CES 2017

The ebullient Irv Gross, Director of Sales at Constellation, greeted me when I walked into the company's exhibit room at CES 2017. He pointed to the back of the room when I asked whether Constellation had introduced a new amplifier: there waited the 185-lb, 500Wpc Centaur II Stereo ($55,000), connected to a pair of Magico M3 loudspeakers ($84,000/pair) via thick MIT speaker cables. Irv explained that its 500Wpc had grown from the 250Wpc Centaur version by using the power supply transformer from their reference Hercules amplifier.