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Muse Erato II

Poor Kevin Halverson! Since Hesiod only named nine muses in Theogony, Kevin has had to double up as Muse's line of players has increased. The Erato II is available as a transport ($5300) or one-box CD/DVD/DVD-A player ("up to" $7300).

What does "up to" mean? "Like our other players, including the Polymynia you reviewed, you can have it configured to your needs.

"As a transport, the Erato II supports 2 / 4 / 5.x / 6 & 7.x channel formats from MAP-Link, HDMI, or bitstream interfaces. When configured as a player, both two channel and multichannel material is properly…

Kuzma 4Point

Franc Kuzma was showing a fascinating tonearm, the $7300–7500 4Point, named because it has unique vertical and horizontal bearings. Kuzma said, "It's like a unipivot tonearm that can't 'chatter' in the horizontal plane."

But well designed unipivots aren't supposed to chatter.

"No, they are not supposed to."

A rigid VTA tower allows repeatable VTA and azimuth adjustments. The tonearm fits on 9" configurations, said Kuzma, but "is effectively 11"."

"And it is biwired," said Kuzma.

???

It has eight special silver-alloy wires coming out of the…

SP Stands For "Special"

"Any source components?" I asked Cayin importer and VAS Audio maven Sze Leung.

"Wes, I have a whole line—and check this out, they come in classic wood cases, just like the McIntosh, Marantz, and Scott used to!"

They do look nice—in either gloss black lacquer or rosewood. The SP-cd300 CD player ($1695) is transformer coupled and seems to be the only solid-state component in the line. The monoblock 8W SP-20M ($3995/pair) employ 300B SE tubes, the 60Wpc SP-40 stereo power amplifier uses KT88s, and the 35Wpc SP-10A integrated uses four EL34s, two 12AU7s, and a 12AX7 ($1695).…

Fine Art in the Loiminchay Room

In the Loiminchay room, I listened to the standmounted Degas loudspeakers (starting at $15,000/pair). Designer Patrick Chu was a painter before he starting building loudspeakers, and finds inspiration in his favorite artists. He named his smallest loudspeaker after the French Impressionist whose paintings, Chu says, are "romantic and musical." Other Loiminchay speakers include the $35,000 Chagall and top-of-the-line $45,500 Kandinsky.

"Whether you're painting or making music or designing a loudspeaker," said Chu, "it really doesn't matter. They're just different artistic…

Dare We Say “Digital?”

Although Allen Perkins' Spiral Groove has until now focused exclusively on analog products, the company has taken a big step into the digital domain by announcing the forthcoming Spiral Groove DP1 line stage preamp and 24/96 DAC. Projected to become available in four months, the DPI is so new that it has yet to be priced.

The Spiral Groove DAC/preamp, distributed by Perkins' Berkeley-based Immedia Sound, will be sufficiently up-to-date to include an up-to-date USB input. It will also be versatile, with the ability to support either two or three amps. Owners can also equip it with…

HeDo: Good Looking and Good Sounding

Herman van den Dungen and Marcel Croese, the duo responsible for the Prima Luna line of tube electronics, have introduced a new line of "Good Looking and Good Sounding" solid-state equipment under the HeDo moniker. As with the Prima Luna gear, the prices are very reasonable: $1395 for the HeDo One 80Wpc integrated amplifier, $1795 for the HeDo Two $200Wpc integrated, $1245 for the HeDo Three preamp, and $1495 for the HeDo Four power amp (the power is not listed on the preliminary literature sheet; I assume it's 200Wpc or a bit more). The four components are pictured here in distributor…

Perfect 8's The Force

What does $275,000 buy you these days besides a used Porsche Carrera GT with 20,000 miles on it? Yes, there is now a loudspeaker system with that asking price, which gets you 900 lbs of hardware, including two midrange—tweeter towers, two subwoofers, and two subwoofer amplifiers. Frequency response is rated from 8Hz to 50kHz, and the minimal load impedance is 3 ohms. Furthermore, the Force is made of glass.

I visited Perfect Eight Technology's suite to find out more. Jons Rantila, Chief Executive Officer, introduced me to his "music sculpture of glass and gold." Glass is used as an…

IsoMike Dems $340k System

Ever listen to a system costing $340,288? Ray Kimber's IsoMike venture put on such an exhibit at CES to preview their DSD recordings with "no limiting, no compression, no mixing, and no equalization." They had their SACD Hybrid Stereo/4-channel discs next door for sale.

The exhibit featured four Sound Lab ProStat 922 full-range electrostatic, loudspeakers each driven by a Pass Labs X350.5 solid-state amplifier. The huge Sound Lab panels—each panel is 94" tall by 40" wide—were placed into each corner of the room and dwarfed recording engineer Graemme Brown. Other products in the…

Live Music in the DCM Room

I'd gone into the DCM room at the end of the day to hear the speaker manufacturer's new Time Frame TFE200 three-way tower, which can be seen at the left of the photo. Using two 6.5" woofers and a midrange mounted above the tweeter, the TFE200 offers a lot of speaker engineering for just $1000/pair. But following my audition of the speakers, driven by Jolida CD player and tube monoblocks, connected with Esoteric USA cables, we were treated to a concert by singer-songwriter Herman Hogan. Al Congdon, the VP of DCM parent company Mitek's Consumer Electronics Group, had heard Hogan playing…

High-Resolution Happiness

So why is Amanda Sweet from Telarc smiling? Well, in addition to being a wonderful person, she's happy that the Concord Music Group chose to sell its wares in The Venetian. Rather than the nightmare everyone predicted, customers only had to walk 20 steps to the official CES cashiers to purchase their SACDs and CDs from Telarc, Heads Up, Concord, Prestige and the like. With only one other CD vendor—5.1—in the area, Telarc did a booming business.