As <i>Stereophile</i>'s senior editor, Jonathan Scull wrote a popular column called "<a href="http://www.stereophile.com/finetunes/">Fine Tunes</a>." He now handles <a href="http://www.scullcommunications.com/">marketing and press relations</a> for Bel Canto, Furutech, Loiminchay, and Ultralink/XLO. And does a pretty decent impersonation of me.
Ad Manager, Laura LoVecchio, is obviously having a great time at CES.
The inimitable <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/wesphillips/">WP</a> takes a poke at me.
As I was heading out dazed from the Sennheiser headphone experience, Dynaudio’s Mike Manousselis invited me to briefly listen to their demo. In the middle of the Convention Center’s huge South Hall, and at a reasonable volume level that did not attempt to drown out the ubiquitous din, a very cool Patricia Barber had claimed the space as her own. Abetted by a Wadia player and Simaudio amplification, speakers that I think were the Focus 360—Mike, help me out here; I hadn’t yet come down to earth from the Sennheisers—were doing a marvelous job of filling the space with inviting sound. If anything could entice me to transition from Richard Strauss’ Alpine heights to Patricia Barber’s sensual coolness, it was this speaker/electronics combo.
Siltech Importer Ethan Wood, who claims to be the biggest man in the high-end industry, gave me low-down on the family affair known as Siltech and Crystal Cable. (Note: Crystal Cable is in the process of choosing a new importer for its cable and speaker line). Siltech was founded by Edwin Van der Kleig, while Crystal is property of his wife Gabi. Both companies use highly pure silver and 24K gold in the majority of their products.
When John Atkinson requested that I check out the new state-of-the-art Sennheiser HD 800 headphones ($1399.95), which will debut next month, I dreaded descending into the madness of the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Little did I know that instead of encountering an impossible throng of tech-crazed computer geeks, I would have my peak sonic experience of CES 2009.
Sam Laufer of Laufer Teknik has become the US manufacturer and distributor of Bybee Wire and the distributor of the Bybee Power Purifier ($4500) that is manufactured by Transparent. Here he's pictured holding the new Bybee wire, which contains the equivalent of three Bybee Golden Goddess Speaker Bullets. While I haven't tried the wire, I have two sets of Bullets on each of my reference speaker inputs, and am continually startled by their ability to clarify and refine low-level bass detail. I never, ever thought I could get this much bass clarity from my speakers, especially from closely spaced, multiple parallel lines of double basses and cellos.
"We are your one-stop shop for cables and tweaks," proclaimed Joseph Cohen of The Lotus Group, while leading me through two rooms filled products. Even the new products took up two pages of notes. Through it all, I remained extremely jealous of legendary mastering engineer Steve Hoffman, who had settled onto a couch in front of the fabulous Feastrex $55,000/pair speakers, and was blissfully tapping his foot to the extremely realistic, full-range sound of a jazz combo playing back on a A Feastrex modified EMT studio type CD player with outboard line transformer.
Somewhere in the maze of air-walled convention cells in the Sands, I stumbled upon PSC Audio's Pure Silver Connection cable. Handmade in Perth, Australia using the finest, purest Australian silver one can find—6Ns, or 99.99997% pure—each cable receives three to six annealing heating and cooling treatments (without cryogenically freezing) to increase the length of silver crystals, thereby increasing conductivity by 20% over untreated silver.
Montreal-based company Verity has been slowly building a reputation for sound quality with its unique speakers, which combine a conventional head-unit on-top a woofer module that, unusually, mounts the drivers on its rear. CES saw the launch of two new models, the Leonore ($15,995/pair) and Finn ($5995/pair). Both speakers offer high sensitivities in the low 90s, and while the Leonore produced an impressive sound from Keith Jarrett's <I>Live at Carnegie Hall</I> CD powered by Nagra's forthcoming MSA stereo amp that Wes Phillips blogged about earlier, I was also impressed by the more affordable, one-box Finn, which was demmed with Nagra's PMA "pyramid" amps. The rest of the system included a Basis Debut turntable and Vector 4 tonearm, Nagra PLL preamp and Nagra's new battery-powered BPS phono stage, which I am sure Mikey Fremer will be reviewing in the near future.