The Hegel Amplifier Experience
My CES encounter with Hegel featured the 75Wpc H80 integrated amp ($2000) driving (are you ready?) the Magico S-1 loudspeakers ($12,900/pair).
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LATEST ADDITIONS
Naim’s Magical Mu-so
Every CES show reporter I bumped into would start the conversation with, "So, Herb what have you seen that you liked?" Or, "What's the coolest new product?" The second I walked it the Naim room, I knew the answer to both questions.
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The Affordable Audeze EL-8
The new Audeze EL-8s ($699) are not just moderately-priced alternatives to the reference quality LCD-Xsthey offer their own special brand of reference quality and new technologies.
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Thorens' TD 203
To me, the most important issue surrounding the digital vs analog debate is not sound quality (each has their virtues). It is always the user interface: Must I use a keyboard, a remote, or a tonearm finger-lift? I love turntables, tonearms, and cartridges. I especially love them when they are inexpensive, beautiful, easy to use, come with a mounted and aligned Audio Technica cartridge and, amazingly, a uni-pivot tonearm like the new $999 Thorens TD-203 does. Fit and finish looked superb.
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Technics Amps and Speakers
I had heard she was talented pianist. I had seen her in photos before, but I never expected the beautiful and statuesque director of Panasonic Technics, Michiko Ogawa, to greet me in person at the door of Technics' CES showroom.
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T+A PDP 3000 HV CD/SACD player with DSD/PCM DAC
There's been some back and forth on AudioStream.com and other forums about how to best play back DSD and PCM, with some finding that having a single digital section converting both formats is less than optimal.
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T+A decided that in order to do both formats justice in a single product, they would have to create completely independent decoding and analog output sections (including two sets of analog output jacks on the back!). The result is a design that the company believes is a unique and "fully optimized approach to the decoding of both PCM and DSD."
MSB Media Server
They were still playing with name ideas when I spotted the prototype media server, here shown from behind with the top off. MSB says there will be up to 3TB of storage inside (which is expandable with external NAS drives) along with an "industrial-grade" CPU with 7 year guarantee. Also included is the company's legendary Femto clock, and MSB Pro I2S output. Control will be via web browser and the server should be available in around 6 months for approx $29k.
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MSB Universal Media Transport V and Diamond DAC V
MSB is now shipping new casework for both the UMT ($6,995) and Diamond DAC V ($29,995), which I think better reflect the company's dedication to digital audio perfection. The DAC is shown above and the UMT below.
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ReQuest The Beast Music Server
Unfortunately The Beast was not in their room when I visited MSB, and only showed up later, so I asked MSB's Vince Galbo to send me some photos. MSB is the North American distributor for the Swiss-built The Beast.
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Lumin S1 DAC/Streamer/Renderer and L1 Server
Lumin started shipping their flagship S1 this year and displayed it in both silver and black in their room. In the photo above is the silver S1 along with two L1 Music Library UPnP 2 TB servers below.
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