All by Charles Brown

Tri-Art Audio B-Series 60W Stereo Integrated Amplifier

This is my second review of audio equipment from our Canadian producers, Tri-Art Audio (TAA). Please see my earlier review of the Tri-Art Audio open baffle speakers, the B series 4 Open, should you wish to learn more about this Canadian gem of a company.

Note: this review includes the added functionality of the Tri-Art B-Series DC Linear (Tube Buffered) 12 Volt Power Supply, which ships with the integrated amplifier. Price for the integrated amplifier and its outboard power supply is $3799.

Tri-Art Audio B Series 4 Open Speaker

Down the ribbon of highway, due east from the frenetically paced GTA (Greater Toronto Area), lies the somnolent university town of Kingston, Ontario. Queen’s University, as an intellectual hub of all eastern Ontario, has been the centre of Kingston’s relevance for a century. But if one looks past this well established landmark, one finds a business of some significance that has been quietly sounding out its audio relevance for the last 10 years—Tri-Art Audio.

Arising out of the ashes of the great stereo retail shop of the 1970s and 80s, House of Sound, where Steve Ginsberg worked as a technician—that wonderful bricks and mortar place penurious Queen’s students like myself hung around in the few moments we had free—has come Steve’s and his sons, Simon and Evan’s extraordinary business adventure—a quality international seller of fantastically sophisticated paints and some of the hippest audio equipment on the planet—the fabulous jewel of Tri-Art Audio. A fantastically interesting business anomaly—paint and sound!

Streaming the Classics: Berlioz—Roméo et Juliette

Do you ever type a streaming query in Roon for a classical work and are overwhelmed by the choices? Rather than clicking on any old recording or the first one you see, Audiophilia will make things a little easier for you and do the heavy listening.

These choices are for streaming only. Is the best in streaming also the best vinyl recording and performance? That’s for another article.

A few criteria:

  1. Recording must be on Qobuz and/or Tidal HiFi.

  2. It does not have to be HiRes or MQA.

  3. No more than ten recommendations in no particular order, then my top three for streaming in order of preference.

Streaming the Classics/Requiem—Verdi

Do you ever type a streaming query in Roon for a classical work and are overwhelmed by the choices? Rather than clicking on any old recording or the first one you see, Audiophilia will make things a little easier for you and do the heavy listening.

These choices are for streaming only. Is the best in streaming also the best vinyl recording and performance? That’s for another article.

A few criteria:

  1. Recording must be on Qobuz and/or Tidal HiFi.

  2. It does not have to be HiRes or MQA.

  3. No more than ten recommendations in no particular order, then my top three for streaming in order of preference.

Streaming the Classics 7/Mahler 9 Symphonies Box Sets

Do you ever type a streaming query in Roon for a classical work and are overwhelmed by the choices? Rather than clicking on any old recording or the first one you see, Audiophilia will make things a little easier for you and do the heavy listening.

These choices are for streaming only. Is the best in streaming also the best vinyl recording and performance? That’s for another article.

A few criteria:

  1. Recording must be on both Qobuz and Tidal HiFi.

  2. It does not have to be HiRes or MQA.

  3. No more than ten recommendations in no particular order, then my top three for streaming in order of preference.

Mahler: Symphony No. 3–Adam Fischer/Düsseldorfer Symphoniker

Yet one more performance of Mahler’s 3rd Symphony for one’s library, a symphony ranked 10th out of 20 of the greatest symphonies in the canon by 151 British conductors in a BBC Music Magazine poll of 2016.

Maestro Adam Fischer, appointed Principal Conductor in 2015, leads the forces of the Dusseldorfer Symphoniker, contralto Anna Larsson, with the fine choral assistance from the Women’s Choir of the Städtischer Musikverein zu Düsseldorf and the Clara-Schumann Jugendchores.

​The CD was released by CAvi on October 13th, 2018 with the recording done in the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Germany between November 9th and the 13th of 2017. If the recording is any indication of acoustic excellence, the Tonhalle is a very impressive venue for this fine orchestra.