CES 2016

I'm not sure why my presence in some rooms inspired ballet music, but Gary Koh of Genesis Advanced Technologies' choice of The Lilac Fairy, on an LP test pressing from the Royal Gala Ballet, seemed more than apt.

Good sound was a notable achievement given that the new Genesis Forte loudspeakers ($140,000/pair) had been shipped to Las Vegas a mere two days after assembly, and had only three days of break-in on them. That's hardly long enough for all its line-source array drivers. Changes have been made to the previous model's cabinet and crossover, and are claimed to provide improved midrange and bass response. More actually, since, the loudspeaker cabinet is a constrained-layer damped, composite sandwich with two layers of carbon-fiber to ensure that it no longer resonates at any particular frequency.

Also heard were Genesis Reference monoblocks ($22,000/pair), a class- D design that outputs 1440W with an external power supply. "It's a musical power supply with capacitors of various speeds that match up to the switch," Gary told me. All I know is that Reference monoblocks had a ton more color than the first class-D amps Genesis introduced, and gave indications of major success. Also in the chain: Genesis Muse music player ($15,000) and phono preamp Platinum Edition (with external power supply, $15,000), SMC Audio VRE-1C preamp ($19,950), Absolute Fidelity cables and rack, and Isotek Titan and Nova power conditioning.