Rune Skov, sales director for Dantax Radio, manufacturer of Raidho, directed me over to the XT-5, explaining that it is the latest addition to their extensive line of speakers. "And as you can see, it is a type of a line source because we are using multiple drivers. In the X series we normally use ceramic drivers, but for the XT series we are using titanium drivers instead."
There was a brief back and forth as to whether they wanted to release information on the new cables (seen above in prototype form), but eventually Ray Kimber said yes. Kimber's Lonny Gould described these as "a carbon-infused eight wire cable." No pricing or release dates are set yet.
Swiss audio company Nagra won an Innovation Honoree award this year for their ingenious motorized volume control design in the tubed HD Preamp. René Laflamme, based in Montreal himself, describes the product: "The preamp is two channels of mono in a single chassis. There are two Super Cap capacitor power supplies, two independent circuits, and each channel has a single triode input stage featuring a NOS (new old stock) Mullard tube hand-selected by Nagra."
Paul Jayson, president of Viola Audio Laboratories, New Haven, CT was on hand to demo the company's new Chorale Integrated Amplifier. Price is still to be determined, says Jayson, "but we are looking at around $19,000, and plan on shipping in March."
"The 5 Series stared with Arnie Nudell in 1993 and the Genesis V," says Gary Koh, from Seattle's Genesis Advanced Technologies. "Then there was the G500 and then the G501, G5.2, G5.3 . . . Now I've given up numbers and we have the Genesis Maestro." Retail price is $30,000 a pair and they are available now.
HiFiMan had two new products on display this year: one for the budget-minded, and one not.
First, for the entry level, is the new Sundara planar headphone which will retail for $499. Josselin Marvie from HiFiMan explains that "We spent some time designing this headphone to be more reliable and comfortable, so we have a new headband design which is more lightweight as well. We also have new cups, and everything has been redesigned to make the headphone last longer."
"This is the evolution of our Sonja series," Explains YG Acoustics senior account executive Kerry St. James. "This follows the Sonja 1 series and the 'dot' indicates how many modules there are in the model. So this is a Sonja 2.2 (he points to the demo in the room) meaning it is the second series and has two modules. The 2 series is available as one module or expanded into three modules, the Sonja 2.3."
"All products in the Heritage Series are built in the Klipsch factory in Hope Arkansas," the company's Kerry Geist begins. Klipsch has chosen to only demo the Heritage stuff here in the Venetian, with the bulk of their contemporary line back at the main convention center. And the room is quite crowded, so they clearly understand their demographic.
Richard Vandersteen, hailing from Hanford, California, was on hand to show off his new creation, the M5-HPA monoblock amplifier. Vandersteen notes that this is a high-pass amplifier, not intended to go full-range, for a system that would also include a subwoofer. The selectable high pass settings are 20Hz, 40Hz, 80Hz, 100Hz or 200Hz. The 80 and 100 Hz settings are optimized to work with Vandersteen subwoofers.
Shown here is the new DeVore Fidelity Gibbon Super 9 ($9,900 pair) which falls in between the company's big Gibbon 10 3-way and the Gibbon 88 smaller 2-way floorstander.