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Sony's pre-Show press conference made little reference to sound quality, and SACD did not get even a mention. However, Sony's display did show their latest SACD player and the new MDR-V900HD headphones ($249), which have claimed frequency response extending to 80kHz. These 'phones sounded exceptionally smooth and well-balanced. Comfortable, too.
Gotta sing! Gotta dance! The irrepressible Michael Fremer is excited about all the cool analog gear he is going to hear at CES, while Kal "multichannel" Rubinson takes it all in stride.
Telarc/Heads Up's Amanda Sweet displays the label's latest three discs: Ladysmith Black Mambazo's Long Walk to Freedom, Hiromi's Spiral, and Vilvaldi's Gloria paired with Bach's Magnificat. The Vivaldi/Handel disc is one of Wes' show demo discs, boasting extremely natural DSD surround.
Cayin's American distributor Sze Leung had three new units on display at the Acoustic Sounds booth: the Phono One ("under $2000"), a tube driven phono section, Citation Sound 1 ($3500) full-function preamplifier (phono section included), and the HA-1 ($700) tubed headphone amp/integrated amp (3Wpc). Jackson Mar and Anna Gao of Cayin's parent company, Zhuhai Spark Electronic Equipment Co., Ltd., came over for CES and couldn't resist grinning when the price of the HA-1 caused bystanders to whistle in admiration.
Chad Kassem couldn't resist showing us his latest LPS: Sonny Terry's Sonny Is King and Johnny Griffin's The Little Giant.
MoFi's Coleman Brice shows off his latest LPS: Richard Thompson's Some Enchanted Evening and Blood Sweat and Tears.
Musical Fidelity's US distributor Signal Path invited John Atkinson and me to hear the American debut of the kW DM25 Transport ($3000) and kW DM25 DAC ($3500). I didn't know the prices of the separates, so when I saw how luxe they looked I added an extra zero to the prices. But no, they really do cost just $6500 together.
That's a lot of green, but the DM25s are solid and drop-dead gorgeous, not to mention full of nifty technology. The transport has an adjustable suspension—"Tunable" was how David Solomon put it. It also splits the digital signal into separate left and right balanced…
We were on a mission, of sorts. A mission to find a pair of small loudspeakers, which, as it turns out, is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Especially around these parts, where, it seems, size and volume are set to impress.
So, instead of finding small loudspeakers, we found some Italian women.
"This looks right up your alley," Jon joked, pointing at a hanging banner of goddesses luring travelers to the Bolzano Villetri suite.
Honestly, I wouldn't have noticed the curves and graces had Jon not opened my eyes to them. The Italians always impress me with…