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“A kiss back to Sony,” was how Nelson Pass described the debut of a unique pair of Pass Labs monoblocks driving Sony’s SS-AR1 speakers in the Sony room at Venetian. And it was an affectionate kiss indeed—the sound in this room, with a Pass Labs XP-20 preamplifier and Sony’s HA-P1ZES media player, I thought one of the best of the 2014 CES. Yes, it had superb clarity and dynamics, with an impossibly low noisefloor on the 24/176.4k Reference Recordings file of Stravinsky’s Firebird, but these qualities were even apparent on a Red Book file of a Rossini opera excerpt. There was something just right about the sound.

Daft Punk's "Within" was playing when I entered Magico's suite at the Venetian. The sound produced by the pair of the new S3s ($22,600/pair) was large and dynamic, with rich low frequencies. A solo version of "God Bless the Child" followed, and Gregory Porter's baritone was uncolored, with a well-defined, palpable image hanging between the loudspeakers. Finally, the bass drum on Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man pressurized the large room with low frequencies, all this from a a pair of speakers, each with two 8" woofers in a sealed enclosure powered by 100Wpc of amplification, with source an Aurender server feeding data to a dCS Vivaldi DAC and a Vitus preamp.

On passive display in the room adjoining their demonstration room was a single Magico Ultimate v.3 horn speaker, shown here with Magico's Alon Wolf for scale. A five-way design costing a mind-boggling $600,000/system, the speaker’s higher-frequency horns feature a Tractrix flare, the lower-midrange horn a trapezoidal flare, all of which blend smoothly into the baffle. A 15" sealed-box woofer handles frequencies below 125Hz.

Given the lateness of the hour, I could only snap a photo of the Italian Pearl Evolution Victor Ballerina 401/8 DPG loudspeaker ($14,000/pair) and grab a brochure. Slated for U.S. distribution, the three-way D'Appolito design with 89dB "sensibility"—why do so many overseas companies dispense with professionals when they translate their literature into English?—boasts a bass box that is equipped with a "Dynamic Pressure Gide (D.P.G) . . . a substantial and radical innovation in loudspeakers [sic] design. The D.P.G. differs from the usual internal bracings—that only aim at reducing box vibrations—because it is intended to orientate a great part of air flow toward the Cremonesi–Venturi port, purportedly reducing air pressure on the box walls."

Formerly imported from Italy by May Audio, when Art Dudley reviewed their Mastersound 300 B S.E. integrated amplifier, MasterSound may be poised to re-enter the US market. Through Diapason loudspeakers, I was intrigued with the sound of the Mastersound Final Amplifier 845 monoblock, a parallel single-ended eye-catcher. Mastersound's Dueundici preamplifier was also in the system. I regret that the lateness of the hour on T.H.E Show's final day did not allow me to gather more information.

Has it really been a quarter century since Meridian introduced its first “digital active” loudspeaker, the D600, pictured left with designer Bob Stuart standing between the D600 and the DSP6000 from 1990. I reviewed the D600 in November 1989 and was mightily impressed by what I heard from a speaker that used Philips’ then-new S/PDIF receiver chip to allow it to realize DAC, crossover, and amplification in one, elegantly proportioned box.

Second up from the bottom in YG’s speaker line has been the Kipod ($38,800/pair), named after YG founder Yoav Geva’s daughter Hailey, whose nickname was “Kipod” or “Hedgehog” in Hebrew. But as Hailey is growing up fast (as daughters do), it was time to name a new speaker after her; CES saw the premier of the YG Hailey. Priced at $42,800/pair, the three-way, floorstanding Hailey uses technology trickled down from the top-of-the line Sonja that I reviewed last July. YG’s “Billet-core” drivers, where the cones are machined from solid aluminum stock, are combined with a 1" dome tweeter in a machined aluminum enclosure that eschews the Sonja’s double-cabinet construction.