LATEST ADDITIONS

Moderately Priced Speakers. That's my assignment for this year's CES show report—as well as moderately priced turntables and other phono equipment—Moderate being defined this time as priced from $4000/pair to $18,000/pair. Right at the top of this range is the $18,000/pair Raidho XT-2, an extremely slim floorstander that uses the same tweeter as the rest of the Raidho range and two 4" cone drivers.

Constellation Audio’s impressive system—Cygnus Media Server/DAC ($38,000), Altair 2 preamplifier ($78,000), and Hercules 2 monoblock amplifiers ($180,000/pair), as well as MIT cabling and Shunyata power treatment—fed the MartinLogan Neolith beauties ($80,000/pair) with enough power to make deep percussion sound real in the next room.

Constellation Audio's eye-catching set-up—the first time they've shown their reference system at an audio show—included a prototype turntable with two arms that is expected to replace the Continuum Caliburn table. (Is Michael Fremer watching? You betcha.)

Now this was an interesting one. Just one room over from the expensive Constellation set-up sat extreme bargain-for-the-money Audio Alchemy, designed by the same man who oversaw Constellation's engineering, Peter Madnick. But since my beat was the high-priced spread, I turned from Audio Alchemy's great-sounding gear to the TAD CE1 loudspeakers ($24,000/pair), designed by Toru Nagatani (above).

1500–1600 parts, 14 circuit boards including six input boards . . . that's just the start of what gives Pass Labs' top-of-the-line XS Phono stage ($45,000) the right to the "excess" moniker. It's a while back that Nelson Pass told veteran preamp designer Wayne Colburn (above). . .

His name was Thom Pahmer and he broke all my rules: It was 10am the first day of the show and I walked in to his empty room, I introduced myself, "Good morning. My name is Herb Reichert and I covering the lower cost part of the High End for Stereophile—and I am especially interested in stand-mounted speakers." Mr. Pahmer looked at me crossly and said, "These are NOT stand mounted speakers!" I pointed at what I thought was a stand and he says, "The speakers are bolted to them—it is all one unit." I asked about the retail price and he told me, $5500/pair.

With my assignment high-priced amps, preamps, loudspeakers, and turntables, I started off by heading to the big rooms in the Venetian Tower. First up was the Esoteric–Cabasse room, where Esoteric was showing the latest incarnations of its “2” series, the Tokyo-made C-02X stereo line-stage preamplifier and S-02 stereo amplifier ($20,000 each). In a classic case of “trickle-down engineering” (which actually works, while trickle down economics rarely does), the preamp uses the same dual-layer supercaps as in the Grandioso ($40,000). It’s a fully balanced design, with a separate volume control for each phase of each channel. The sound is claimed to be faster, lighter, and more highly resolved, with a “big open soundstage.”