"We are your one-stop shop for cables and tweaks," proclaimed Joseph Cohen of The Lotus Group, while leading me through two rooms filled products. Even the new products took up two pages of notes. Through it all, I remained extremely jealous of legendary mastering engineer Steve Hoffman, who had settled onto a couch in front of the fabulous Feastrex $55,000/pair speakers, and was blissfully tapping his foot to the extremely realistic, full-range sound of a jazz combo playing back on a A Feastrex modified EMT studio type CD player with outboard line transformer.
Somewhere in the maze of air-walled convention cells in the Sands, I stumbled upon PSC Audio's Pure Silver Connection cable. Handmade in Perth, Australia using the finest, purest Australian silver one can find6Ns, or 99.99997% pureeach cable receives three to six annealing heating and cooling treatments (without cryogenically freezing) to increase the length of silver crystals, thereby increasing conductivity by 20% over untreated silver.
Clarity Cable of Wichita, KS had a neat little demo going at T.H.E. Show. Rather than pairing their single cable line and new Clarity Audio Pillows with high-priced electronics, they intentionally chose inexpensive mass-market electronics. With a twist. The Infinity Beta 50 speakers were rewired with Clarity wire. (You can also find Clarity wire in MaxxHorn speakers). The CD player was a Panasonic DMP-BD30 with a flimsy chassis, etc. Yet the sound was impressively full-range and inviting.
"Do you have a low-cost amplifier that Stereophile hasn't reviewed that you'd like people to know about?" I asked VTL's glamorous Bea Lam. With a grace and surety usually reserved for Vannah White, the incomparable Ms. Lam glided over to the diminutive VTL ST-85 Performance Amplifier ($2750).
Soundstring designer Leonard Miller, whose eight years in business has garnered a host of positive reviews and product awards, manufactures reasonably priced cables that boast a progressive geometric, multi-gauge/multi-conductor design. Rather than 75 models at 95 different price points, the company has one line, of cables, all of comparable quality, all manufactured in Connecticut. The power cables and speaker cables have three conductors each, the equivalent of 10.5 gauge copper. Interconnects have eight individual conductors, the equivalent of composite 22 gauge. A specific geometric progression promotes signal transmission in the fastest way possible, creating the fastest path for each frequency, thereby allowing components to function optimally with less effort. Soundstring's Tricor Maxial Speaker cables cost $425 for a 6' pair, and the power cord costs $450. Soundstring's HDMI, DVI, and USB cables were used to record Jim Merod's jazz albums, one of which I will soon sample. (Thanks, Jim. The proof is in the pudding, so they say). A line of digital cables is in development.
I love this stuff. Ultra System's Robert Stein (pictured right with Bernd Alne of HiFi-Tuning left) greeted me with an entire array of 12 audio enhancement products, a host of which are just entering the US market. One that will surely attract Michael Fremer's attention is the Audio Desk Systeme Vinyl Cleaner. This German wonder, which retails for $3495, delivers the world's first, fully automatic ultrasonic as well as mechanical LP cleaning bath. The baby treats both sides of an LP to an ultrasonic cleaning, then to a liquid bath, and finally to a blow dry. The only services it doesn't offer are tints and highlights.
Want to hear silver turn to platinum? Check out Wireworld's new line of Platinum Eclipse Reference audio cables, whose interconnects are composed of four flat conductors made of Ohno continuous cast solid silver of 99.99997% purity.
Due to a horrible traffic jam in the bowels of the Sands/Venetian Show venue, I was only able to catch the tail end of Greenpeace's January 9 press conference. The good news is that the greenest consumer electronics products on the market today have a smaller environmental footprint than those sold a year ago. The sad news is that there is considerable room for improvement.
Upon hearing that I was looking for relatively inexpensive electronics to feature in our blog, Parasound's Richard Schram and publicist extraordinaire Gordon Sell immediately pointed to a static display of Parasound's Halo P 7 multichannel analog preamp. Designed by Finland's Juha Kuusama, the Halo P 7's origins lie in Juha's design for Parasound's first surround processor, which was released late in the last century.
Kerem Kücükaslan (pronounced something like "Kooshookasslan," shown standing in the center of the photo), former President of the Istanbul HiFi Club, is justifiably proud of his Echole Obsession cables. When I first encountered these cables, mated with Kaiser Kawero speakers from Germany at last year's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, I was mightily impressed with the huge, three-dimensional soundstage that the system achieved in a huge ballroom. Playing a portion of Ivan Fischer's R2D4 recording of Mahler's Symphony 2, this system spoke musical truth.