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T + A Music Player

"This," Quartet Marketing's Stirling Trayle proudly said, "is the T + A Music Player."

What's it called?

"The T + A Music Player."

Ah, we love the comedy classics. Actually, it's called the T + A E Series Music Player (4500) and it combines a CD player, a "high-quality" FM tuner, supports all UPnP music servers, and streams Internet radio. "Oh yeah," said Trayle, "it also supports allDNLA compatible servers."

Since Jon Iverson and I are both Mac users, we asked about Apple compatibility. "Well, as you can see, we have an iPod input on the back panel—and we'…

Rosemarie & Cynthia

The ever-lovely Rosemarie Torcivia and Cynthia Fontaine, running the Stereophile room at the Venetian. They'd appreciate it if someone would bring them a decent sounding stereo to listen to. An ipod even.

The Superiority of Ayre Power

The three phase power supply is pure Ayre. There are three amplifiers, one for each phase. "Essentially, they are mini-MXRs," said Silberman. They are 120 degrees out of phase with one another, and we need to tune each one with a stethoscope to achieve absolute pitch stability. The result?

"Put your finger on the motor housing," Silberman demanded. "Can you feel any vibration or motion?"

No, we couldn't.

Oh yeah—it also sounded good.

Ayre's Der Platen Spieler

Ayre's Steve Silberman was excited about the new DPS Ayre turntable. Charlie Hansen had hipped Wes Phillips to the then pending debut of the DPS Ayre back in September.

"I thought this was one of the greatest turntables I'd ever heard, from a mechanical perspective," Hansen said. "But the power supply, while having some innovative ideas, was not up to the standard of the DPS itself—and slow deliveries of the PS were keeping the table from gaining traction. So I said, we can make a better PS—that's what we're good at."

So Ayre utilizes the standard DPS table, which employs a…

Sumiko TBD Cartridge

Sumiko's Norbert Schmied showed us their new upscale cartridge. "What's it called?"

"Can I get back to you on that? Let's just call it the TBD," he said.

"What can you tell us?"

It has a pauferro body and a Boron cantilever. The top plate is chrome, "for a smoother, tighter interface with the headshell," and the backplate of the motor assembly is extremely rigid. The generating magnets are Alnico and the stylus has a line-contact profile. Output will be 0.5mV.

Price is projected to be substantially above that of the $2000 Celebration—possibly in the $4000…

Primare, oh oh, Primare, oh oh oh oh

Sumiko was showing the $2495 Primare DVD110 DVD/CD player/reciever. It's a two channel unit with a class-D 102Wpc amplifier and a couple of features you don't see on most stereo components: a subwoofer and 1080p video outs.

That's pretty cool.

A Different Perspextive

Sumiko had a new Pro-Ject turntable on display, the "approximately $2000" Perspex, which sports the new 9CC Evolution tonearm.

The table has a mag-lev suspension and tunable sub-platter assembly and plinth.

The tonearm is called "9CC" because it's a 9" model using continuous carbon fiber. The bearing assembly seems monstrously overbuilt. "That gives it remarkable rigidity," said Norbert Schmidt.

Ahhhh, Music!

We're stunned at how few exhibitors spend money for the larger rooms on the 35th floor of the Venetian, since they are so sonically impressive. Sumiko's room with the $28,000 SME 2012, $6000 Audio Research PH7, $10,000 Audio Research Reference 3, Audio Research Reference 210 monoblock amplifiers ($9000/each), and brand-spanking new $25,000/pair Vienna Acoustic Die Musik loudspeakers had us glued to the sweet spot.

There's just something about a big, open room—and when a system has a price tag the size of that in Sumiko's room, why would you compromise the sound by jamming it in a…

Bolder Boulder

We'd been told to check out Boulder's new music server, but that's not exactly what the $24,000 1021 Disc Player is. It's a CD player (with a few other formats "to be announced") that uses a computer disc drive to feed a one-minute buffer to "preserve the integrity of the audio signal delivered from the drive. "Also," confided Steve Rockwell, "the clock is about this far [pinches fingers together], so jitter is phenomenally low."

Raw data is dumped from the buffer to a Boulder-designed Eigen-value DSP oversampling filter—which itself, has a data buffer to eliminate timing glitches…

Where'd I Go?

Why off to CES2008, of course. Check out Stereophile's coverage at our Show blog.

And check out Stereophilia on Friday for cat-blogging—with a CES twist.