beaming. I don't know if that was the room or it is an inherent facet of the CLX design. I don't get anything like that localisation from my reQuests, where in my room the sweet spot is 3 seats broad and these were 2 seats broad at best. Nevertheless, as soon as the orchestral elements of the music hit the panels there was an instant WOW and a recognition that these speakers can rock your boat with power, finesse, dynamics, detail and deep soundstaging.
When we started the Gladiator soundtrack the room was empty and by the end of track 1, the sound had attracted a whole host of interested listeners into the room.
Moving on through acoustic jazz, small group jazz and classical, there was an overiding sense of "being there" great soundstaging and depth and provided one stayed in the sweet spot, defineable stage localisation and placement of instruments voices and orchestra - all three dimensional and very believable. There have been more detailed reviews of the CLX's than this so I will say that I was very impressed and so was my better half, who used to refer to my ESL 63's in Arcici stands as "those room dividers" and who admitted that as large as the CLX's are, they were not ugly at all. Now, she did not go far enough to say that she wanted a pair in the living room at that very instant! The CLX speakers arre imposing, but elegant in stature and worthy of being in your room for that special sound. Having experienced the narrow sweet spot, these are a product I would need to know worked with my room to get the best out of them.
We also compared the ML listening experience with the Wilson room and the Focal Grand Utopis demo. The Focals were ridiculous in my mind - for $100K plus associated gear around $150k and up, I expect to be highly impressed and really I was not. For starters, no one is going to listen to these monsters at concert level very often and they just seemed totally incongruous to be in anyone's home, no matter what the size of the space. I was a bit peeved that the Focal session was behind closed doors - which was OK, but the description and presentation was all in French; not a real issue for me personally, but it indicated the local & parochial nature of the show. Hardly likely to encourage a wider audience.
On the other hand the Wilson MAxx speakers are certainly not pretty to look at, but they can sing with the best. Graeme Humfrey and his partner Jennifer of Coupdefoudre audio video had set up a great room both visually and sound wise with a pair of Wilson MAXX driven by the new Pathos Synergy and Adrenaline gear. Looked like a cool $200K's worth of audio exotica here! There was also a humungous Wilson centre sub 2 15" drivers pressuring the room as well. Despite the fact that the room had lots of folks wandering in and out and a ton of audio jewellery lining the walls, the Wilsons just handled that milieu of humming distraction by belting out whatever Graeme put on the table or took from his master tapes and yet were sublimely clear, non fatiguing, accurate and just damn impressive. Standing next to the speaker cabinet, about as tall as moi at 5'10, there was not even a hint of resonance on the outside of the cabinet. Most startling of all was that these speakers were hugely dynamic at relatively modest listening levels - not loud at all - but the immediacy and impact of a drum thwack was sharp and fast - as it should be for a C$70K product.
So the best sound went to the Wilsons, but the best 'bang for the buck', by far went to the CLX's. As my wife said "she liked the Wilsons most, but she would buy the ML's first" and I have to agrre with her and so my goal is to get a pair of CLX's into the house as soon as I can afford them. In the meantime, those pristine reQuests I picked up on Sunday afternoon at C$2K just seem like the bargain of the century!
Honorable mention also has to go to the (small) Gradient room, where the Helsinki speakers had the best spatial intelligence presentation of any speaker at the show I heard and also the room where the PS Audio new PerfectWave Dac was sounding very open with no digital hash. I noted that Esoteric was the ubiquitous player or DAC choice for many systems and there were very few turntables in use. Worst demo was the Solen room where they had these monsters I assume you can build yourself with massive 15" woofers pounding your chest and the rest of the drivers completely unintegrated. Did it catch your attention - yes, could you live with it - absolutely not, unless that is you like hockey stadium sound!
Overall, I was glad I went to Son & Image, although dissapointed the show was very regional in nature, but delighted I had the opportuity to hear the CLX's and I wll pay a visit to Son Ideal to hear then in their new room they are setting up in their store. I envy all those fortunate CLX owners out there - you really couldn't wish for anything else. :bowdown:
Steve
MiTT
Super User
Thanks for that Steve. Great read. Any pictures by chance?
User211
Well-known member
radicalsteve
Active member
few pics
here are pics of the MAXX and me, MAXX the Wilson sub, CLX room and Avantgardes - which sounded very nice, but were short on space to breathe in the room and not in the same league as the CLX. I should clarify that the Focals were really good, but the demo was rather boring and it all seemed so surreal compared to real world gear.
Steve
here are pics of the MAXX and me, MAXX the Wilson sub, CLX room and Avantgardes - which sounded very nice, but were short on space to breathe in the room and not in the same league as the CLX. I should clarify that the Focals were really good, but the demo was rather boring and it all seemed so surreal compared to real world gear.
Steve
Attachments
TrumpetDoug
Well-known member
Vienna Acoustics.
Those Vienna Acoustics in the 2nd pic from the bottom are the s#!T. I have heard these many times at a Place in Morton Grove Il. the Top cabinet is moveable and host a midrange and super-tweeter I believe. I have never heard the CLX to make a comparison but the Vienna's are fantastic in my book. I might add that for the price they should be. I think around 35g's!!
Doug - out
Those Vienna Acoustics in the 2nd pic from the bottom are the s#!T. I have heard these many times at a Place in Morton Grove Il. the Top cabinet is moveable and host a midrange and super-tweeter I believe. I have never heard the CLX to make a comparison but the Vienna's are fantastic in my book. I might add that for the price they should be. I think around 35g's!!
Doug - out
MiTT
Super User
Those Vienna Acoustics in the 2nd pic from the bottom are the s#!T. I have heard these many times at a Place in Morton Grove Il. the Top cabinet is moveable and host a midrange and super-tweeter I believe. I have never heard the CLX to make a comparison but the Vienna's are fantastic in my book. I might add that for the price they should be. I think around 35g's!!
Doug - out
I agree Doug. I heard them for the first time at RMAF last fall and I was very impressed. Very musical and visceral at the same time time. I went back to hear them several times. Not the most beautiful of speakers, but they sure make music. I think you're in the ballpark on price too.
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