Part 2 — 2300 And 2400 Hallways: Montreal Audiofest 2026 Show Report
High-end audio gear reviews, in-depth hi-fi technical details, and exhibit room listening notes.
Montreal Audiofest Show Report By Rick Becker

2347  Codell Audio
Codell Audio is one of the oldest and most respected high-end dealers in Montreal. They had a pair of rooms next door to each other. This first one featured a rare opportunity to hear Quad speakers, which are now sourced in China, driven by Quad monoblocks, seen here on the bottom shelves with a Saturn Audio power conditioner between them. Other components with the yellow lights were also by Quad. My experience in the past has been that Quads sound a lot better when given more space than they were afforded in this room. The seating was full, again, so I didn't get to sit in the narrow sweet spot typically required by electrostatic speakers such as these. At least the opportunity was there for someone willing to wait for a good seat to become available.

That was a Brinkman Bardo turntable on a stone plinth fitted with a Supatrac tonearm with a unique horizontal unipivot bearing that has piqued my interest. Unfortunately, my camera auto-focused at the far end of the tonearm. A Zesto Andros 1.2 tube phono stage sat below it. Unfortunately, the music was being streamed through the Quad streamer on the middle shelf of the rack on the left.

Special pricing was offered on the show samples, a common practice that can more than pay for your trip to Montreal if you are prepared to buy something.

2349  Codell Audio
Next door, Codell Audio had what looked like a comparison demonstration going on with two Quadraspire racks filled with Linn components identified with large numbers. They were driving two different models of Linn floorstanding speakers. Here again, the seats were all taken in mid-afternoon on Saturday. The presenter was speaking in French, so I moved along.

In the hallway was a banner for the Audience cables and power conditioners in the system. Cables are often hard to identify, though some manufacturers have supplied small stand-up signs to place near the equipment racks, which is a big help.

2405  Hegel Canada
Hegel has frequently hosted adjacent rooms and did so again at Montreal. The passive room displayed a long table with their products, each topped off with a stand-up sheet with specifications and price.

A standup sheet like this can save a lot of talking and answer questions for people who are too shy to speak up. Plus, it's easy to snap a photo for reminiscing back home. The Prodigy is one of their newer products. It's well equipped with a mm phono stage, streamer, DAC, control app, internet radio, and 75 wpc into 8 Ohms, capable of handling 2 Ohms.

2407  Hegel Canada
Next door was another packed room where I was greeted with the chant of "thieves and beggars," a modern-day audio show classic.

On the top shelf was their reference H600 integrated amp with the D50 Raven reference DAC just below, and a power conditioner on the bottom shelf.

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