John and Tara spent the first week of October in Montréal, Canada, with warm greetings from our new friends at Simaudio. We toured Simaudio's factory, listened to excellent hifi, and even had our first taste of poutine. Oui!
Our master of ceremonies for the week was Costa Koulisakis, Director of the MOON Training Program. Costa guided us through the state-of-the-art, 60,000 square-foot facility in Boucherville, Quebec, where all MOON products are engineered and built.
Victor Sima founded Simaudio in 1980, and from the beginning Sima set out to offer an alternative to mass-market audio products, focusing on high-performance music reproduction, engineering discipline, and long-term value. Forty-six years later, those principles still stand today.
The Factory
Simaudio service area
The first stop on the factory tour was the service center, where two engineers repair and upgrade customers’ beloved MOON units.
If you take away only one thing from the factory tour, let it be this. Simaudio takes pride in building products that are robust, sustainable, and have minimal environmental impact. This is why they provide a 10-year warranty on all of their products. Simaudio wants music lovers to enjoy their gear for years, with music as the soundtrack to their lives.
Factory Advantage
SMT machine
SMT room
Simaudio assembles all its electronics in-house and mostly by hand. However, precision-programmed machines help the factory create perfect circuit boards. Pictured above are Surface-Mount Technology (SMT) machines, which are robots that rapidly and accurately place electronic components onto printed circuit boards.
Inside the selective soldering machine
The circuit board then goes through a selective soldering unit, where a small fountain of liquid metal is precisely controlled to solder the pins to the board with a specific time programmed for each pin. This machine's processes and capabilities have been built up over decades of experience.
Selective soldering machine - finished circuit board
MOON’s circuit boards are hybrid, meaning they use both surface-mount and through-hole components. Why does this matter? Because it directly affects sound quality, thermal handling, repairability, component size, and manufacturing costs. Again, I ask, why does this matter? Because it speaks to Simaudio's value proposition: as music lovers and engineers, they have been creating and designing audio components that seek to surpass the limits of sound quality and redefine what is possible for forty-six years.
One advantage Costa noted on our tour was Simaudio’s ability to maintain product quality control. “When you can see and control absolutely everything along the way, this allows us to be flexible if something needs to be added or modified.”
Handcrafted Audio Components
Hand-built components
The Simaudio factory even has a five-axis HAAS CNC work center. This is where the aluminum is machined into its completed form. The beautiful chassis parts of our beloved hifi gear are meticulously machined in-house.
Simaudio CNC machine
Quality Control + Human Intelligence
Simaudio testing bench
Every completed board and component is verified and tested with expert equipment and by actual humans to ensure everything is right and good. The quality control (QC) department tests functionality and performance to ensure distortion and noise levels meet the parameters specified from the design stage.
One of the final steps in this QC process is burn-in, for example, of an 861 Power Amplifier. Overnight, the 861 will be connected to a digital multimeter (DMM), run through its paces, and challenged electrically. If something goes wrong, Simaudio would much rather fix it at the factory than have it happen to a customer. “Fix the issue before it’s an issue” is their mantra.
Pile of MOON units
MOON Reference Sound Rooms
Small sound room
Large sound room
Both listening rooms were designed and assembled by Simaudio engineers. Our first listening room was the smaller of the two, at roughly 20’x15’. The larger sound room was 20’x30’. Both are reference-level sound rooms, incredibly quiet, and sonically support the systems being demonstrated.
We were given the opportunity to spend two days listening, and we were able to hear each MOON component, from the 110 LP v2 Phono Preamplifier to the 888 monoblock Power Amplifiers. We heard audible improvements at each step up through the Compass and North Collections. There was no sense of diminishing returns as we moved up the Simaudio line. Everything we heard was excellent and exceeded our expectations for their respective places within the MOON universe.
Simaudio 861 Power Amplifier
Every MOON component has a square logo with a cropped treble clef, representing music as a core element and the guiding principle. For Simaudio, creating, building, and enjoying MOON components is the performance of this company’s lifetime.
The Skinny
From our visit to the Simaudio MOON factory, we both took away the high level of care for the hifi and the business, but most importantly, for the people, the customers, and lovers of the MOON products.
Pearl Audio is proud to be your Simaudio dealer in Portland. We have Oregon’s largest display and new inventory of Simaudio MOON equipment. We look forward to continuing to reach for the MOON.
Postscript
This was the best poutine we had all week! It was called The Forager and had mushrooms, goat cheese, truffle oil, fries, and whatever Canadian magic they sprinkled on this dish. Très bien!
