Also on hand was the Clear Light Rev 1 interconnect ($856/1.5m pair). Now with a larger diameter, improved shield, and nicer RCA connector, it is still substantially lower in price that the…
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Cardas Operations Manager Josh Meredith was happy to show off Cardas’ Clear Light Speaker cable ($1048/2m pair). Now the lower end of the Clear speaker cable line, it will soon move up a notch to middle position as another model of speaker cable comes out.
A simplified version of Clear speaker cable ($3726/2m pair), its ability to be produced more rapidly results in its considerably lower price.
Listening to UNLV’s radio station KUNV playing Jazz, I notice the glowing digits on the Droid’s GPS indicating two minutes to turn 1.2 miles away. Riiiight. Notice the speedo pegged hard at zero. This Montana boy has spent the last 20 years regularly attending CES in Vegas. . .ugh. Too many people for me; too much glitz; too many lights. Fortunately, however, patient and persistent digging through the mountains of garish purple plastic gadgets will almost always reveal a modest handful of personal audio riches. That’s why I’m at the 2011 CES: digging for gold.
Allen Sung, owner of XLO (left), introduced the Purple Rush power cord ($7000/6ft). The first product in the company’s new Purple Reigns series, this substantial baby is heavy enough to easily yank a poorly positioned component off the shelf. IMHO, the cable’s oversized proprietary connectors are as impressive as its girth.
XLO’s designer, Jay Victor (right), explained that he wanted to design a power cable that he could use on high-current power amps in his own system. “I started dabbling in cable design when I was in charge of product development at Monster Cable with Demian Martin,” he…
Joe Skubinski of JPS Labs introduced its first two USB cables, the Superconductor Q USB (approximately $399/1m) and Superconductor 3 USB (approximately $799/1m). The cables are so new that Skubinski had to guess at the prices. Both boast a precision twisted-quad design with dual shields and gold-plated connectors.
Skubinski’s design goals were to transfer the digital signal as flawlessly as possible without radiating noise into adjacent cables. As I left the room, he and the folks from Usher loudspeakers were about to conduct an experiment to see if the Superconductor 3 could successfully…
Furutech is introducing a new speaker cable brand in 2011, ADL, Alpha Design Labs. Designed to make OCC cable products available to entry-level buyers, ADL cables are the lowest priced cables in Furutech’s current line-up. Prices start at $100/1m pair interconnects, with USB and LAN cables going for around the same price.
Pictured is Furutech’s Flux series of cables, which was introduced last year. The Flux power cable runs $1200/6ft, while speaker cables cost $2000/2m pair. On the left is publicist extraordinaire Jonathan Scull, standing aside Furutech’s Graeme Coley. Also present,…
I think it was at least a couple of years ago that I first heard that Atlantic Technology—a speaker manufacturer that I associate more with value-for-money than cutting-edge products—was working on a patent-pending technology that combines reflex, acoustic suspension, inverse horn, and transmission line approaches to bass loading. Dubbed Hybrid Pressure Acceleration System (H-PAS), this is said to combine the best aspects of each approach, with deep bass extension, good system sensitivity, and reasonable enclosure size.
Well, the patent has been granted, and the floor-standing AT-1 ($2500…
In defining what is the maximum cost of “mid-priced” speaker, which was my assignment at the Show, I had tentatively settled on $10,000/pair. Jeff Joseph Audio’s Perspective, still undergoing tweaking, at a projected price of $11, 800/pair, exceeds that self-imposed maximum, but the speaker sounded so good, and Jeff Joseph was so obliging in hamming it up, that I just had to include it in my blog and take Jeff’s picture. JA, you can write up a sub-$10k speaker in return.
Demmed with Bel Canto DAC3.5 and Ref.500 power amps, hooked up with Cardas Clear Beyond, the floorstanding perspective…
Nate Mansfield, Sales Manager of Kimber Kable, happily showed off the company’s newest products, the complete line of Kimber Select KS 6000 series speaker cables ($4400–$18,800/8ft pair, depending upon level and wiring). Introduced in prototype form at CES 2010, the KS series has been shipping for the last six months, and is available in either all-copper, copper-silver hybrid, or full silver configurations. Designed by Ray Kimber, the cable also features a new multi-layer braid that combines stranded and solid core conductors in the same cable. The Kimber Select KS 6000 series represents a…
Veteran CES-goers often refer to the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) as “the Zoo”—a term that I don’t think applies very well. In the zoos that I’m familiar with, the animals are not crowded closely together (as people are during CES), and they’re not there because of choice—which people are, even though they may grumble about it. I normally spend about half-a-day at the LVCC—I refuse to call it “the Zoo”—which gives me a chance to catch up on what’s happening in mass-market consumer electronics. And it sometimes allows me to discover the occasional product that could easily have been…
The audiophile community was greatly shocked by the death, in September, 2009, of speaker designer Jim Thiel. My acquaintance with him was restricted to brief chats at shows, but he has always impressed me as a modest, gentle man, with a singular devotion to the pursuit of making the most accurate and musically pleasing speakers. Somehow, I thought he would always be around.
The Thiel/Bryston room had a system featuring the Thiel SCS4T ($3690/pair) speakers and a pair of new prototype Thiel USS subwoofers (price and delivery date TBD), partnered with Bryston electronics and digital source…