CES 2009

Richard Rives, famous for tuning rooms around the world is now distributing audiophile products. Among those is the new Navison Audio Reference 228 CD Player which sports the latest Philips CD-Pro2M transport and 24 bit Delta Sigma DAC technology.

In addition to Sooloos and Blue Smoke, Qsonix was also demonstrating the latest iteration of their touchscreen music server system. The fully self-contained Q110 package is comprised of the single DAC/HD drive/software box and up to four touchscreens.

"What's new?" I asked Jeff Rowland.

Also on display at Esoteric was the nifty E-03 phono section ($5500). It has two phono inputs—MC and one that can play either MC or MM cartridges. It also sports a demagnetizing function, which takes a scant 30 second. It has externally selected impedance and capacitance for each input. The E-03 also has a high-voltage custom power supply. It should be available in March.

Saturday morning Ayre held a press conference at the top of the Venetian to reveal their latest products, which include a new USB DAC, the QB-9.

Upon hearing that I was looking for relatively inexpensive electronics to feature in our blog, Parasound's Richard Schram and publicist extraordinaire Gordon Sell immediately pointed to a static display of Parasound's Halo P 7 multichannel analog preamp. Designed by Finland's Juha Kuusama, the Halo P 7's origins lie in Juha's design for Parasound's first surround processor, which was released late in the last century.

After years of attending shows where Nordost cabling was successfully paired with Raidho Acoustics speakers, I was surprised to learn that the Raidho Acoustics Ayra C-2 ($24,000) speakers are internally wired with Nordost Valhalla. No wonder the combination is so synergistic. Frankly, even a boom box would sound like a breakthrough product if it were wired with the Nordost Odin I heard in this room. Odin ain't cheap—Odin power cables cost $11,000 for a decent length, interconnects $16,000 for 1m, and speaker wire starts at $20,000 for 1m, with the best sound said to come from 4 meter lengths of speaker cable and an investment of $38,000—but the sound is as full, complete, neutral, and satisfying as anything I've yet heard. My own experience confirms that single Odin power cable can transform the sound of a system.