First time Venetian exhibitor Raysonic also had an extensive line of Tube components on hand including their brand new two-box $4,200 CD228 Tube CD-Player.
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Some disc players simply look better than others when the lights go out. The Raysonic CD168 Tube CD-Player is one such machine and retails for $2,550. The CD168 uses 4 Russian 6922EH tubes and upconverts your CDs to 24 bit/192kHz to either balanced or unbalanced outputs.
Those who follow computer audio forums have probably heard the name Amarra a few times. If you have an Apple computer running iTunes and want to get the most out of high resolution audio, Sonic Studio's Amarra software offers a way around some of the inherent problems when switching resolutions and the way the Apple OS handles audio.
The company's Jonathan Reichbach was at CES to talk about the most recent release of the program along with its mini version. Both versions bypass Apple's Core Audio for "bit perfect" data straight to your DAC. The full-fledged version of the program…
The Holm Acoustics leather wrapped remote control which feels heavy and comfortable in the hand. Just press on the leather for the buttons to work.
Denmark's Holm Acoustics set themselves up at the Flamingo with their beautifully-designed CD1 transport at $7,300 and DSPre 1 DAC/preamp/DSP starting at around $8,000 depending on the number of processing channels and analog output.
The company demonstrated their DSP's room tuning abilities with a pair of Revel Ultima 2 loudspeakers and some Mark Levinson amplifiers. Kal Rubinson will likely be reporting on their technology more thoroughly in an upcoming column, but the brief demo yielded mixed results in such a small room with such large amps and speakers.
The company's…
I hadn't seen this almost two-year-old company before, but was familiar with founders Andreas Koch, formerly with Studer ReVox and EMM labs, and Jonathan Tinn through his relationship with darTZeel. Sharing a room with darTZeel, Playback's MPS-5 was sitting in the center equipment rack spinning discs.
The MPS-5 plays both SACDs and CDs as well as accepting digital signals from music servers and the like. Retailing for $15,000, the transport is based on a modified Esoteric mechanism, and inputs on the back include AES, SPDIF, Toslink and USB (up to 48kHz).
I don't like to…
Walking into the Jeff Rowland Design Group room is like walking into a dreamscape of audio bling. To look at a Rowland faceplate is like gazing into the face of God...well, maybe that's overstating it a bit. Whoever set up the Rowland room knows how great their gear looks and even set up floor to ceiling poles full of lights, strategically aimed to heighten their hypnotic, 3-D look.
On display were the new Jeff Rowland 925 monoblock amplifiers. Touting a switch-mode power supply, the 925 puts out 400W in class-AB. The 925 amp will be out in four to five months and will sell for $48…
Rogue Audio was also showing off the yet-to-be-released Ares phono preamplifier. The preamp can be run in all-tube or hybrid tube/solid-state to allow it to work with any cartridge you might want to throw at it. Mark O'Brien told me he was completing the design as recently as two weeks ago. The Ares will retail for $1995 and will start shipping at the end of June 2010.
Mark O'Brien of Rogue Audio was showing off the new Tempest III integrated amplifier ($2999). The III (an update to the Tempest II) offers 90Wpc and comes with a remote control. It also features an optional 10dB boost of solid-state gain before the signal hits the tube section, which is selectable on the front panel. Also on the front panel is a high quality headphone output. Mark was playing the Apollo monoblock amps in the room's live system, so I did not get a chance to hear it. Hey Stephen Mejias, might this be the new amp you are looking for?
Newly unveiled in the Cary Audio room was the CAD 211 Founders Edition amplifier. This fully balanced monoblock retails for $20,000/pair. The amps have taps for 4, 8 and 16 ohm speakers and specified as putting out 70W in class-A, increasing to 110W when pushed into class-AB. They also employ zero feedback so I'm not going to send them to JA's test bench (low-feedback designs seem to make him grumpy). They sounded sweet and full-bodied driving the Marten Coltrane speakers, with cabling by Tara Labs. It is ironic, however, noted JA, that Cary founder Dennis Had retired from Cary in the…
As I wandered the halls looking for the next audio fix, a friendly voice with a thick Swedish accent called out to me. Since I'm pretty new at the magazine, I wondered who might be calling out my name let alone who might be calling out name that's from Scandinavia. It turned out it was Timo Engstrom, the maker of The Lars two-chassis, tube integrated amplifier that Art Dudley wrote about in June 2009. Somehow Timo read my badge and knew I was covering amplification at CES for Stereophile—he must have good eyes. He invited me in to have a listen to the Lars.
Art Dudley waxed poetic…