Part 7: The Lower Level, Outremont, And St. Laurent Rooms
A symphony of spectacular high-fidelity sound!
Montreal Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

S8   Cardas Audio, Eon Art Canada, Oracle Audio Technologies, And Gershman Acoustics
This brings us to the final room at the show, a multiple Best Rooms Award winner by not only Enjoy the Music.com, buy from many magazines and reviewers globally too. Here we have a talented team of manufacturers that has remained consistent over many years while also presenting various models in their lines. The room is almost always well attended with very attentive listeners. Music reigns supreme, and conversations are minimal. The presenters rarely speak to the crowd, preferring to let the sound quality speak for itself. Yet, they are available and welcoming of inquiry at the back of the room, where additional models are often on display. The music presented here would stand among the best rooms at any show in the USA, but only Ofra and Eli Gershman have ventured south of the border with consistency. Given the tariff and political issues facing us, sadly, I don't see the other members of this team coming to the USA anytime soon.

The speakers were the Gershman Acoustics 30th Anniversary Black Swan ($95k). The amplification was a pair of Boson monoblocks ($186k) with a Tachyon DAC ($79.4k), both from Eon Art in Quebec. These two amps are linked together and operate as one.

The Black Swan was the flagship of the Gershman line for many years, and it has been modified somewhat over that time, most visibly with custom IsoAcoustics vibration-absorbing footers replacing the spikes. Wood slat grills snap into receptors embedded in the speaker. The extended sides of the tweeter/midrange unit hold those drivers completely separate from the large bass unit underneath.

With a completely separate chassis, the two units must be connected with a jumper cable. Additionally, the crossover on the bass is connected with a single bi-wire cable for better sound quality. Bi-amp'ing is also a possibility with this speaker.

The beautiful Oracle Delphi Mk VII Reference Turbo Mk 2 turntable ($18,875) was fitted with an Oracle Reference 1  carbon fiber tonearm ($9k) and a Corinth low-output MC cartridge ($2,750). That should add up to $30,625. An Oracle PH200 Mk III phono stage ($2,760)  had a separate power supply on the lower shelf.

It is typical for Jacques Reindeau of Oracle to place the LP and cue up my requested song. In fact, it's pretty well understood throughout the industry at shows that the host cues up the LP, especially given the price of many of the cartridges being used these days. (I've heard cartridges at shows up to $19k USD on several occasions.) But Jacques had gone off somewhere, and an associate offered to cue up my LP. The problem was that there was still an LP on the platter. He took that one and walked to the side of the room to find the jacket. Since I already had my LP out of the sleeve, I reflexively set it on the platter. How many thousands of times have I performed that feat in my life? What could possibly go wrong?

WHOA, Nellybelle! I was startled by the dancing platter reacting to my gentle placing of the LP. I've had other suspended tables before, most notably a Linn LP12 that I tweaked to the max with aftermarket parts, but never did they react so instantaneously as the Oracle. It was like the platter was floating on water. Of course, it wasn't, but this indicated the Oracle's high degree of compliance with micro-vibrations from airborne, internal, and ground vibrations. I was impressed by this physical encounter with the turntable that helped to explain the very high resolution and low noise floor of this system.

I should also mention the digital front end, comprised of the Oracle CD 2500 CD player ($22,275). The suspension pillars of both the CD player and the turntable make the LP12 suspension seem primitive.

At any show, I typically cross paths with videographers who use sophisticated equipment that is infinitely higher quality, much lighter, and far easier to use than I used in the pioneering days of portable video back in the 1970s and 1980s. I watch them, partly with envy, and partly with the irony that I have become a writer in this field.

She was oblivious to the three-chassis single-channel Eon Art amplifier beside her. I spoke with Stéphane Hautcoeur, owner of this Canadian Company, whom I've known for years, about this massive amp. The bottom chassis houses seven filters and converts AC to DC. The middle chassis is the power supply, and the amplifier section is in the top chassis.

Each chassis is built like a file cabinet with the face pulling out to reveal the internal components mounted inside the ‘drawer'. The amplifier section, seen here, shows the tube front end of this hybrid design. The circuit boards are multi-layer and built to military specs.

On a side table, Stéphane had a completely open drawer that revealed the tube front end and the solid-state power section in the back. Of course, you will need two of these stacks for stereo. This reminded me of the three-chassis McIntosh 75th Anniversary MC2.1KW monoblock solid-state amplifiers I heard in the Son Ultime room across the hall in Outremont 7. They are completely different designs, both electronically and physically.

I should not forget the cabling here. The Cardas interconnects and speaker cables were from the Clear Beyond series, their flagship.

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