LATEST ADDITIONS

Minneapolis-based Bel Canto Design (props to my homies) brought a new amplifier to CES this year. The e.One REF150s ($1495, shown on the lower rack) is a fully balanced dual-mono amplifier that will put out 150Wpc into 8 ohms This may be a wee-sized amplifier, but it sounded huge strapped to a pair of new Joseph Audio bookshelf speakers.

This is Rosemarie Torcivia. I just met her today. She works for Source Interlink Media, the parent company of <I>Stereophile</I> and <I>Home Theater</I> magazines. She gets to spend her days at CES in the <I>Stereophile</I> and <I>Home Theater </I> suite answering questions and being a knowledgeable and friendly face for the dealers, manufactures and readers who pop in to say hello. She was thrilled when I took her picture and told her she was going to be in the official <I>Stereophile</I> CES blog. <I>I</I> was thrilled when Rosemarie helped Jon Iverson and I get lunch today. I like Rosemarie and I bet you would too.

God, how I love mbl's demos. Their rooms at RMAF have been major highpoints of the last two shows for me, and their exhibit at CES 2010 is just as fine. There was an incredible warmth and inner glow to the midrange, a tremendous presence and clarity to the sound of cymbals, just the right weight to an electric bass, and a wonderful transparency throughout the range that made me want to stay forever.

B&W's openng day press conference at the LVCC revealed an entirely new line of Diamond Series loudspeakers in a new piano-black finish. This new vintage comes from the line of monitors that included the Diamond Silver Signature ,an $18,000/pair high-end two-way that had been produced in a limited run of 1000 pairs. The smallest member of this speaker line is a two-way, stand-mounted monitor called the B&W 805 Series Diamond, a strong value at $5000/pair. The stands are extra, but are now available in black.

On the first day of the Show, B&W announced the sixth generation of their flagship, full-range, three-way floorstanding 800 loudspeaker. The new 800 costs $24,000/pair and includes a transmission line-loaded, diamond-dome tweeter with a quad-magnet motor to increase sensitivity and dynamic range. Other features include a dual-magnet motor for the woofers, B&W's proprietary Kevlar FST midrange driver, a matrix enclosure and a crossover that includes silver, gold and oil construction Mundorf capacitors.

Nothing beats starting off four days of room-hopping at CES on a joyful. In this case, the delights were provided by Jeff Joseph of Joseph Audio.

When I entered the Nordost room, Roy Gregory and Lars Kristensen of Nordost were in the midst of preparing a demo of their Foundation Theory. Although the literature on the theory, which should be available on Nordost's website, consumes five small-print pages, the basic theory boils down to this: consistency in your brand of cabling, whatever the brand may be, produces greater rewards than mixing different lines of cabling.