Part 6: The Lower Level, Montreal, And Westmount Rooms
Robots, high-end audio exhibition rooms, plus audiophile rock 'n' roll.
Montreal Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

  On Sunday morning at the Montreal Audiofest 2025 show, I packed up and downloaded my luggage into the shooting brake in the parking garage below the Bonaventure. As I waited in line for a table at the breakfast buffet, I looked longingly at the folks in the pool and hot tub. If only I were not so afraid of getting water stuck in my ears and spoiling the day. While still in line, a robot passed me, heading off to deliver breakfast to someone's room.

It caught me by surprise and was gone before I could grab a photo. Moments later, adding insult to injury, a second one passed me by. Breakfast was great — far superior to running across the street to the McDonald's in the train station.

Isabeau Corriveau was up early, too, playing for the early arrivals to the show.

The escalator descends to the lower level, where the medium-sized and large rooms are located. The bright yellow McLaren Artura was parked near the bottom in an attempt to lure visitors away from the truly high end gear they lust for.

Up close, it took on the look of a giant murder hornet. Fortunately, those have been eradicated from the Pacific Northwest, I read recently.

I was spotted by Roland Schebor of Muraudio, who wanted to update Enjoy the Music.com on work they are doing on a new speaker that will likely be ready sometime next year. He was at the show, keeping tabs on the industry.

Montreal Rooms

M1 DR Acoustics
I proceeded to the left as you come off the escalator, zigging to the right, then down the hallway to the left to the Montreal 1 room. I'll cover the large Montreal rooms in sequence, then double back to the escalators and cover the medium-sized Westmount rooms in order. This will help readers who attended the show visualize my path and correlate my comments with their own experience.

So, DR Acoustics has been a fixture in this room for as long as I can remember. They make cables and power conditioners, and usually assemble a very decent rig. This year, they oriented the rig on the distant short wall and drew an attentive crowd with the B&W flagship speakers. They installed several large wood diffusers to keep the room from being overdamped.

The electronics were the Classé Delta series preamp and monoblocks that have been shown with the B&W speakers in previous years. DR Acoustics manufactures the power cords supplied with Classé Delta amps and has a series of cables designed at that level. The Polynice is their Power Management & Virtual Ground System ($5,995 / $4,995 show special). The Antigone 3.0 is a Power Management System & Virtual Ground System ($8,995/$7595 show special). The Cronos is something so new it's not yet on their website.

Here is a look inside the Polynice grounding component. I covered this in more detail last year, and there is plenty about it on their website. The four bluish inputs on the rear are for ground wires, and the grounding unit is hidden under the white signage. I believe those are silver braided ground cables leading to the ground unit. Splitter cables are available if you need to ground more than four components. It is a substantial unit, to say the least.

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