As though that makes it uglier.
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CEDIA is filled with niche products that most charitably can be labeled weird. Here Primedia's Laura LoVecchio poses with a MLB-themed television. Die-hard Mets fan that she is, she's pointing in revulsion at the Yankees logo hidden on the back.
This bad boy is the crossover from a Dynaudio Evidence Temptation. Who says size doesn't matter?
Lionel Goodfield gave me a look under the hood of Simaudio's new $1400 LP5.3 Phono universal phono preamp. That huge power supply in the front? Well, Simaudio already has plans for an outboard, higher current model—and the umbilical connector is already resident on the rear panel.
Lionel Goodfield gave us a taste of things to come: The $3500 P5.3 balanced, full-feature preamplifer. It's slated to replace the P3 and P5, and introduces technology pioneered by the P7 Evolution.
It has four single-end inputs, one balanced input, one single-ended monitor output, and both SE and balanced outputs. It should be available by January.
A matching $4800 W5.3 150Wpc dual-mono power amp will follow soon.
Polk Audio introduced the $1200/ea. RTS100, "the first in-ceiling speaker to meet THX Ultra2 performance standards." The RTS100 has a 14" diameter enclosure containing dual 5¼" midrange drivers and a 1" Ring Radiator tweeter mounted between them. Polk’s exclusive Sound Shape baffle floats the sound waves toward the listening position for "imaging that seems to hover in front of the listener rather than being localized in the ceiling."
Thing is, it works. Playing a Blue Man Group/Dave Matthews performance that was essentially a series of spatial cues connected by a tune, the system…
Jim Thiel stands between the final prototype of the CD3.7 and the new SCS4, a point source stand mounted two-way with a cast aluminum baffle. Projected price is "under $1000, which seems like a bargain
Like all Thiels, it is time and phase coherent, but unlike other Thiels, it has 89dB sensitivity, making it relatively easy to drive.
Stereophile is scheduled for an exclusive one-on-one demo tomorrow with the new Revel loudspeakers, but we couldn't resist tantalizing you with a glimpse of the $22,000/pair Ultima 2 flagship, the Salon2.
A four-way floorstander, with three 8" woofers,a 6.5" mid-woofer, a 4" midrange, and a 1" tweeter. Connections are hidden behind a smoked access panel in the rear. Bandwidth is given as 24Hz–45kHz.
Tune in tomorrow.
MartinLogan subwoofers? Yup—although the Kansas company is known as an electrostatic specialist, they've been making subs for a long while. The new $2995 Descent1 seems pretty spiffy, though: Top-mounted control interface (hidden under the logo plate), three rigid-chassis, aluminum-cone drivers, triple-servo monitoring, a sealed cabinet enclosure, and three 250W Vojtko amplifiers.
Anechoic range is given as 18–125Hz, ±3dB.
And did we mention that it's pretty?
Marantz is showing the new $1699.99 TT-1581 turntable. Look familiar? It ought to—it's a proprietary Marantz model constructed by Clearaudio, with a Marantz specced platter and cartridge.
Kevin Zarow, vice-president of marketing for parent company D&M said, "Marantz is totally committed to two-channel audio."
To prove it, he also showed us three $7999.99 components that were droolworthy: the SC-752 preamp, the MA952 3002 monoblock amplifier, and the SA-751 SACD player. "And the technology we've developed in these components will definitely trickle down to our more…
As they had done at CES, Andrew Lipinski (right) and Lukas Lipinski set up a full surround system using their L-707 two-way monitors that had so impressed Larry Greenhill when he reviewed them for Stereophile last December.
I have long been a fan of Andrew's recordings, and was privileged to be able to hear an extract of the massively scored Penderecki Credo in surround from SACD, which Andrew recorded at the composer's 70th birthday celebratory concert. Kal Rubinson enthuses over both sound and performance of this SACD in his November "Music in the Round" column.
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