CES 2009

Although Mikey Fremer has received a pair for review, I haven't visited his Jersey crib yet to take a listen. So the system in Boulder's room at CES was my first chance to audition Wilson's new MAXX 3. I popped a data disc with some of my hi-rez 24-bit/88.2kHz files in the Boulder 1021 CD player, and a list of the WAV files appeared on the player's screen. The 1021 will play data CDs carrying FLAC, WAV, Vogg Orbis, and MP3 files, and as I found, will decode and play hi-rez files.

The original Coltrane speaker from Swedish company Mrten Design got the thumbs-up from Michael Fremer when he reviewed">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/205marten/">reviewed it three years ago, so I was not surprised to hear good sound in importer EAR USA's room from the new Coltrane Soprano ($45,000/pair). The Soprano combines a diamond tweeter from Jantzen Audio said to have a 55kHz bandwidth, with two 7" ceramic-cone woofers from Accuton. Other than the 56mm-thick front baffle, the stylin' gracefully curved enclosure is fabricated from carbon-fiber laminate.

8 DACs per channel and upsampling to provide a 2,8224MHz data rate with 26-bit resolution from a standard CD. Retail is $33,450 and availability will be March.

Here is Wadia's new 381 Integrated CD Player, which retails at $6,950 and offers the same performance of the company's 581se minus SACD playback.

Wadia's iTransport was a big">http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/010708wadia/">big hit at last year's show, so they are back this year with a pile of new products.

With the cover and top plate of the CD8 off, the Philips Pro-2 transport mechanism is revealed along with the damping system coupling the laser and spindle with the aluminum I-beam below.

Audio Research is showing their new replacement for the CD7, the Reference CD8 CD player shipping now at $9,995. They've taken a Philips Pro-2 transport and attached it with isolation pads to a machined aluminum I-beam which in turn is bolted to a machined aluminum bottom plate.