CES 2011

CES Unveiled turned out to have little of interest to Stereophile readers—except those who are general technical geeks. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Most of the products on display involved mobile computing, computer peripherals, etc., and the exhibits were simple table-top setups. Major CES exhibitors like Sony and Panasonic were conspicuous by their absence. Samsung just had some of their small digicams. I guess the high performance audio community decided to pass on this event, and it makes sense: what makes these products special can’t be evaluated by just looking at them.

Polk’s Blackstone TL3 ($300/pair) marks the eight-generation of Polk’s satellite speaker systems, and combines prior Polk technologies with new industrial design and improved time-aligned drive units, including a ring-radiator tweeter. The system we heard included a Marantz receiver and Samsung Blu-ray player, and I was very impressed by the small speakers’ ability to throw a wide soundstage with solid center-fill and fine detail.

Dynaudio’s DM2/6 ($800/pair) is a bass-reflex design with a 5.5” mid-woofer and a coated soft-dome tweeter. Said to be easy to drive for any amplifier, the DM2/6 has a rated sensitivity of 86dB with a 6 ohm impedance. The DM2/6 is available in very attractive black ash and rosewood vinyl veneers, and is engineered and built in Denmark.

MSB is offering a new universal transport based on Oppo's BDP-93, which plays practically anything on disc including DVD-Audio, SACD, Blu-ray, CD etc. The player also sports a USB input allowing it to stream from a USB memory stick player, external hard drive or computer.

The MSB Universal Media Transport will be available in about six weeks, with a multichannel option available six weeks after that. Price starts at $3,995.

MSB was also showing their new "high res" USB DAC that the company claims can play a 384kHz stream over USB or SPDIF "bit perfect". Depending on options, the Platinum DAC IV starts at $6,500 and tops out at $27k.

My beat is digital, but I'm particularly on the lookout for music server products. So I was pleased to see that Cary had their MS-1 server on display and fully loaded.

The spartan front panel has a single power indicator and disc drawer for ripping CDs directly to the internal 1 Terabyte SATA drive. On the rear are two USB connectors and an ethernet port to connect to your network. One USB jack operates as the digital out sending the data stream to your DAC and the other is for an external mirror drive or for sourcing files from USB sticks or other drives connected to the MS-1.

Cary has created apps (available for free in Apple's App Store) specific for your iPad or iPhone/Touch to control the system and music library.

The MS-1 is available now for $2,495 with a power supply upgrade to be released shortly for an additional $450. Cary says it is also looking to increase future storage capacity (the current drive can hold about 2,600-2,800 albums as FLAC files).

Stacked on top is the company's new $1,495 Xciter DAC which can handle anything up to 32bit/192kHz with 4 selectable inputs and a complete bevy of connectors on back.

Company Technical Director Andy McHarg shows off the dCS Debussy DAC with the new 24bit/192kHz asynchronous USB upgrade card, available in April. Current owners who'd like to upgrade can do so for $250 and folks who purchase the DAC from now until April will get the upgrade for the cost of shipping. The fully upgraded product will be available March or April for $11,499.

The show will open in a few minutes and 5-year CES veteran Rosemarie Torcivia is ready to hand out free magazines and answer questions in room 29216.