GoldenEar’s Sandy Gross emailed before the show about Golden Ear’s new compact, sealed, self-powered Supersub XXL subwoofer ($1999), which would be premiered at CES 2015. The subwoofer has two inertially-balanced, long-throw 12" woofers in the horizontal plane and two fully inertially-balanced 12.75" by 14.5" passive radiators in the vertical plane.
I corresponded briefly a while back with Gary Koh, CEO of Genesis. Gary has owned the company for the past five years, and moved it from its original home in Colorado to Seattle, Washington. When he took over the company, he was aware that his background was in computer software, not electronics. He decided that this could be an advantage. "Not being an engineer, I didn't know what was impossible. This explains to some degree the types of projects I've decided to take on, and those that have been achieved."
GTT Audio has taken over the US distribution of Bruno Putzey's Mola Mola line and was showing the new, completely optioned Makua linestage. Checking all the boxes when ordering this $11,740 components adds a $2900 phono section, a $6600 DAC, or a $1890 DAC. The Makua can be controlled by the MolaMola App, shown here running on a Samsung tablet.
Krell’s new Krell IPOD Dock (KID) only costs $1200, but offers balanced outputs, signal conditioning with bass and treble adjustments, all digital control lines, diverse outputs (2 balanced, 2 RCA, and S Video) with optical isolation. The auxillary input allows one to attach a Zune or Creative Digital Zen MP3 player. The Krell KID received much attention from press and public alike.
Harman International’s High-Performance Group’s exhibit featured a live demonstration of its most expensive equipment, including two Revel Rhythm 2 18" subwoofers ($10,000 each); two Revel Ultima2 Salons ($22,000/pair); a Macintosh MacBook Pro running Amarra software driving a Mark Levinson No.502 Sound Processor; a No.52 preamplifier ($30,000); two No.53 Reference monoblock amplifiers ($25,000 each); and Transparent power conditioners for the digital equipment and for the amplifiers. The rack also included a No.512 SACD player. The Revel Ultima2 Salons were crossed over to the subs at 80Hz with 4th-order slopes for both high-pass and low-pass filters. Listening to Diana Krall singing "I Used to Love You," I was struck by how all the loudspeakers and electronics disappeared leaving a holographic image of her voice, with a wide and deep soundstage.
McIntosh displayed the full-range, $80,000/pair XRT2K speaker in their two-channel room at the Alexis Park. It sets a record for number of
drivers per side—110—with
40 tweeters, 64 midrange units, and six woofers. Frequency response is claimed to be 16Hz–45kHz. The system driven to full volume by the 495lb McIntosh MC2KW monoblock ($30,000), which can deliver 2kW, demonstrated awesome dynamic range.
The Pathos InPower monoblock amplifier ($13,500/pair) is a hybrid design offering 80W (at 0.4% THD, 5Hz–60kHz, ±3dB. It features some of the most beautiful industrial design I saw at the show. Designer Gianni Borinato describes it as a balanced, double INPOL power amplifier, with a zero-feedback, hand-matched. MOSFET output stage biased to run in class-A. The point-to-point wiring uses silver wire. Two triode tubes in the input stage are wired in opposite phase to form a double triode that is claimed to minimize distortion. The design proved its merit by driving the Focal 1037 Be loudspeakers with speed, dynamics, and excellent imaging. The room was a favorite among the Stereophile writers at the Show.
I was trading e-mails with Roger Sanders, manufacturer of the Eros Mk.III electrostatic (ESL) loudspeakers, when it occurred to me to ask him about his name. I was struck that he had the same last name as Gayle Sanders, president of another American electrostatic speaker company, MartinLogan. Were they related? "No," replied Roger Sanders, "it's simply a coincidence that we have similar names. I've never even met him.
I ran into REL Acoustics' highly eloquent John Hunter on the way to the Venetian Towers, and he suggested I come by to hear the REL Acoustics "Six Pack." As it turned out, this was not a San Francisco microbrew special, or well-developed abdominal musculature, but twin towers of 3 stacked, (84 lb each) REL Gibraltar-2 subwoofers ($4000 each) set between two full-range Rockport Avior loudspeakers.