Toronto Audiofest 2025: Complete Show Coverage, Biggest Gear Reveals, And Best Demos
What happened, what to buy, special highlights, plus our best audiophile gear picks!
Toronto Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

MoFi Distribution, And Vinyl Sound

This was my first chance to hear the MoFi Fender turntable along with a MoFi cartridge. This one had the new matte finish.

I admired the design of the new Quad amplifiers at Montreal without realizing they looked very much like their predecessors.

This was the Castle Windsor Duke ($9k) monitor. I used to see this brand more frequently at the Canadian shows back in the 1990s.

The packaging of this IsoTek power cord was quite unlike the review samples of any other cables I've known.

Hearken Audio, Northstar Audio, And Tri-Cell Enterprises

Hearken Audio typically has an outstanding room at the Canadian shows, and the room here was in that same high league.

The front-ported Ilumnia Magister Novus speaker from Belgium, made with layers of plywood and a sloping aluminum top baffle, housed a downward-firing mid-woofer with a tweeter cantilevered above it, creating an omni-directional point source for the sound.

The Sound Kaos D12.3 subwoofer matches it aesthetically and houses two facing drivers that fire out the front and back, matching the omnidirectional sound of the floorstander. An SPL crossover bridges the two speakers.

The Reed Muse 1 turntable matches the speakers with its plywood plinth, and it is one of my favorite turntable designs. I love the Birdseye veneer on the top of the plinth, which matched the wood on the record brush.

The new Hana Umami Black cartridge (their new flagship product) was fitted to the Reed 3P tonearm, and a Levin mat covered the platter.

Matt Thomas shows no fear in bringing in boutique products and masterfully weaving outstanding systems. For that, he picks up another Best Rooms award, and my recommendation is that you seek him out in Kitchener, ON, particularly if you are into analog playback.

You've gotta love the I/K Audio model 9 record clamp at the bottom of the list. Also of note are the HRS racks and the CAD Ground Control products.

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