CES 2008

Immedia's Allen Perkins was running not one, but two Spiral Groove turntables. He was running the original SG1 ($20,000) with Continuum's new Copperhead tonearm ($12,000), but he was also debuting his new SG2 ($15,000) with a Triplanar Ultimate tonearm ($4200).

"The Sonics by Joachim Gerhard Amerigo loudspeakers ($5500/pair) are the first speakers Joachim has ever designed specifically for the American market," said Immedia's Allen Perkins. "I designed the cabinet dimensions and suggested we use an American veneer like Zebrawood or Bird's-Eye maple, then Joachim developed drivers and a crossover network. Funny thing, he said it had the lowest distortion he'd ever measured."

For Stereophile writers, the focus of interest at CES are the exhibits featuring high-performance audio (mostly in the Venetian). That's certainly true for me, but I have to admit to being intrigued by the many sorts of electronic gadgets and gizmos that are shown in the main exhibit halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo, so my visit to CES always excludes a brief tour of these venues. And, sometimes, in my wanderings through these halls I even find a product that is interest to audiophiles as well as gadget freaks. I found one such product at the Sands Expo: the Zoom H2 portable audio recorder.

In their suite at the Mirage, Nagra introduced the VPS (Valve Phono Stage), shown here under the Swiss company’s well-regarded PL-L line preamplifier. The front-panel switch selects between A and B inputs and mute, while the rear panel features two sets of inputs and outputs and an output level switch. The A inputs accommodate MC cartridges, while the optional B input can be set for either MM or MC operation. Capacitive and resistive loading can be changed with modules that plug into the pcb close to the input connectors. The MC circuit is based on high-quality transformers wound in-house by Nagra, followed by gain and RIAA stages using ECC81 and ECC83 tubes. The RIAA equalization can be set with internal jumpers either to the 1953 standard or to the 1976 standard. The circuit boards are mounted on compliant supports, to minimize microphony and the power supply is housed in a separate chassis. Unusually, the output can be taken either directly from the tube stage or via a solids-state buffer.

Jim Wang of Harmonic Technology (right) and Jimmy Ko of Inex Innovation (left) have teamed up to produce the all-in-one Photon Amplicable. Combining the attributes of Harmonic Tech's CyberLight interconnect cables, an amplification system, and speaker cable, the Photon Amplicable allows the user to connect a source or preamp directly to speakers, and to power the system through the cables.

I'd gone into the DCM room at the end of the day to hear the speaker manufacturer's new Time Frame TFE200 three-way tower, which can be seen at the left of the photo. Using two 6.5" woofers and a midrange mounted above the tweeter, the TFE200 offers a lot of speaker engineering for just $1000/pair. But following my audition of the speakers, driven by Jolida CD player and tube monoblocks, connected with Esoteric USA cables, we were treated to a concert by singer-songwriter Herman Hogan. Al Congdon, the VP of DCM parent company Mitek's Consumer Electronics Group, had heard Hogan playing in a Long Beach coffee house, and liked what he heard. He invited Hogan to perform in the DCM room at CES. You can't beat that live music!