CES 2008

Ayre's Steve Silberman was excited about the new DPS Ayre turntable. Charlie Hansen had hipped Wes Phillips to the then pending debut of the DPS Ayre back in September.

"Wow, that's great," I said, looking down at B&W's new $599 Zeppelin iPod player, the football-shaped Zeppelin, as it played a track from Tal Wilkenfeld's new Transformation album off of my Apple iPhone. Tal Wilkenfeld, a 21 year-old, very pretty, Australian girl, was all the buzz after she played bass with Jeff Beck at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival Concert in Chicago last summer.

Meridian has completely redone its Signature Reference 808 CD player, now the 808.2 ($14,995). "We've changed its drive, drive navigation software, power supply, DSP, and clocking and buffering. I'd like to say that the only thing we've retained is the case, but we've improved that, too," said Bob Stuart.

The Benchmark DAC1 D/A headphone amplifier has long been our affordable digital recommendation, both in its original form ($975) or with an additional USB data input ($1275, reviewed in the January issue of Stereophile). The DAC1 looked a little different when I went into the Benchmark room at the THE Show; "That's because you're looking at the new DAC1 PRE," explained Rory Rall. The NY company has added a pair of single-ended analog inputs so that the DAC1 can act as the system preamp. It still has digital inputs, of course, though the AES/EBU XLR had to be omitted to make the rear-panel real estate available for the analog inputs. A switch scrolls between the four digital inputs, the USB computer input, and the analog input. The DAC1 PRE is expected to begin shipping in February 2008 and will retail for $1575.

We'd been told to check out Boulder's new music server, but that's not exactly what the $24,000 1021 Disc Player is. It's a CD player (with a few other formats "to be announced") that uses a computer disc drive to feed a one-minute buffer to "preserve the integrity of the audio signal delivered from the drive. "Also," confided Steve Rockwell, "the clock is about this far [pinches fingers together], so jitter is phenomenally low."

I was excited to see Cambridge Audio's TT50 turntable. On display with their small, S30 loudspeakers ($259/pair), the TT50 was looking pretty darn sexy in its high-gloss jet-black finish. If it reminds you of Pro-Ject's popular Debut III, that's probably because the TT50 was developed in partnership with that Austrian firm. It uses a proprietary tonearm, an Audio Technica AT95E moving magnet cartridge, and its elastomer-coated acrylic platter is said to "control resonance and provide matched acoustic impedance to the vinyl record for maximum detail retrieval."