SSI 2009

It did not require great perspicacity to predict that SSI2009 would not be as well attended as last year's show. Things are tough all over. In any case, as I write this, on Saturday evening on a train en route to Toronto—yes, I manage to catch the train this time!—the show still has another day to go, and, as Michel Plante, with Sarah Tremblay the SSI's organizers, admitted, what often makes or breaks a show like this is the Sunday attendance.

It was a pleasure to finally meet Stereophile forumhttp://forum.stereophile.com/forum/ubbthreads.php">forum; member, KBK, also known as, Ken Hotte. If you think he looks a little crazy here, you should read his forum posts.

Lafleur's X-1 bookshelf ($14,000/pair) was one of the hits of last">http://blog.stereophile.com/fsi2008/040608lafleur/">last year's Montreal Show despite the poor acoustics of the room they were being shown in, so I was looking forward to taking a further listen this year in a better room. Driven by an all-Simaudio Evolution series rig—Andromeda CD player and i-7 integrated amplifier—the X1s did indeed produce a superby detailed, natural-sounding midrange and treble, but the low frequencies seemed a little shelved down in absolute terms, I thought.

In the Brosseau">http://www.brosseau.qc.ca/">Brosseau Audio/Video suite, Linn's Adolfo Cano provided a fascinating demonstration playing back Barb Jungr's "Beautiful Life" from a Linn Recordings sample disc.

Asked to name the top three drawbacks of electrostatic loudspeakers, the knowledgeable audiophile will list—not necessarily in this order—restricted listening area, inability to play loud, and limited bass extension. Although the last criticism can still be applied to the new MartinLogan CLX (its claimed bass –3dB point is 56Hz), the speaker's design has gone a major way toward addressing the other two criticisms.

Monitor Audio's Sheldon Ginn is very excited about the company's new PL200 loudspeaker ($8000/pair). This attractive floorstander fills the gap between Monitor's PL100 bookshelf and the much bulkier PL300 floorstander, and uses a three-driver configuration with a ribbon tweeter. It's available in ebony, rosewood, and piano black finishes, and boasts a real leather front baffle.

Stereophile readers often wonder about how products are chosen for review, and, as I said at the SSI "Ask the Editors" panel discussion, the Monitor Audio Platinum 200 provides a case in point.