CES 2010

Sort By: Post Date Title Publish Date

CES 2010

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2010 | 0 comments

The Rockport Alya's 1.25"-thick front baffle is cast from aluminum, then machined to accommodate the drive-units. The tweeter's usual front-plate is discarded and replaced by the baffle, which has the necessary opening and locating pins. This gives a very clean acoustic environment for the dome. Andy Payor's hand is shown here locking the tweeter into place with a ring that screws into a thread tapped into the rear of the baffle.

CES 2010

Rockport's Alya Speaker

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2010 | 6 comments

I have come to expect innovative engineering from Rockport's Andy Payor, and was not disappointed by his new Alya loudspeaker. The two-way Alya costs $29,500/pair and marries Scanspeak's new beryllium-dome tweeter with a custom Audio-Technology woofer with a 6.5" carbon-fiber cone and a 2" voice-coil. The front baffle is aluminum and internal horizontal rods connect it to the rear of the cabinet, holding the HDF enclosure in a rigid grip. A rear port is tuned to a respectable 35Hz.

CES 2010

A Tribute to Jim Thiel

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2010 | 0 comments

The first night of CES saw a memorial reception held in honor of loudspeaker designer Jim Thiel, who passed away last September. A succession of high-end audio's greatest offered thoughts and reflections on a talented, well-respected, and universally liked man whom everyone agreed was taken from us too soon. Shown in my photo is erstwhile Stereophile publisher Larry Archibald, whose comments were deeply felt and moving. I paid my own tribute to Jim in my November 2009 "As We See It" essay, which I reprised in my closing day's speech at THE Show, discussed above by Jason Serinus..

CES 2010

John Speaks

Jason Victor Serinus | Jan 14, 2010 | 0 comments

Stereophile editor John Atkinson served as the opening act for the Grand Giveaway on the final day of THE Show 2010. In his short talk, John reflected on the losses of the past year. He first honored two of his departed mentors, John Crabbe and J. Gordon Holt, both of whom were central to the development of high-end audio. He also honored the memory of Al Stiefel, who co-founded the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest with his wife, Marjorie Baumert.

CES 2010

Live vs Recorded with VMPS

Jason Victor Serinus | Jan 14, 2010 | 5 comments

After John's short talk at THE Show (see below), the two of us decided to make the rounds together until I had to leave for the airport. But it wasn't that easy to just get up and go.

CES 2010

Music For Sale

Jason Victor Serinus | Jan 14, 2010 | 1 comments

The vendor display at THE Show was up and going strong throughout the four days. Classic Records, who clearly didn't want to attract any attention, joined Acoustic Sounds, Chesky, Elusive Disc, HDtracks.com, M•A Recordings, Music Direct, Reference Recordings, themusic.com, Ultra Systems, Truextent, Quality Rare Records, and Parts Express.

CES 2010

THE Show

Jason Victor Serinus | Jan 14, 2010 | 0 comments

The outboarding THE Show, run by the affable Richard Beers, was held for the first time at the Flamingo Hotel on the Strip, two Las Vegas blocks from CES’s “High-Performance” venue, the Venetian. In previous years, THE Show had been held at the St. Tropez Resort, then the Alexis Park, but Richard now has a multi-year contract with the Flamingo. I estimated THE Show had representation from a good 110 manufacturers. One of the big draws was actually outside the Flamingo's back door, where Panasonic was demming HD-3D TV in a huge trailer. It's rumored that some die-hard two-channel audiophiles snuck into the trailer trying to mask the same guilty expressions that they carried to the porno exhibit in the Sands Convention Center.

CES 2010

A Busy CES

Larry Greenhill | Jan 14, 2010 | 0 comments

Friday was the busiest day I and other Stereophile writers found at the CES venues. Pictured here is a lull in the traffic taken from a window at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) near the press room, where the line for the free press lunch stretched hundreds of feet. Later that day, the bus and cab lines at the LVCC stretched half a mile as evening approached and the temperature outside dropped from mid 60s to temperatures in the 40s (Fahrenheit). Little evidence of a recession was visible in pure crowd count, but I ran into many more Asian and European attendees, while missing some friends in the audio high end community who skipped CES this year.

CES 2010

CEntrance's Tiny USB Headphone Amp

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2010 | 1 comments

I was aware of CEntrance from the code they supply for the Texas Instruments USB receiver chip used by Benchmark , Bel Canto and others to allow USB connection without there having to be a driver program on the host PC. But the Chicago-based company also makes USB-based hardware, and at THE Show, Jason Serinus and I bumped into their Managing Director, Michael Goodman (left) who is showing Jason the cute DACport USB Headphone Amplifier ($500). This 24/96-capable, bus-powered, cigarette lighter-sized product has a miniature USB port on one end and a ¼" headphone jack on the other, with a small volume pot on top. CEntrance also makes similar bus-powered products with an A/D converter to connect microphones and electric guitars to a PC via USB.

CES 2010

Atlantic Technology—Small Speaker But Big Bass

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2010 | 2 comments

"So what you think our new AT1 loudspeaker will cost?" Atlantic Technology's Peter Tribeman had just finished his dem of a fairly small two-way tower that, driven by Parasound Halo JC 2 preamplifier and Halo A21 power amplifier, was producing prodigious amounts of low frequencies in a fairly large room.

CES 2010

MSB Signature Platinum DAC IV + iLink II Integrated Transport

Jon Iverson | Jan 14, 2010 | 2 comments

Yes even the best can come with an iPod dock built right in. The MSB Signature Platinum DAC IV, starting at $13,995 with the iLink II Integrated Transport option at $1,995. Shipping now.

CES 2010

MSB Ladder DAC Revealed

Jon Iverson | Jan 14, 2010 | 5 comments

Here is some serious DAC porn: The MSB Signature Platinum DAC IV with its top off to reveal four 24 bit Discrete 3MHz Four Quadrant Ladder DACs.

CES 2010

MSB Platinum DAC Line

Jon Iverson | Jan 14, 2010 | 1 comments

MSB is not messing around at this CES. The company has announced a stack of new products, including the DAC IV variations seen here (from the top): Signature Platinum DAC IV starting at $13,995, the Diamond DAC IV starting at $25,995, the Platinum DAC IV starting at $5,995, and the Platinum Power Base to keep them running.

CES 2010

Ultra-Quiet Classé Amp

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2010 | 0 comments

Some products at CES—all-black products, with black highlights, and with the lettering tastefully done in black, in a darkened room—defeat all but the most-determined photographers. So my thanks to Larry Greenhill for managing to photograph the new Classé CTM600 600W monoblock amplifier ($6500 each).

CES 2010

Parasound's John Curl Phono Preamp

Erick Lichte | Jan 14, 2010 | 3 comments

There were a few companies showing products on the 2nd floor of the Venetian, adjacent to the Sands Convention Center, where the Adult Show was being held. After John Atkinson and I grabbed a well-needed afternoon cup of coffee we checked out a few of the spaces on these lower floors. JA and I quickly found the Parasound/Atlantic Technology room—a pairing of companies I would not have come up with myself. On silent display was the brand new JC3 phono preamplifier ($2000). Those who know about Parasound equipment will already know that the JC moniker for this phono stage indicates that it was designed by John Curl, an engineer that many audiophiles (and reviewers) speak of only in hushed tones. As you can see from JA's photo, the preamp is divided up into shielded sections within the chassis to keep the dirty signals dirty and the clean signals clean. Each channel's circuitry is encased in a metal sub-enclosure, that also shields the input and output jacks, and is supplied super-regulated DC from the power supply.

Search form

CES 2010

Pages