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It's been 12 years since I attended a CES in Sin City. The porn stars are gone, but the tube amps and turntables are still here. They are trending the same virtual realities as Pono, the new drones, and cars that drive themselves. The temperature back in New York is heading for the teens but in the lobby of the Venetian, I saw a 3-year old working a smart phone like an aging carny works a 3-card Monte on Beale Street—she was wearing some fancy pink headphones and a matching pink Beatles tee shirt. (Did I mention it was 67°F in front of the Venetian today, the lobby of which is pictured above…
Neil Young, the great man himself, paid a visit to the hi-res exhibits at CES to herald the arrival of his righteous hi-res music file player, Pono. Among the announcements: Pono is now available at something like 80 retail outlets, as well as in 35 Fry's Electronics locations. Among the stores selling Pono are In Living Stereo in NYC, Audio Consultants in Chicago, The Audio Salon in LA, Audio Element in Pasadena, Audio Vision SF, Music Lovers in Berkeley, Definitive Audio in Washington State, Amoeba in SF and LA. Canada won't get Pono until the middle of 2015, but every retail outlet in the…
As we've noted in the past, the Rubicon has a rich feature set and price to match: $40k. And now the product has been updated to include support for DSD 128 and 24/384 streaming via USB.
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the Antelope DAC with its Acoustically Focused Clocking technology earlier this year, especially with headphones. And now the company has made good on its promise to release the companion 10M Clock which Antelope claims is 100,000 times more accurate then the Platinum's built-in ticker.
The 10M uses a non-radioactive rubidium core enabling accuracy to 0.03 parts per billion (which adds up to about 1 second of deviation every 1,000 years).
By itself, the 10M retails for $8995, but bundling with the Platinum DAC (normally $5,500) brings the price to…
However, I was rather touched by the banner promoting the stated aim of CES: "A Better Life, A Better World." It's hard to argue against this sentiment.
For those interested in audio, the products on display at Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) are of little interest. And yet...I don't think I would feel that I've attended CES unless I spent a few hours at LVCC. I figured that it would be best to go on the first day of 2015 CES, before the show really got going.
That turned out to be a wrong assumption. There were huge crowds, and long lines for the shuttle buses. And going to the LVCC serves to remind us that the world of high-performance audio is a relatively small part of what is broadly…
Thiel is back! Following a period of reorganization necessitated by the death of Jim Thiel, the "new Thiel," while varying in specifics, promises to respect Jim Thiel's sonic ideals while developing speakers for both two channel and multichannel. Presented by Paul Fisher, pictured here, the new models form the Third Avenue Collection, and include the TT1 tower ($5798/pair), the compact TM3 ($3498/pair, and the TC1 ($2500) center channel.
Bryston's James Tanner and Brian Russell (left to right) seemed pretty happy at CES, and with good reason. The Bryston Middle T has just received a highly favorable review from Kal Rubinson in our February issue, and the Mini T ($3195/pair in glossy black) was sounding truly excellent in the system demoed at CES. Bryston can no longer be thought of as just a manufacturer of electronics!
That was the subject heading of an email that I received from GoldenEar's Sandy Gross back in November. These turned to be another tower speaker, the Triton Five ($1999.98/pair) and a new subwoofer, Super-Sub XXL ($1999.99 each). The Triton Five is a step up from the Triton Seven, and includes design improvements learned from the design of the Triton One (which I reviewed in the February,2015, issue.) Unlike the Triton One and the Triton Two, but like the Triton Seven, the Five is not powered. Listening to a pair of Fives, the resemblance to the One (and the Two) was quite obvious, with the…