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The Wavemaster monoblock power amplifiers ($9000–$10,000/pair) can put out 200W into 4 ohms. They employ an Audience discrete-component front end, switching power supply, and come with an Audience Power Chord. They accommodate single-ended and balanced inputs.
I walked into Audience's room expecting to see the usal assortment of cables, power conditioners, and high-quality parts, but I was confronted with an entire Audience system, from a heavily modded Denon CD player to preamplifier, power amplifiers to loudspeakers!
The speakers are unusual—called ClairAudient Line Source Array 16 ($33,000/pair), the pair I heard employed 32 3" drivers, and a subwoofer. Audience's John McDonald wasn't actually playing the ClairAudients when I walked in, he was playing two pairs of those drivers, mounted into boxes—no crossovers, no filters of any…
Relatively affordable at $30,000/pair, that is, given the cost-no-object construction featured by TAD's new CR-1 "Compact Reference Monitor," seen here with its designer Andrew Jones and compared with the company's original floorstanding and superb-sounding Reference One from 2006. (Across the corridor from TAD, Ray Kimber was using four Reference Ones to demo his new IsoMike recordings in surround.)
The CR-1 uses a similar coincident upper-frequency driver with a beryllium-dome tweeter as the Reference One, and marries it to a 8" ported woofer that uses a cone formed from woven…
Loudspeakers from German manufacturer Canton have impressed Stereophile's review team over the past few years with their combination of careful, solid engineering and excellent sound. CES saw the launch of Canton's revised Reference line. The Reference 3.2 ($15,000/pair), seen here cradled by chief engineer Frank Göbl, features a new tweeter with a ceramic/aluminum /ceramic sandwich dome replacing the earlier version's aluminum/manganese-alloy diaphragm, which pushes up the primary dome breakup mode from around 21kHz to 30kHz. The tweeter dome is recessed within a short waveguide to…
I went into the Blue Light Audio room at T.H.E. Show to hear the new Dartzeel amplifiers (Wes Phillips will be blogging on these presently) and to chat with designer Hervé Délétraz. But my attention was caught by Evolution Audio's beautifully finished MMMini Two speakers ($40,000/pair). Ostensibly a two-way design combining a 5" aluminum ribbon with a 7" ceramic-cone woofer, the stand also contains an 8"x12" subwoofer.
I was too fried by the afternoon of the Show's fourth day to glean any meaningful impressions of the system's sound—I'll leave that to WP—but I was impressed enough…
While I was cruising NAD's booth, I noticed the M2 Direct Digital amplifier—obviously part of NAD's Masters Series. I asked one Nad rep to tell me about it. "Oh, we didn't bring it—it's not going to be released until spring."
I pointed to it. She went to find someone else. He didn't have any details either. Basically, what I was able to glean is that it is a direct digital amplifier (duh!)producing 250Wpc and it costs $3995. It is the result of a strategic alliance with Zetec.
I spoke to someone who had actually heard it at a trade show in Asia and he rolled his eyes and…
I can't believe that it's been 21 years since Thiel founders Jim Thiel and Kathy Gornik and I emptied the first of many bottles of fine wine talking about music and loudspeakers. But here they are, snapped outside the dem room they were sharing with Bryston and Wireworld, as passionate about audio, music, and the high-end audio industry as ever. And in the case of Kathy, looking even better than ever!
Thiel's PR wonk Micah Sheveloff grabbed me as I walked past the room in the Sands Convention Center Thiel was sharing with Bryston to meet with Frank Göbl of Canton. "You've got to hear the new CS2.4 Special Edition." As Wes Phillips had been mightily impressed by the original CS2.4 ($4900/pair) when he reviewed it in November 2005, I looked at my watch. Enough time. I went into the dem room.
The CS2.4SE costs $8000/pair and only 150 pairs are being made. It differs from the original version by having a cost-no-object complement of very high quality polypropylene and custom-made…
Music Hall was showing a new USB DAC wit a tube output stage. The Music Hall dac25.5 ($600) uses an Electro-Harmonix 6922 tube, a Texas Instruments PCM1796 24-bi/192kHz DAC chip, a TI SRC4192 Asynchronous sample-rate converter (with a high-precision active crystal oscillator master clock), and four digital inputs (S/PDIF, TOSLINK, XLR, and USB). It sports re-clocking and user-adjustable upsampling (96kHz or 192kHz). It outputs analog via XLR or RCA.
Despite the headline, I was impressed with how much DAC $600 can buy.
Directly across the hall from the PrimaLuna exhibit, I discovered its somewhat more expensive big brother line, Mystère. While PrimaLuna amps operate in triode mode, Mystère gives you the sound of tetrode. These aren't high power babies—the ia11 integrated amp ($1995) puts out 40Wpc watts and the ia21 integrated amp ($2995) gives you 50Wpc. The electronics are manufactured with a different partner in China, and are the dream project of their designer.
On a modest demo system, I heard the Mystère PA21 power amplifier equipped with KT88s, Concept CA11 preamp, PrimaLuna ProLogue Eight…