2007 Festival Son&Image Coverage

There's something in the air in Montreal that seduces me to visit the city a couple of times every year. Is the friendly residents? The romantic language that I only partly understand? Or is it the 3 am last call? Perhaps it's a combination of the three.

Every spring, Montreal is the home of the Festival Son & Image (FSI), Canada's only home entertainment and electronics show, for both consumers and the trade. FSI provides a fantastic opportunity for audio video enthusiasts to come face to face with a large number of manufacturers and distributors, and a chance to play around with a great number of products.

This year, the show celebrated its twentieth anniversary and marked CANADA HiFi's second appearance as one of the exhibitors. The show took place at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Montreal between April 12th and 15th.

Our first day at the show began by attending a media conference put on by the show's organizers. During the conference, Michel Plante, a veteran of the Canadian audio video industry, was introduced as FSI's new owner and president. He shared his enthusiasm with us about the show as well as his plans to expand the appeal of the show to a broader number of consumers and trade. The addition of a video gaming area to this year's show, demonstrated Michel's commitment to also making the show more appealing to a younger audience, in addition to the existing enthusiast community. Marie-Christine Prin, the former owner of the show, also shared her comments with the members of the media. Not coincidentally, the conference took place in one of the rooms that featured a full-scale home theatre setup, valued at over $400,000. To start the show off on the right note, the conference concluded with a demonstration of the audio/video components in the room, with the help of a chapter from the latest Bond flick, Casino Royale. The equipment in the room consisted of Adam Audio speakers, Bang&Olufsen amplification, a Vidikron projector, a Samsung blu-ray player and D-Box home theatre seating. The demonstration was quite breathtaking, in large part thanks to the D-Box motion system integrated into the seats. D-Box said that all future Blu-ray releases from Fox will be encoded for the D-Box system.

One of the first rooms we visited was the KEF room, since they were right across the hallway from the CANADA HiFi booth. KEF, exhibiting at FSI for the first time, made sure that they had a prominent presence by participating as one of the show's sponsors. On display in their room was a good chunk of the KEF speaker line-up. KEF's Reference Model 205/2 floorstanders, paired with Chord Electronics components, sounded great - there was no question about it. In the same room, the Fatman iTube iPod tube hybrid integrated amplifier was on display courtesy of distributor Bluebird Music. This is by far the sweetest looking and sounding iPod dock I have seen or heard yet. Perhaps most impressive, were KEF's Reference 207/2 speakers on demonstration in another upstairs room, which ended up snagging one of FSI's Visionnaire awards.

In another room, a company called Niro was demonstrating their one speaker solution that achieved a surprisingly convincing 5-channel surround sound. The Niro system consists of a single speaker enclosure containing five woofers, a compact subwoofer and a digital amplifier/processor. I've listened to similar systems in the past but this was the first time that I heard one that actually worked well. The beauty of the Niro system is that it doesn't rely on wall reflections, like all other single-enclosure surround speaker systems that I've heard. Instead, it uses some processing wizardry to produce a perceived surround experience. The Niro system was on demonstration in another large conference room, to prove that it didn't require walls to work properly. We should be doing a review of this system in one of our upcoming issues.

The guys from Audiyo showed off a number of hi-fi brands in their room this year, among them Furutech, Mundorf, DACT, Accentus, Audio Note, Cryoclear and Uniko. Two music systems were set up in this room. One system contained the Grand Accentus SE loudspeakers, EMM Labs and Jeff Rowland electronics, and Virtual Dynamics cables. The other system combined the Accentus A-102SE speakers, Audio Note electronics, Furutech Reference and Cryoclear cables. Both systems sounded great but I especially enjoyed the musicality of the Accentus A-102SE/Audio Note combo. Ban from Uniko/Accentus was nice enough to give me a copy of the Super Sounds! III CD from First Impression Music. This album was coated with a special substance called AVM (Anti Vibration Magic), which dampens and absorbs undesirable mechanical vibrations. It's certainly a superior quality album, although I did not have the regular CD version to compare it with. Ban mentioned that apparently all future releases from First Impression Music will be coated with AVM. Aside from CDs and DVDs, AVM can also be applied to a large number of internal parts of electronic components. I also received a small bottle of AVM to apply to some of my own electronics, which I have yet to try.

The Red Wine Audio room created a buzz at the show with the iPod audiophile hardware upgrade called the iMod. The iMod was successful in creating a bigger soundstage and substantially improving the bass and high frequency response of the iPod. Red Wine sells already modified iPods or you can send them your own to be modified.

As mentioned above, the video gaming area was a great addition to this year's show, which attracted large crowds, and not just the younger visitors. This area consisted of about 30, if not more, LG TVs and all three of the latest video gaming systems including Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and the PS3. Sony also had their PS3 set up on a handful of Sony TVs. This was definitely one of the high-traffic areas of the show.

In the same room as the video gaming area, Pioneer showed off some of their breathtaking Elite plasma displays, playing video from their Elite Blu-ray player - a display that appeared to be of interest to many visitors. If you ran into the right guy at this display, you might have gotten lucky to hear some information about new products that Pioneer will be releasing this year. I learned that a whole 1080p line-up of more affordable plasmas and two new Blu-ray players (one regular and one Elite) are coming this summer. I actually learned much more than this but swore to not put it in print. Pioneer also brought their high-end floorstanding EX speakers, which I saw for the first time. They were paired up with a Pioneer Elite CD player and an integrated amplifier, which I have also never seen previously - in fact, these components aren't even listed on the Pioneer's North American websites, but they are present on the European website. Unfortunately, the large room was too busy to do any serious listening to this setup.

At the end of the third day of the show, a gala was held for all FSI exhibitors at club Medley, just blocks away from the show. After a healthy dose of hors d'oeuvres and a couple of drinks, FSI's first annual Visionnaire (Visionary) award ceremony commenced.

Awards for innovation were presented to six different product categories and four lifetime achievement awards were given to trade professionals (check out the award box on the side for details). The smart brains at our table were lucky enough to win us a bottle of Champagne by solving a word puzzle - the answer was "Inukshuk". To top off the evening, Canadian bluesman Bob Walsh entertained us with his lively tunes, over a few more cocktails.

The 2007 Festival Son&Image was certainly a success with new owner Michel Plante at the helm. We can only expect an even better show next year, now that Michel had a chance to settle in! For more info about FSI, please visit their website at www.fsiexpo.com.