CES 2015

The main joy of returning to audio and writing for Stereophile is the pure fanboy excitement of meeting the folk-heroes of high-end and getting to talk them. In one great-sounding room I got to meet three at once: Wendell Diller of Magnepan (one of the nicest humans in the audio schema) as well as Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson of Conrad-Johnson.

The $80,000/pair MartinLogan electrostatic hybrid, the Neolith, played with wonderful spatial imaging and translucent sound. The speaker's enclosure was painted in a glossy, thick automotive glass red paint called Rosso Fuoco, but is available in 6 other colors.

Though still sporting the classic Mac look, there is plenty of new tech packed into the D150. USB gets you up to 32/192 PCM as well as DSD 64/128 and DXD 352.8/384 and there are also two SPDIF and optical connections. There is a custom DIN connector for connecting a McIntosh CD/SACD transport such as the new $3,500 MCT450 (available in a couple months).

There's also a high quality headphone amp and Mac's "Advanced Quad Balanced" DAC section. Price is $3k.

For the second consecutive year, Hi-Res Audio made a major statement on the main floor of the Venetian Hotel via a large Ballroom exhibit and star-studded panels. I took in "Meet the Hi-Res Music Creators." Moderated by recording engineer Maureen Droney (pictured fourth, going left to right), Senior Executive Director of the Producers & Engineers wing of The Recording Academy (the Grammy people), the panel consisted of four major engineers who record multiple genres in hi-res.

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.

Last year Bruno Putzeys simply held up a layered stack of circuit boards when describing his new DAC, but this year we were able to hear the DAC in Philip O'Hanlon's On a Higher Note room, shown above in the Makua preamp, with the bottom cover off and LEDs all aglow.