I love wandering the halls and coming across a fully formed company that had up until now snuck under the radar in the US. Bladelius is such a brand, enjoying success all around the world and presently making a push into North America. President George Ioakimedes, who resides in the US, is at the show to sign up dealers and spread the word about the Swedish company.
Now that Meridian Sooloos has stabilized the hardware offerings in their front-to-back media server system, the new 2.1 software upgrades are getting most of the attention at this year's show.
CES also sees the announcement of the new control app. Though Sooloos currently has a browser-based controller for the iPhone and Touch, the new software is a true iTunes downloadable free app that adds piles of new features and, if the demo I saw is any indication, runs way faster.
Here's Ayre's Steve Silberman holding the new DX-5 universal player that can handle not only SACD, CD and DVD-Audio, but also DVD and Blu-ray discs. Think of it as an Oppo BDP-83 on super steroids. In fact the company starts with an Oppo drive and MPEG processor and throws everything else out, adding in a new power supply and all the important digital bits. Wrapped up in a beautifully machined package and retailing somewhere around $10,000, pre-orders begin next week, and deliveries should happen sometime in the first half of February.
Ed Meitner's EMM Labs also has a new SACD/CD player/reference DAC called the XDS1. Available now for $25,000, the company's Shahin Al Rashid says that if you want the lastest and greatest from Ed, this is the piece to buy. In addition to the XLR and RCA stereo outputs on the back, there are both AES/EBU and Toslink input jacks to accomodate external sources.
Known for some of the best loudspeaker demos at CES, TAD is now branching out into electronics. In addition to a new amplifier (which Erick Lichte will be covering) on hand is the company's new D600 disc player, which will retail for $26,500 and appear next month in the US. In typical TAD fashion, this is a tour de force design sporting Burr-Brown PCM1794 DACs, an external power supply and the ability to play both CD and SACD (2 channel only).
Our copy editor, Richard Lehnert, sent this to me today. I love it.
<i>From left: JA (with unidentified baby), Jon Iverson, and Erick Lichte, riding an elevator at the Venetian, site of the high-performance audio suites, on Day 1 of the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show.</i>
The companion loudspeaker to <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_57">Denon's RCD-CX1 SACD/CD receiver</A> is the SC-CX303 ($1200/pair). The SC-CX303 is a ported two-way with a 1" soft-dome tweeter and a 5" carbon-fiber–cone woofer. Denon claims a sensitivity of 86dB and an impedance of 6 ohms. Instead of a formal frequency response, Denon instead gives an unreferenced figure for frequency extension that, at 35Hz–60kHz, is neither helpful nor credible.