With its forthcoming BHK Signature 250 amplifier ($7500), PS Audio's Paul McGowan (above) has stepped outside his own self-imposed price point box. By inviting his longtime friend and colleague, Bascom H. King (Constellation, Infinity, Infinity class-A, Conrad-Johnson, and Marantz), to create his magnum opus without regard to price, his goal was to make, in his own words, "one of the top five amplifiers in the world."
On one level, this was just "another CES." The barrage of humanity, traffic, flashing lights, cigarette smoke, hawkers, gawkers, noise masquerading as music, and the ever-present Las Vegas Strip above was such that, as I entered the Venetian on the last day, all I could think of was the promise that, before the night was over I would be back amongst the trees, silence, and rejuvenating peace of our home...The Age of the Audiophile is far from over. As CES 2015 has made abundantly clear, the show may be over, but the fun has just begun.
Siltech has just released its Siltech Triple Crown interconnects (est. price in Europe, US prices still be determined, 20,000/1m pair) and speaker cables (est. price 35,000/2m pair). Touted as "cable royalty... sets new benchmark for interconnect and speaker cable performance," these major lookers utilize the company's newest mono-crystal technology. According to Lennart Thissen, who designed the cable's unique mechanical parts, they have "the lowest capacitance of any cable we know."
In this case, it's the Bowers & Wilkins T-7 battery-operated Bluetooth loudspeaker ($349). Shipping now, this baby holds a charge for 18 hours, and takes four hours to fully recharge. The T-7 can pair with up to eight devices, has two 3" full-range drivers and one passive radiator. "It's just a lot of fun," says regional sales director Marc Schnoll.
Rotel previewed three new "best ever" models at CES. Although the passive display allowed for little more than photo and note taking, I learned that the brand new RC-1590 DAC/preamplifier ($1749), which ships in March, promises to be "the best stereo preamplifier Rotel has ever made."
"The High End needs products that can demonstrate to customers why they should spend more money for the high-end," Dave Nauber, President of Classé, told me. "Thus we've introduced the Sigma Series, a new range of products with prices half those of our other products."
Closing three days of Hi-Res presentations at CES 2015 were (from leftright) Maureen Droney, Senior Executive Director of The Recording Academy's Producers and Engineers Wing and a recording engineer who has worked with Santana and John Hiatt; Marc Finer, whose Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) consults with Sony and other entities as he attempts to align messaging on the hi-res front; and Robert Heiblim, Vice Chair of the Consumer Electronics Association's (CEA) Audio Division.
Incorporating noise-cancelling geometries, DH Labs' forthcoming flagship Corona power cord (approx. $850/1.5m) is triple-shielded. The company's Greg Hovsepian notes that the cord, which makes "proprietary use of 1386 individual strands of silver-coated copper, is manufactured in the US.
Yup, they grow 'em big in Pasadena. Stage III's Leviathan power cord ($14,500/1.5m) has much larger silver-palladium conductors than the previous flagship model.