"The Dark Lord has the most advanced planar-magnetic transducer that can be designed and manufactured," claimed Colich, seen with his hand on His Lordship in the photo above
British manufacturer RHA, known primarily for their in-ear headphone models, had the new Dacamp L1 for the first time at CES. Beautifully built and feeling hefty in the hand, the new headphone amp and DAC sports independent processors for each channel. Three knobs along one side control gain (there are three settings), bass and treble, and inside is a 4000mAh lithium ion battery that RHA claims will give you 10 hours of play time.
I was thinking this was a nice $1,000-2,000 product as Questyle's representative was going over the features: 3 types of headphone jacks (regular unbalanced, 4 pin balanced XLR and 2.5mm balanced), USB/Optical/SPDIF inputs on back, swithcable gain via three small switches on the bottom, and AKM AK4490 DAC chip inside.
Cocktail had their new brawnier and refined X-50 server/player on hand. And I'm comparing it to the previous X-30 model, which I'd seen at previous shows. The new X-50 feels much heavier and looks built to kill in a solid black case. On the front is a similar layout to the X-30, with a CD slot on the left and a slightly larger color display on the right.
In response to requests for a more affordable cable that's truly high end, High Fidelity Cable founder Rick Schultz has introduced the company's entry-level Reveal interconnect ($699/1m pair) and speaker cable ($1399/2m pair).
At CES 2017, Japanese manufacturer A&M Ltd. announced the expansion of their Air Tight amplifier line with the ATM-3211 all-triode, 120W monoblock ($72,000/pair).
Dennis Bonotto, new International Sales Manager for Nordost, joined the company's Michael Taylor to introduce Nordost's new top USB cable, the Valhalla 2 USB ($3500/1m)
A 2017 CES Innovation Awards honoree, the HiVi Swan MS-10 ($4000 per pair) is a wireless active stereo system that resembles no loudspeaker that I've seen. (I kept thinking that it looks like one of those "ergonomic" office chairs.)