I received a detailed lesson on speaker motor design, including how wide magnet gaps avoid the distortion-causing air turbulence caused by narrow gaps, and how the use of titanium voice-coils avoids the problems of dynamic damping that are generated when the paramagnetic qualities of aluminum—commonly used for voice-coils—…
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Danish manufacturer Raidho demonstrated its $30,000/pair, 88 lb, X3 loudspeakers at CES. The remarkable slim towers have four dedicated 4" ceramic midbass drivers and one 8" side-mounted woofer, in addition to a magnetic-planar tweeter that is crossed over at 3kHz.
Gary Leonard Koh, the President and CEO of Genesis Advanced Technologies, walked me through the latest technological upgrades he has made available through his product line. His 60"-tall, 135 lb Genesis G-Force floorstanding loudspeaker has a cabinet with a carbon-fiber veneer that overlays a formulated laminate of green poplar and bamboo, combined with medium and high density fiberboards. The speaker uses a ring-radiator ribbon tweeter (R3T), a 5" planar-magnetic ribbon midrange, two 5" solid-titanium-cone mid-bass drivers, and two 10" powered (500W) servo-controlled woofers.
The…
Meridian was showing three of their current line of DSP loudspeakers: the $20,000/pair DSP 5200; the $46,000/pair DSP 7200, and the $80,000/pair DSP 8000. These loudspeakers have in common an all-digital input, internal digital signal processing circuitry, and a crossover implemented in the digital domain.
The largest speaker has a sealed enclosure with five internal amplifiers and eight drivers. The DSP 7200 has two woofers, one midrange unit, and one tweeter, and has a bass-reflex configuration; and the smallest 5200 is a 2.5-way loudspeaker with a bass-reflex enclosure. The special…
Dynaudio's Mike Manousselis welcomed me to the Danish speaker manufacturer's exhibit suite and introduced both the company's founder, Wilfried Ehrenholz (above left) and their new $13,500/pair Focus 600 XD, active loudspeaker (above right) to me. "All There Is" reads Dynaudio's slogan for the new speaker, as it can be connected directly to a network, wired or wireless, to play music.
This three-way, 43" tall, floorstanding design employs a single 27mm dome tweeter, a 140mm coned midrange unit, and two 180mm coned woofers. It incorporates four 150W amplifiers, one each for the tweeter,…
"Go hear Tower of Power," said Jon Iverson, "on the 35th Floor of the Venetian. See Philip O'Hanlon and tell him I sent you."
"What is the Tower of Power?" I asked.
"You'll see when you get there," he said.
I found Philip O'Hanlon in the "On a Higher Note" exhibit suite. Philip imports Vivid Audio speakers, as well as Bruno Putzeys' Mola-Mola Electronics. Now I had heard of Vivid Audio, of course; their Giya G3 loudspeaker was Stereophile's 2014 "Component of the Year." Of course, I had heard of Bruno Putzeys, the Dutch electronics engineer whose Hypex and NCore 1200 class…
Sorry I don't have a better photo of this handsome component, which is at the top of the stack. Available now for $3,500, the M12 handles up to 24/192 PCM via USB as well as several card slots on the back for further options. One of those options is a $450 network card that enables the BluOS, aptX Bluetooth, WiFi and Ethernet. Control is via the Bluesound app which looked very nicely done. I hope to play with the M12 a bit more and see what it can do.
In a repeat of last year's CES, Accuphase again showed up without their latest digital product actually in the room. So company representative Kohei Nishigawa was a good sport and again held up the photo of the soon to be released DC-37.
Based on the same digital section of the all-in-one DP-720 SACD player, the $12k DC-37 handles 32/384 PCM as well as 5.6MHz DSD via USB 2. All the other usual inputs are included as well as separate power supplies for the analog and digital sections.
Burmester's Ref Line Musiccenter 111 now has a little brother that dumps the big screen on the front panel for a more low profile and less expensive version at half the price: $25k.
Inside are two 2TB SSDs in a RAID 1 configuration, plenty of networking options and web and iPad control. On the front is a slot for ripping or playing CDs and the internals handle anything PCM up to 24/192. Available now.
A new brand to me, it turns out that Melco is a division of Buffalo, the japanese computer memory company. Melco had two products on display: the N1Z server with two 512GB SSDs and dual power supplies for around $9k and the N1A with two 2TB hard drives and single power supply for approx $3k.
Other features include full networking capabilities, quick start up and shut down (5-15 seconds), DSD support and multiple USB 3 ports for back up and expansion.
New in Simaudio's room was the 208D which comes as a basic DAC for $2,200 and also a version with added network player for $3k. The 280D handles both PCM up to 32/384 and DSD up to DSD256 via USB and includes aptX Bluetooth. The analog stage is a fully balanced differential circuit which Simaudio claims increases dynamic range, headroom and signal to noise.
Plenty of inputs on the back and the network version adds WiFi and Ethernet streaming with full iPad control. Available in the next month or so.