LATEST ADDITIONS

What a difference a tweeter makes! Elac makes a small bookshelf speaker, the BS 73, which costs $850/pair. They make another, even smaller, bookshelf speaker, the BS 312, which costs $2800/pair. The BS 312 is shown in the center of the photo, with the BS 73 flanking it (I'm not sure which one). There are some obvious differences in construction (the BS 312 has a metal cabinet), but the greatest difference is probably the tweeter: the BS 73 uses a dome tweeter, whereas the BS 312 uses what they call a JET tweeter.

Like many (most?) audiophiles, I've tended to turn up my nose at in-wall and on-wall loudspeakers. I normally assume that there must be major sonic compromises in designing speakers that fade into the background. I was then most pleasantly surprised by the sound of the Totem Tribe V ($6000/pair) at CES 2015. This is an on-wall speaker, but that sort of mounting is not possible in a hotel environment, so the speakers were stand-mounted, as close to the wall as possible. The sound was clean, open, and dynamic, with a firm bass foundation.

Epos and Creek have long been associated—Epos loudspeakers seemed to work particularly well with Creek electronics—but the connection became more solidified in 2014, when Mike Creek acquired total control of Epos and appointed his son, Luke, to be the Epos brand director. The first result of this change of ownership is the new Epos K-Series, which importer Roy Hall describes as being more "lifestyle-oriented."

While his multipurpose integrated amp lurked in the background, I took immediate notice of Dan D'Agostino's hulky 6U form-factor multichannel amplifier, the Cinema Standard. Available with two ($12,000) and three ($15,000) channels, it offers 250Wpc into 8ohms and doubles down to 500 into 4 and 1000 into 2, at 0.1% total harmonic distortion! Now that's dynamic headroom.

Manley Labs' Evanna Manley was deeply involved in discussion so I asked around about what new amps/preamps are showing. The answer was that, since there were no new products being introduced, they decided to present their current offerings to emphasize their aesthetics by having them framed and hung. Point taken. Picture taken.

I visited the Burson room because I retain a strange interest in this Australian company’s innovative discrete op-amp modules even though I am long past my DIY years. (JA has a pair of Burson's op-amp modules in for evaluation.)

Dynaudio North America's Michael Manousselis was proudly demonstrating the Danish parent company's Contour S 3.4 LE speakers with the new Octave V 110 integrated amplifier ($8000), a fixed-bias pentode design that has been optimized specifically for the KT120 tube. Features include wideband output transformers while utilizing soft-start circuitry, extensive monitoring and protection circuitry, as well as an energy-saving EcoMode feature.