TAVES Show Toronto - Atom / Totem Sky and assorted ramblings

I saw the Uniti Atom at the TAVES show this weekend just north of Toronto. Very impressive piece of hardware (gorgeous remote as well). The gear in the Plurison room (the Naim importer for Canada) was set up more like a showroom than a listening space, so while the Atom was hooked up to a really cool pair of small Focal floorstanders (not sure which model), doing any critical listening was not possible. I was very impressed with the build and fit and finish for sure.

The most impressive thing I heard at this show was the new Totem Sky... small standmount speakers that sounded incredibly good driven by a Naim Uniti. For $1800 Canadian per pair, I have to think they will sell a gazillion of these speakers.

Otherwise this show had the usual enormous multi 100 thousand dollar rigs shoehorned into tiny rooms, all of which tends to make me roll my eyes and my feet turn in the opposite direction. 

I went hoping to find a vendor who was selling Quadraspire posts... currently my amp needs a little more vertical so that I can get my Burndy's up off the floor. Didn't find the posts, but did find an isolation device called a Nordost Sort Cone... these things are about 4 inches tall.... so picked them up figuring I would try them. Went home and put them under the head unit of my 300... disconnected... destressed... then reconnected my Burndy's which were now hanging gloriously free of any other cables and up off the floor. Turned my rig on and bam... what a difference. Now I'm trying to figure out if it's due to the Burndys being off the floor... or due to the isolation provided by the sort cones... or both, all while pondering the wisdom of bypassing the built in isolation (the little rubber feet of the 300 DR) of a very expensive amp for something that costs about $200. More hifi nonsense to ponder endlessly. But my Burndy's are off the floor so if nothing else I can feel good about that :-)

OMG... Just imagine what would happen if I could get my speaker cables up off the floor! (that will never never happen).

 Moderated Post:  See main TAVES thread here: https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...91#66047985372345791