The tweeter is a titanium dome "which harkens back to some current and classic JBL designs," explains Eichenbaum. "The styling is very much reminiscent of the seventies classic." They will naturally include a sculpted foam grill (most excellent!) which will come in bright orange, blue, and the more discreet charcoal color seen in…
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Discerning college dorm rooms and recording studios rejoice! JBL's famed L100 speaker from the seventies has been rebooted as the L100 Classic (left, in the photo above), which, despite the familiar look, Harman's Todd Eichenbaum says is new from the ground up.
Emmanuel Millot, from Sound United (Marantz's parent company who also owns Denon, Polk, Definitive Technology, and others), was on hand to walk us through the new Marantz ND8006 CD and network audio player/streamer. Retail is $1,199 and it became available late last year.
"It's actually the first product of its kind on the market," Millot states. "It combines a CD player and all the streaming features you would want from a network player." Streaming capabilities include AirPlay, Bluetooth, Internet Radio, Spotify Connect, Amazon Music, TIDAL, Deezer and more. "There is a 24/192 bit DAC…
Three new bookshelf models were unveiled which Sound United's Mark Suskind explained are intended to replace the Studio Monitor Series. The models start with the D7 at $499/pair which feature a 4.5" woofer and 1" aluminum dome tweeter and is also ported. The D9 retails for $749/pair and has a 5.25" woofer and a 5"x9" passive radiator and 1" aluminum dome tweeter. And finally the new D11 has a 6.5" woofer and 6"x10" passive radiator and sells for $999/pair. All available since late last year.
Suskind started off explaining the new tweeter: "the first thing you'll notice is the tweeters…
England-based Ruark has a complete line of powered small to medium size all-in-one music boxes as well as powered desktop speakers. But what caught my eye was the console-size R7 which managing director Alan O'Rourke called a "Radiogram." For US citizens, a radiogram is a piece of furniture from the UK that historically combined a radio and record player. In this case though, that would be a CD player and radio.
"The inspiration came from the Radiograms my grandmother used to have," said O'Rourke. "We thought it'd be real nice to build a modern interpretation with everything in one unit…
Some manufacturers weren't exhibiting at CES but did have suites elsewhere in the Venetian hotel. One such was Audio Research, who was showing the first amplifier to be designed following the passing of the company's long-time Senior Design Engineer, Ward Fiebiger, who died of a heart attack last March. The Ref160M monoblock offers around 150W into 8 ohms and will cost in the region of $30,000/pair. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the illuminated power meter on the front panel is transparent, allowing you to see the glowing tubes behind it.
If there is one thing that raises the hackles of engineers, it is audiophiles' insistence that power cords affect sound quality. But at CES, AudioQuest's Garth Powell (right in photo, with AQ's Alex Brinkmann) was showing how changing just one cable in a system, the one connecting a Simaudio Moon CD player to a Niagara 700 power conditioner, could make or break the system's sound quality. Playing a track from Muddy Waters' Folk Singer, with Moon amplification and Magico S1 Mk.2 speakers, and without changing the volume, Garth compared AudioQuest's new Thunder cable ($700) with AC cables from…
For now, I'll file this one under "interesting if it were true," since I can't verify the unique claims about these cables. But the main display certainly caught my eye. You can see the sci-fi looking metal enclosures in the above photo that the Texas company's Casey Whitworth says is the Professional Series Elite Interconnect. The large metal enclosures are Faraday cages surrounding the cable "so we can pile them on top of each other and not have issues with the magnets."
Whitworth explains that the cables use neodymium N52 rare-earth magnets to eliminate skin effect and focus the…
Kanto has just emerged in the market this past year with a series of three powered bookshelf speakers, a pair of subwoofers and two styles of stands. The company is based in Coquitlam, BC, Canada, and marketing manager Brett Smalley ran through the line.
The compact YU2 ($199) uses a 3" composite woofer and 3/4" silk dome tweeter, and has a USB DAC built in, an auxiliary input and output, sub output. Smalley describes the YU4 ($299 - shown in the photo above) as a "hybrid desktop/bookshelf speaker." It sports a 4" kevlar woofer and 1" silk dome tweeter and has the same features as the…
The sign up above said GoldenEar Technology, but when I walked in it looked like any normal hotel room. No big banners, black cloth draped along the walls or spotlights. And then at the far end I spotted company president Sandy Gross sitting on the couch and a single bookshelf speaker sitting on a stand. That was it.
But as soon as I introduced myself, Sandy jumped up and starting talking about his new baby, the DigitalAktiv 3. "This is a self-powered, wireless-connected monitor which we expect to be shipping later in the year. It has a 200 watt amp on the low frequency section with two…
With everything about its presentation and packaging proclaiming its intended specialness, Siltech debuted its 35th Anniversary limited-edition Crown Princess interconnects (3500 for either XLR or RCA terminations). As explained by Crystal Cable's Gabi Rijnveld (whose husband, Edwin van der Kleij-Rijnveld, runs Siltech), this is the first time that Siltech has issued a 100% monocrystal interconnect with silver conductors.