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Esoteric's two-box (transport plus D/A converter) SACD player, feeding A70 amps (not sold in the US), an Audio Research Reference 3 preamp, and a pair of Aerial Acoustics 20T speakers combined to produce one of the smoothest, most musical sounds I heard at the show.
If anyone was even in danger of presuming vinyl was passé at CES, all they had to do was come within earshot of the energetic DJ manning dual Stanton turntables at Intel's Las Vegas Convention Center booth. The DJ, Vince Pistricola, aka DJ Shortround, emerged from the Detroit music scene as a DJ and magazine publisher covering the latest in hip-hop with his Detroit Equipment Quarterly. As I took some time out to listen, DJ Shortround blasted through the din from thousands of rushing conventiongoers with a steady diet of techno. Although you'd think DJ Shortround's frantic scratching…
Jon Iverson has a nose. I mean, he just knows—for instance, we were walking through the Alexis Park, I mean Alexis Villas, when he stopped in front of Zu's logo and said, "I think this might be worth investigating."
We stepped inside and were greeted by Adam Decari and Sean Casey, two young'uns from Ogden, UT, who had spent time working for Ray Kimber (must've been their first jobs out of college, because these guys can't be much over 30). "Welcome to the Zu!"
Zu is technically Zu Cables, but what intrigued me was the two loudspeakers on display: the Definition ($9000/pair) and…
Balanced Audio Technology's Geoffrey Poor proudly showed off BAT's new Solid-state preamp, the VK42SE ($5995). Those ominous looking black cans are brand new state-of-the-art oil-filled capacitors, which will sport a different livery in the production model, by the way. The 42SE features BAT's power supply bypass, dual mono, zero feedback circuitry and it sounds "more tubelike than some of our tubed designs," Poor proclaimed. "It's like a VK42 on steroids! It has more air, more liquidity, and more testicular fortitude. I don't know why we don't have it in the system."
We wondered…
It has been a while since we saw a new design from Egglestonworks, so we were happy to see the Fontaine II ($5500/pair.) The Fontaine has a small footprint and looks even smaller than its 41" height would suggest. the driver complement is a 1" fabric dome tweeter and two 6" midrange/woofers. Like the other EW designs, the Fontaine II utilizes a transmission line.
Jon Iverson and I rocked out to the Dead's Skull and Roses and found the sound big as bright-sized life. It had pep and energy—and, at least in that room, not quite enough Phil Lesh to our liking. We may have to check back…
Leave it to a bass player. John Atkinson sidled up to Jon Iverson and me last night and said, "Have you heard Ascendo's room yet? It has a bandpass woofer that doesn't sound like a bandpass woofer at all—it sounds good."
So JI and I dutifully hied us Ascendo-ward first thing this morning and checked out the System M-S ($36,000/pair), a speaker that mates a decoupled ribbon tweeter that can be manually time-aligned with the bass cabinet, and a semi symmetrical bandpass cabinet sporting an 11" bass driver on the outside and an internal 8.25" driver. Designer Jurgen Scheuring says his…
Parting the colorful wooden beads makes a sound like brushes against snare. I'm enveloped in soft green glow and the sweetest scents of liquor and jazz. I stand in the corner, trying to figure it all out. Two of the tallest speakers I've ever seen — vintage Acoustat 2+2s — climb all the way up to the ceiling. There's a glowing palm tree dancing between them. Along the walls are concert posters and all sorts of album art. To my right is a mirrored alcove, a bar area, holding many varieties of absinthe and other liquors I've never seen. The room is filled with smiles and everyone…
When your company is called Muse, I guess some product names just suggest themselves. When Kevin Halverson needed a moniker for his CD, DVD-A/V, and SACD player, he thought of Polyhymnia, the muse of sacred poetry, geometry, mime, meditation, and agriculture. Halverson says, "It means 'many voices," which it also does.
The Polyhymnia is based on Muse's Modular Audio-Video Platform (MAP), which went through three generations. Upgrades to the MAP platform for the Polyhymnia include: a dual laser OPU, support for all PCM data rates and types, and optional attenuator , ultra-high-end…
Dusty Vawter's Channel Island Audio has made its reputation building high-performance audio components in extremely small packages, but we were still surprised to see how tiny CIA's new VDA-2 DAC ($599)is. How small? Try 4.4" W by 2.65" H by 4.4" D.
Vawter didn't like the conventional DAC architecture, which uses a brick-wall digital filter followed by analog filtering to smooth out sampling noise. "Our design uses only a 'slow roll-off' digital filter and no analog filtering," Vawter told us. "It sounds less 'digital' and more 'analog' than either brick-wall or filterless designs…