LATEST ADDITIONS

When Jason Victor Serinus visited the Bluebird Audio room on the Venetian's 35th floor, he mentioned that Chord was demonstrating its Blu Mk.2 CD transport ($11,788) along with the Dave DAC that I reviewed and was impressed by last June. I chatted with Chord's digital guru Robert Watts (above in photo) about the new transport and he mentioned that it incorporated his latest WTA (Watts Transient Aligned) digital filter with a million taps! (The more taps there are, the closer a DAC can reproduce the timing information in the reconstructed analog signal—see my DAVE review for why Robert feels why this should be so.) I was puzzled, as a digital reconstruction filter belongs in a DAC, not a transport.

I was working on our video coverage of the 2018 CES with our resident videographer Jana Dagdagan, and as video is such a time sink, I wasn't able to visit as many rooms as I usually do. But one room I managed to visit and that stood out when it came to sound quality was Constellation's.

"This is the evolution of our Sonja series," Explains YG Acoustics senior account executive Kerry St. James. "This follows the Sonja 1 series and the 'dot' indicates how many modules there are in the model. So this is a Sonja 2.2 (he points to the demo in the room) meaning it is the second series and has two modules. The 2 series is available as one module or expanded into three modules, the Sonja 2.3."

"The 5 Series stared with Arnie Nudell in 1993 and the Genesis V," says Gary Koh, from Seattle's Genesis Advanced Technologies. "Then there was the G500 and then the G501, G5.2, G5.3 . . . Now I've given up numbers and we have the Genesis Maestro." Retail price is $30,000 a pair and they are available now.

Paul Jayson, president of Viola Audio Laboratories, New Haven, CT was on hand to demo the company's new Chorale Integrated Amplifier. Price is still to be determined, says Jayson, "but we are looking at around $19,000, and plan on shipping in March."

There was a brief back and forth as to whether they wanted to release information on the new cables (seen above in prototype form), but eventually Ray Kimber said yes. Kimber's Lonny Gould described these as "a carbon-infused eight wire cable." No pricing or release dates are set yet.

Rune Skov, sales director for Dantax Radio, manufacturer of Raidho, directed me over to the XT-5, explaining that it is the latest addition to their extensive line of speakers. "And as you can see, it is a type of a line source because we are using multiple drivers. In the X series we normally use ceramic drivers, but for the XT series we are using titanium drivers instead."