MONTREAL SALON AUDIO - Art's Saturday Morning at the Show
Show report
by Art Dudley | Mar 27, 2017
It's one of those everybody-says-it but not-everybody-does-it things: Reinhard Goerner, of the distribution company Goerner Audio, is among the most musically knowledgeable, musically sensitive people in this business—and, as always, he turned me on to lots of great music during my visit to his room. An example: For some reason (it might have been the cover art), I had never listened to the sole, eponymous album by Sandy Denny's post-Fairport Convention band, Fotheringay, a blank now filled-in by Goerner and his gear: Also as always, he brought a system comprising little-known but evidently high-quality, high-resolution components. For Montreal 2017, the source was the Volta digital server ($CDN14,000) from the Italian company Grandinote, with the same manufacturer's Shinai integrated amplifier ($CDN18,000) and a pair of Diva IV loudspeakers ($CDN18,000/pair) from Wiener Lautsprecher Manufaktur (WLM). There was no analog source—and, for once, I didn't miss it in the least. (It's worth adding that the iPad-based user interface that comes with the Volta is awesome.)