Thiel's PR wonk Micah Sheveloff grabbed me as I walked past the room in the Sands Convention Center Thiel was sharing with Bryston to meet with Frank Göbl of Canton. "You've got to hear the new CS2.4 Special Edition." As Wes Phillips had been mightily impressed by the original CS2.4 ($4900/pair) when he reviewed it in November 2005, I looked at my watch. Enough time. I went into the dem room.

The CS2.4SE costs $8000/pair and only 150 pairs are being made. It differs from the original version by having a cost-no-object complement of very high quality polypropylene and custom-made polystyrene capacitors, and is been finished in a hand-selected Birdseye Maple veneer stained a deep red.

It sounded as good as it looked. With "Superman's Song" from Crash Test Dummies, played back from a Music Vault source feeding a Bryston BDA-1 D/A processor ($1995), BPA-26 preamplifier, and pair of 7B-SST monoblocks ($7990/pair), and with the lowest octave (below the mid-30s—the CS2.4SEs were run fullrange) reinforced by a Thiel SS2 subwoofer ($9800), the sound was simply superb. (Other items in the system included Wireworld cables and a Torus RM-20 AC line conditioner.)

Unfortunately I only had the time for one song and I missed the dem of Thiel's zöet whole-house system, which uses IP-addressable self-powered loudspeakers. My apologies, Jim, Kathy, and Micah for my sudden disappearance.