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That's what MSB's Larry Gullman called MSB's iLink, $2000 package that makes your iPod "better than CD."
What you get is an MSB charging dock that replaces your iPod's analog outputs with an MSB DAC with RF remote capabilities. It requires modification of your iPod (included in the price)—or you could buy the package with an 80GB pre-modded iPod Video for $2349.
So why is it better than CD? "With the RF dongle connected to your iPod, you can listen to high-rez, lossless audio from your listening chair, but you're holding the iPod in your hand," Gullman said. Your collection…
We caught up with Ultimate Ears' Mike Diaz at the Taqueria. "Check this out," he said, plunking a pair of earbuds in front of us with his iPod Mini. We cued up The Carpenters' "Close to You" and inserted the 'phones.
"Wow! These are great! What do they cost?"
Karen Carpenter kept singing.
"I said how much do they cost?"
Karen Carpenter kept singing.
I looked up. Everybody at the table was staring at me. I removed the earbuds and heard Mike saying, "These are the metro.fi 2s. We're charging $89/pair for them. They have a single titanium diaphragm and…
"I have a theory," I said to Jon Iverson. "There are two types of rooms at CES: The ones that make you want to sit down and listen forever and the ones that make you want to cover your ears and run into the halls screaming. This room," I said, encompassing Naim's $85,000 system with my sweeping arm, "is one of the former."
I sat down, listening to Ray Lamontaign's 'Til the Sun Turns Black. "I may never leave.
It wasn't that the system sounded spectacular. In fact, it was the opposite of spectacle, it was relaxed, encompassing, supremely emotionally compelling. It didn't…
Eneke (left) and Jaclyn Vandersteen flank Vandersteen's new composite Ebony Quatro ($10,700/pair). The wood Quatros are quite different from the speaker cloth covered $6950/pair Quatro Michael Fremer reviewed in Stereophile.
"Quite a step up for a wood cabinet," I joked.
"I always swore I'd never spend one single buck on cosmetics that I could put into sound quality," Richard Vandersteen thundered. "And I didn't start with this one. It's a very different animal, from the X-material plinth to the new composite Ebony, which gives me a consistency I've never gotten from any…
"What's new?" We'd just walked into the Channel Islands Audio room and spotted Dusty Vawter.
"Nothing really," he said.
"What's this?"
"Oh, that's the world's smallest AC conditioner, the XDC2 ($299). It removes DC from your AC, which is the leading cause of transformer chatter."
So there is something new?
"Well, I don't like to brag."
And here we thought that's what CES was for.
"Well, there's another new development—sort of," Channel Island Audio's Dusty Vawter said. "We've upgraded our $599 VDP-1 by essentially removing the entire circuit board and replacing it with a better circuit."
How much does it cost?
"The product stays the same price and every unit prior to the 2.1 version is eligible for the upgrade."
How do people find out about the upgrade?
"We announced it on www.audiocircle.com and now we're going through our warranty cards and notifying our customers—and I guess people will read about it on your blog."
One can…
Why would adult audiophiles do this to themselves? We have no idea. Kevin Deal and EveAnna Manley show off their latest tube blingware. Their dentists made a pretty penny knocking out their front teeth and adding the "Tubes Rule" matching grills. Yes, this stunt did get a photo in our blog.
If you're PrimaLuna, it's the DiaLogue, an integrated tube amp available in two models: the $2199 DiaLogue One and the $2499 DiaLogue Two. Both amps deliver 21Wpc in triode operation and 30Wpc in ultralinear mode. What's the difference? The Two comes with Genalux KT88s, Solen capacitors, fast recovery diodes in the power supply, and a high-gloss hand-rubbed finish.
Both amps feature PrimaLuna's adaptive auto bias so you can stick in any tube and the amp will optimize performance for it.
"So you're enabling tube rolling?" I asked Kevin Deal.
"You bet! Tube rolling is…
An inside look at PrimaLuna's adaptive auto-bias. Sometimes simpler is quite complex.