CES Show Report

Thursday

  Naturally one of my show reports will start with a proper sports car. The CES is no different as the Ford GT40, while being an exceptionally special high-performing vehicle for a road course, is also packed with a special McIntosh audio system. They designed a lightweight loudspeaker system for the car, yet one can only wonder... with a great sounding engine behind your ears why would you want to hear anything else?

 

Alan Yun of Silverline was proudly showing his new Sonata III four-way full range floorstanding loudspeaker in Burl wood ($7,200). An Esotec dome tweeter, LPG midrange, and Dynaudio woofer round up the drivers in this unit.

 

Continuum Audio Labs turntable... wow! What a turntable to lust for with its tunable bearing(!), battery powered linear controlled motor (no cogging), and their 'The Cobra' tonearm that is not made per se... it is grown! To even try and describe in details all the new innovations within this turntable/tonearm would take a full report in and of itself! As for price... $50 LARGE.

 

Alex and Jeff of Hovland proudly hold their award for Best Of 2004 Amplifications (click here to see the awards page). Both the HP-100 preamplifier and RADIA amplifier took honors.

 

Tash Goka of Antique Sound Lab is soon going to be offering their new Flora DT ($2,500) preamplifier that uses both an input and output transformers coupled tube stage. We are talking eight transformers here folks! Four single ended (RCA) inputs and both single ended (RCA) and balanced (XLR) output. Naturally an autoformer is employed for the volume control. Sah-weeet!

 

Bobby Palkvic of Merlin is seen here with their new VSM-MX ($10,000) and their well-deserved Blue Note Award for the VSM-Millennium. The MX builds upon the Millennium with enhanced structural and refined crossover components that utilize cryogenics(!).

 

Terry Cian of Cain & Cain stands proudly next to his new brainchild, the IM-BEN FE168 Sigma Fostex driver loudspeaker ($5,500 in standard finish, seen here with Acid Edge Cherry for $6,500). Our reviewer Ian White has reviewed the Cain & Cain and fell in love. (Said in good humor as these are indeed impressive speakers) Ian in love with speakers... i think Ian needs to get out a bit more ;)

 

Luke Manley of VTL joyously showed me their new TL 6.5 Signature Line preamplifier ($8,500) as it has all the basic building blocks of their award winning 7.5 yet within a single chassis (and priced less). Very high quality parts throughout and i must say, the internal construction looks tré manifique! Ya know, i remember my VTL 225 triode KT90 monoblock amplifiers i owned many years ago... and the countless hours of musical bliss! Ah yes, the good 'ol days.