CES 2012

Also available in February for around $3.500, the Paris DAC features Toslink, SPDIF and USB inputs and the processing is built around the AKM DAC chips. Both balanced and unbalanced outputs are available.

Traditionally, high-performance audio at CES has been on display away from the ginormous Las Vegas Convention Center, also traditionally but gently derided by audiophiles as the "Zoo." But there are still one or two high-end companies to be found and as you can see from the photo, the LVCC was packed with people checking out the new technologies on show.

Speaking of great things in small packages, here we see Parasound’s Zphono USB phono preamplifier ($349) and Zdac digital-to-analog converter ($450). Parasound’s Z Series products are handsome, truly affordable, and built like bricks. Interesting side note: The half-width, rack-mount design has its roots in a mic preamp that Parasound built for AMF bowling centers in the 1980s. I bet those mic preamps kicked butt, too.

Pathos was also showing a prototype DAC with striking looks and tubes that should be out in a couple months. Inputs include USB, SPDIF and AES and pricing will be announced later.

There's nothing like a nice big touchscreen to browse a large music collection, and Pathos was showing a prototype of the largest touchscreen dedicated to a music server that I've seen to date. Called the Musiteca, the new product was up and running but clearly had some features to work out. As shown, the product has a built-in DAC, transport for loading discs, and 1TB drive for storage.

In addition to the above features, Pathos' Paolo Andriolo says there will be variable XLR outputs to feed the audio directly to your amp and a free iPad app. Price is predicted to be around $7k and should show up by April.

My show report assignment was speakers under $15,000/pair, whereas John Atkinson would be reporting on speakers over $15,000/pair. But what about a speaker costing exactly $15,000? That was the dilemma I faced when, on my visit to T.H.E. Show, Peter Bichel Noerbaek told me about his latest speaker, the PBN Liberty (named after his daughter, age 9), which has a list price of $15,000/pair. I told him about the problem this presented for me, and he quickly responded by changing the price to $14,999/pair! The Liberty is a floorstanding three-way that uses what Noerbaek calls "inechoic" (not "unechoic") construction. The cabinet weighs 140 lbs. and is made of 48 layers of MDF.

Robert Deutsch reported below on PBN's $14,999/pair Liberty speaker. My attention in the company's large room at T.,H.E. Show was attracted by the large WAS2 (right), which costs $55,000/pair, with its piano-black lacquer-finished enclosure and mahogany hardwood front baffle, and weighs 1000 lbs/pair. It combines two 15" subwoofers, driven by a 1kW ICE-Power amplifier, two 8" coated paper-cone woofers, two 5.25 Nextel-coated paper-cone midrange units, and a 1.1" soft-dome tweeter. Frequency response is quoted as 18Hz–22kHz ±1.5dB and sensitivity is said to be 94dB!