Salon Audio / Montreal Audio Fest 2017 Coverage by George de Sa

The 2017 Salon Audio / Montreal Audio Fest, was a wonderful event; an amazing feat, given that this was technically only its second year. The shows organizers, industry veterans, Michel Plante and Sarah Trembley, assembled this year’s Montreal Audio Fest, with a refreshed look and feel, within the freshly renovated Hotel Bonaventure Montréal. Once again, the Montreal Audio Fest opened its doors with free admission, to the delight of its patrons. I found that spirits of both consumers and exhibitors seemed high; embracing the rejuvenated venue and perhaps now settled into the fact that the Montreal Audio Fest is not going anywhere. The following are just some of the rooms that I visited, over the three days of the show – March 24/25/26, 2017; for more, look to Suave Kajko’s coverage, posted last week on our website.

SVS by Summit HiFi
One of the rooms that generated a lot of excitement was hosted by Summit HiFi, an Eastern Toronto dealer that was demonstrating a complete SVS home theatre setup. Gary Yacoubian, President & Managing Partner – SVS, was there in person to expound about this system. The system was a 5.1.2, using SVS Prime speakers, including the new SVS Prime Elevation height effects L/C/R ($200 – $250/ U.S. each). Though it was exciting to hear the object based height effects of the latest Mad Max film, the star of the show was most definitely the new SVS SB16-Ultra Subwoofer. The new SB16 demonstrated ($2,000 U.S.), along with the PB16-Ultra ($2,500 U.S.) ported sub – not shown, are the largest and most powerful subwoofers in SVS’ history! They incorporate an all-new 16” driver with an 8” edge-wound voicecoil. With 1500 Watts (continuous) and over 5000 Watts (peak) the demonstration was incredible. The sound was full, large and surprisingly tight, given the compact hotel room.