So it looks like the downturn is just us. A few short years ago, high-performance audio had a thriving presence here. We occupied three floors of regular rooms at the Venetian hotel, with plenty of exhibitors occupying large swaths of the top…
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. . . and nobody came? If you look at the numbers for the high-end audio sector alone, it certainly looks like something went south. However the rest of CES is thriving: gadgets, AI and even self-driving cars have supplanted much of what used to dominate these shows (one of the Innovations Award winners this year is Kohler's "intelligent bathroom.")
Just so happens the first room I entered this year featured the Wolf Cinema projector in a full-on home theater demo. Curiously, like a fish out of water, Wolf sets up their video equipment at the Venetian high-end audio stomping grounds year after year with an impressive big screen presentation. It must work for them! But as I looked around in the dark, I found Dynaudio's Brian Kjaer also present. This is Dynaudio's only CES showing this year, as the audio provider for the Wolf Cinema room.
Dynaudio's surround system featured the Contour 20 bookshelf in the rear and the Contour 30…
Found taped to a locked door among the regular exhibitors. Presumably they paid for the room anyways?
Heinz Lichtenegger, Pro-Ject president starts by exclaiming "it's a revolution at the price point!" Built around the ESS Sabre ESS9038 dual DAC chip, the $399 S2 also has full MQA processing, up to DSD 512 and 24/192 PCM, 7 selectable digital filters, jitter claimed as low as 100 femtoseconds, and headphone jack. "It's the lowest jitter you can measure," says Lichtenegger.
The S2 was designed by John Westlake who has created products for Cambridge Audio, Peachtree Audio, Audiolab and others. The interior indeed sports a gorgeous and detailed layout, packing everything into a rather tight…
Since they are based in Vienna, Austria, Pro-Ject decided to commemorate the Vienna Philharmonic's 175th birthday by creating a bespoke limited edition (175 units made of course) turntable, priced around $8,000-9,000.
"Everything you see on this turntable is made out of material used to make the instruments in the orchestra," notes Pro-Ject president Heinz Lichtenegger. The tonearm lift connected to the headshell is an actual "key" from a clarinet, the control buttons are real flute parts and the turntable plinth is made of the same brass used for trumpets. And of course the wooden case…
Pro-Ject has launched several new models of turntables this year intended for the budget conscious market. Company president Heinz Lichtenegger explained that after helping to kick-start the analog resurgence, they introduced the new entry level models in response to "analog transitioning to a feature-driven market dominated by Chinese brands" bringing out ever cheaper all-in-one feature-laden products.
Pro-Ject has decided to offer specific features in a family of different budget 'tables so you can get exactly what you need without money going to features you won't use. The…
Pennsylvania-based distributor/exporter Dyson Lai proudly presented the gorgeous new TPC-1HP tube preamp from Seattle, Washington-based Increcable Acoustic Lab. Retail will be $6,000 when the preamp is released in the next couple months.
Lai explained that the preamp features a separate tube-regulated power supply (the chassis on the left), two output transformers on the main chassis, and a dedicated headphone amplification section. All Increcable products are point-to-point wired by hand, with no circuit boards used.
As far as I know, Stereophile has yet to review any of the…
Thanks to automated manufacturing, Audeze has produced its first "affordable" in-ear phones, the iSine LX ($199), currently sold via their website. As explained by Audeze COO Sankar Thiagasamudram, the company's far more expensive LCD-i4ear phones have much thinner diaphragms, as thin as a white blood cell, and need amplifiers to drive. The iSine LX also works with Audeze's free plug-ins that were designed for professional mixing and recording digital audio workstations that use Pro Tools and other programs on Windows and Mac platforms.
With Warner, Universal Music Group, and Sony as major shareholders/partners, it's no wonder that MQA figured so prominently in the CES Hi-res pavilion. MQA wasn't everywhere—Qobuz hasn't seen fit to embrace it as yet, and the majority of audio manufacturers have yet to get on board—but it has certainly come to mobile phones and players.
The latest portable playback device to incorporate MQA decoding and playback is the Activo CT10 from Astell&Kern's parent company, Iriver. This device uses Astell&Kern's new Teraton sound module, which can handle up to 24/192 PCM (with or without…
With Mytek's Michal Jurewicz in the background, the company's Chebon Littlefield showed the new Clef high-resolution, MQA-equipped, Bluetooth-equipped, mobile USB DAC/headphone amplifier ($299). Shipping in February, the Clef joins the Brooklyn DAC+ ($2195—review to come from Jim Austin) and the Brooklyn power amp as the latest products in the company's line.