CES 2015

Sandy Gross and his charming daughter, Wendy, who was at CES helping dad out.

TAD's chief engineer, Andrew Jones, always cheerful and happy, took great pleasure in introducing his newest design, the TAD CE1 Compact Evolution One, a contemporary styled bookshelf loudspeaker. This product produced my once-a-show epiphany for good sound.

In a repeat of last year's CES, Accuphase again showed up without their latest digital product actually in the room. So company representative Kohei Nishigawa was a good sport and again held up the photo of the soon to be released DC-37.

At Musical Surroundings, the Metis line-stage preamp from Aesthetix, first seen at the 2014 RMAF, was running the big demo system. This new 4-tube preamp replaces the multi-chassis Callisto at about $25,000.

As we've noted in the past, the Rubicon has a rich feature set and price to match: $40k. And now the product has been updated to include support for DSD 128 and 24/384 streaming via USB.

Going into the Audio Arts room at CES was like going through a time portal into the 1986 CES, as Flim and the BB's classic album Tricycle was playing. The system was based on the top-line Zellaton speakers ($79,750/pair) driven by Swiss CH amplification connected with Schnerzinger cables. According to the meters on the Precision M1 monoblocks ($94,750/pair), while the average level was 4–5W, the peaks on the drums reached 360W and more! Yet the sound remained clean and uncompressed. An impressive if expensive sound.

Brad Lunde, President, of Lone Mountain Audio, the US importer for English speaker manufacturer ATC, showed me this three-way, floorstanding, powered ATC SCM40A loudspeaker ($12,499/pair).