John Atkinson

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 15, 2011 | 0 comments

Wisdom president Mark Glazier holds one of the two-way, push-pull, planar-magnetic modules, four of which are used in each LS4.

Vandersteen's new Tréo

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 15, 2011 | 1 comments

Richard Vandersteen doesn't rush to release new loudspeakers, so given that the top-of-the-line Vandersteen 7 was a hot product at the 2010 CES, I wasn't expecting anything new at the 2011 Show. Talking to Richard in the company's Venetian suite, where they were featuring the Model 7, he casually mentioned that the new Tréo ($5990/pair) was at the Show, just not in his room. So I hustled me along to the Musical Surroundings room, where the Tréos were being demmed with a Clearaudio turntable and Aesthetix electronics.

Basically, the Tréo is similar to the $10k/pair Quatro Wood that Wes Phillips reviewed in December 2007, but replaces that speaker's active, equalized bass unit, with a conventional passive 6.5" woofer and an 8" flat-cone "acoustic coupler." Good sound at an equally good price.

The Sonus Faber

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 1 comments

Previewed by Michael Fremer in the October 2010 issue of Stereophile (pp.13–16), where he goes in depth into its technology, Sonus Faber's flagship loudspeaker, The Sonus Faber, will only be produced in a limited edition of 30 pairs. Apparently, all 30 pairs have been spoken for by distributors and dealers.

This is a big speaker—it stands 67" tall and weighs 672 lbs—and was being demmed in an appropriately large room with the large Audio Research Reference 610T tubed monoblocks. Or it would have been demmed, as on both my visits to the room, the electricity supply to the room had failed. (If you look closely, you can see the electrician's red toolbox to the left of my photo.)

Sonus Faber Amati Futura

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 0 comments

The first trickle-down from The Sonus Faber project is a revised Amati model, the Amati Futura ($34,000/pair). Beautifully finished in a mirror-gloss lacquer, as you can see, it was also almost unphotographable. It was also only on passive display in the Sumiko penthouse suite at the Venetian.

Major Changes for YG Acoustics

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 3 comments

If you look closely at the easel to the right of the photo of the YG room at the Sands/Venetian Convention Center, you can see the text "with drivers machined in-house." Usually, this means that the manufacturer has machined the baskets and polepieces, but in the case of YG, they are also talking about the cones!

Called "BilletCore" by the Colorado company, the aluminum cone for the midrange and low-frequency drive-units used in the top-of-the-line Anat III Reference ($111,000/system) and the smaller three-way Kipod is milled from a solid block of aluminum. In the case of the Anat subwoofer, the starting point is a billet of aluminum 2.5" thick weighing 16 lbs, compared with the finished cone after a day of work, which is 0.008" thick and weighs less than 1 ounce. Stiffening ribs are left on the rear of the cone and the final step is to black-anodize the aluminum. The benefit of machining the cone is said to be improved unit-unit consistency and rigidity compared with a conventional spun, cast, or pressed metal diaphragm, which pushes break-up modes even farther out-of-band.

Though YG was in the same room as in previous CESes, they had taken heroic measures this year to tame its acoustics, as can be seen from the photo. The result was worth the effort. In a system that included dCS Scarlatti digital front-end, a Veloce battery-powered preamp, Tenor 350M monoblocks, and Kubala-Sosna Master Reference cables, the Anat II Reference produced a warm, detailed, full-range sound. Particularly impressive was a version of Sting's "Roxanne" from Italian singer Petra Magoni of Musica Nuda. Both the voice and the solo double bass accompaniment had a palpable presence but without sounding forced or exaggerated.

Trenner & Friedl Duke

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 1 comments

"$175,000/pair?" I gulped. I know my beat at the 2011 CES was expensive loudspeakers, but the price of the Trenner & Friedl Duke took my breath away. Yes, the sound in the large room the new Austrian company shared with Cardas, Profundo, and the Jeff Rowland Design Group was superb, but that's a lot of change, even if the manufacturer will fly anywhere in the world to set the speakers up in the customer's home. (The rest of the system comprised a dCS Puccini used as a transport to feed JRDG's new Aeris DAC (the Colorado company's first digital product), $9800; a JRDG Criterion line stage, $18,500; and two JRDG 625 stereo power amplifiers, $13,500; with Cardas Clear cabling.

Each 12" woofer uses a fiber-glass–reinforced paper cone and is loaded by what is referred to as "a hybrid form of horn-resonator and bass reflex design." The mid/HF module is coupled to the woofer modules with spheres of varying hardness, to drain vibrations optimally, and can be adjusted to bring the drivers into proper time alignment at the listening position. The midrange unit features a papyrus cone with an elmwood phase plug and an alnico magnet, while the enclosure is filled with wool from "locally raised sheep" to reduce internal reflections being retransmitted through the drive-unit cone. The tweeter uses a titanium nitride dome loaded with a Tractrix-flare horn, while the supertweeter is a diamond-diaphragm type. The upper-range crossover is passive; the woofers are fed via a line-level crossover, and internal wiring is all Cardas Clear.

Trenner & Friedl's Crystal Power

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 1 comments

The Trenner & Friedl Duke's diamond-diaphragm supertweeter fires upward at a Golden-Ratio–proportioned Swarovsky crystal that acts to widen its dispersion.

Ray Kimber Keynotes for Perfect Eight

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 0 comments

I first encountered the glass-enclosured Force dipole loudspeaker from Perfect Eight, which combines a full-length ribbon with 8 cone midrange units and a subwoofer handling the load below 60Hz, at the 2008 CES. Their 2011 dem, with the speakers driven by Ypsilon amplification, was noteworthy for having invited Ray Kimber to talk about and play some of his IsoMike recordings. (Ray is seen here on the left in my admittedly rather grainy photo—it was dark—with Perfect Eight's Jons Rantila.) I listened first to soloists from the Academy of St. Martin-in-the Fields performing a movement from the Mendelssohn Octet, then to a Mozart piano sonata movement by Robert Silverman (the latter one of my "Records to Die For" in the February 2011 issue). Despite my skepticism about glass as an enclosure material, the sound was natural and uncolored.

TAD Speakers Sing

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 3 comments

TAD didn't appear to be demonstrating anything new in their large penthouse suite at the Venetian, but designer Andrew Jones was getting such an enormously involving sound from the Compact Reference CR-1 stand-mounts ($37,500/pair plus $1800/pair for stands) that I had to stop to take an extended listen. Jones had some of HDTracks' new 24/192 files that he was playing with Amarra and one track, featuring Hammond organ, double bass and drums, had the audience stumped. (The fellow in front of me even held up his iPhone and ran a song ID app, only for the screen to flash "No Match.") Then I twigged: it was a jazz arrangement of Pink Floyd's "Money," with sound to die for. DAC, preamp, and power amps were also from TAD.

Estelon Speakers from Estonia

CES 2011

John Atkinson | Jan 14, 2011 | 1 comments

The Estelon speakers from Alfred & Partners ($43,900/pair) were one of the hits of last year's RMAF, so I made a point of taking a listen to them at CES. The ceramic-diaphragm floor-standers were being used in more than one room—Conrad-Johnson was also using them, in their first "live" Show dem in two decades—but I was drawn into the Kubala-Sosna room by the sound of Jimi Hendrix playing "Born Under a Bad Sign." Source was a Korg DSDx2 recorder, which Joe Kubala had used to record the track from LP, and the sound, with Audio Research Reference 5 preamp, Tenor 350M monoblocks, and Kubala-Sosna Excitation cables, was rich, full-range, and clean. The speakers are internally wired with K-S cable.

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John Atkinson

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