Wes at the CES: Special
On-the-Spot Feature
January 8 update
It's funny, but for all the variety on offer at a CES, it
always seems like I discover the real gems in veins. Thursday was a good day for
speakers.
At the Alexis Park, I encountered Amphion's new Krypton, a
floorstanding three-way that looked like a Xenon on steroids. It's a big 'un -- but by
super-speaker standards, it's reasonably priced, coming in at $16,500 a pair.
Like the Xenon, the Krypton employs a side-firing woofer, a
12" jobbie in a sealed enclosure. The 25mm tweeter is centrally mounted in a wave
guide between the two 8" SEAS midrange drivers.
Anssi Hyvonen , who accompanied the speakers from Finland,
alluded to the immense amount of work that went into perfecting the Krypton's crossover,
but that was obvious when I sat down to listen to "Chopi" from David Russell's Aire
Latino [Telarc CD-80612]. The Krypton's tweeter and midrange look as though
they're mounted a tad high in relation to a listener's ears, but the speaker focuses the
sound perfectly, throwing a specific and detailed image exactly where it ought to be. And,
in the case of Russell's guitar, that sound was life-sized and no larger -- a trick the
big guys can't always pull off.
Over at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I had my first
encounter with Dynaudio's new subwoofer line. At the moment it consists of only two models
-- the ported 10" Sub 300 ($1400) and the sealed-enclosure 12" Sub 500 ($1900).
Both feature built-in amps (210W for the 300, 250W for the 500) and brand-new drivers with
3" voice coils and long-throw motors. Dynaudio claims the new drivers offer massive
output of LF from these guys, which have 94dB sensitivity.
As usual with Dynaudio, the finishes were superb and the
cabinetry flawless. What I didn't expect was how compact the subs were. If you're looking
for a discrete subwoofer, the Sub 300 and Sub 500 need to go onto your short list.
Making them even easier to tuck away, Dynaudio has
outfitted them with remote controls -- and front and rear IR sensors. In addition
to setting volume and crossover point, the remotes allow consumers to call up four preset
low-frequency EQ curves. And did I mention that they accommodate balanced and SE inputs?
I can't wait to hear these guys.
The third speaker that knocked me out (they always travel
in threes -- why is that?) was Sonus Faber's new flagship, the $39,995 Stradivari Homage,
which, running true to form for Sonus Faber, is drop-dead gorgeous. The speakers are
shallow and elliptically shaped, with the drivers mounted into tunable cavities running
down the center of the cabinets.
The driver complement is impressive: a specially tweaked
silk ring-radiator tweeter, a 6" midrange driver that looked familiar (but probably
isn't what it seems), and two custom-built 10 1/4" aluminum-magnesium woofers.
The Stradivari Homage was on static display, but it's the
speaker I most want to take home to my place -- and it's not just because of its good
looks. When a company names a speaker in its "violin" series after the great
master builder, you just know they feel they've got all their ducks in a row.
But before that happens, I have to get through another
three days of CES. Stay tuned.
January 9 update
If there's one constant at CES year after year, it's that
you'll see a speaker or two that are unlike anything you've ever even dreamed of. Why
should this year be any different?
The strangest looking of this year's batch has got to be
the Solid Acoustics SIKKIM ($2299), billed as a polyhedron speaker system. They look like
the Deathstar from Star Wars mounted on a microphone stand.
The speakers have 12 tiny drivers set into a multifaceted
globe -- obviously we're talking omnidirectional here. There also seems to be some sort of
equalizer box involved (there were some language difficulties, so I'm not being as
specific as I'd like).
But the thing works. I listened to a few different songs
and was impressed by the openness and solidity of the sound. It was a little bright, but I
assume that can be fixed in the little black box. I won't say that they're pretty and I
won't swear I'd love 'em in a long-term audition, but I was pleasantly surprise that they
worked at all, and I' be willing to spend more time with 'em.
The Gilmore Audio Model 2s ($14,500) were pretty,
but I'm a sucker for Corian. The Gilmores are flat dipoles featuring a 40" ribbon
tweeter and four 8" pistonic woofers. All of those drivers are set into a thick
ear-shaped (sort of) Corian panel.
If you want solid bass, these babies should be right up
your alley -- they had lots of rump thumpin' jump -- and my copy of Cantus' Deep River
[Cantus Recordings CTS 1203] had surprising delicacy and depth. I wasn't familiar with all
of the associated equipment -- and I heard some ground-plane buzz from one of the tube
amps that obscured some inner detail -- but I thought these guys were quite promising.
They've got a big brother, too: the $19,950 Model 2, which has four 12" woofers and a
60" ribbon. Hmmmm.
The speaker I flat-out adored, however, was DeVore
Fidelity's Silverback, a $20,000 floorstander that gave me goosebumps. The Silverback has
90dB sensitivity and never drops below a 6-ohm load, so it's dead simple to drive. It has
a pair of side-firing 8" woofers a 1" silk-dome tweeter, and a top-mounted
6" midrange driver with a custom phase plug -- but them's just details.
I sat there transfixed by the transparency, dynamics, and
phenomenal inner detail that the Silverbacks delivered. You probably haven't heard of
DeVore Fidelity before, but you are definitely going to be hearing about it from
now on.
From me, if I'm lucky.
January 10 update
There's still a whole day of the show left, but the best
sound I've heard here so far is undoubtedly TAD's demo of its $45,000/pair Model-1
speakers at the Alexis Park. These striking floorstanders feature a Beryllium
tweeter/midrange driver (165mm), a trilaminate (woven arimid fiber/acrylic foam/woven
arimid fiber) 200mm midbass driver, and a pair of 250mm trilaminate woofers, all housed in
a sculptured laminated birch-plywood enclosure. They're drop-dead gorgeous.
And they're jaw-droppingly good-sounding. This is
what high-end sound is all about. The Model-1s simply weren't there -- but we were there,
there being wherever the recording took place. For a recording of Mozart's clarinet
concerto, we were transported to a mid-sized hall; for a pre-release recording of Boz
Scaggs, it was a studio soundstage. We certainly weren't in a hotel room near McCarran
Airport.
I could go on and on and on about the technical geegaws
that went into making the TAD Model-1s -- and I will in my full-length show reports later
this month -- but the short take on the experience was that only the music mattered while
it was laying through them, and that, ultimately, is what I came to this party for.
Another room that served the music well was the
Sugden/ProAc suite, where George Stanwick was showing off Sugden's new Masterclass Series.
The $4000 line-level Masterclass preamplifier, $12,000/pair monoblock 165W Masterclass AA
Symmetrical Balanced amplifiers, and $4500 Masterclass CD player were driving ProAc's
Response D38 ($8000/pair), and sounding mighty suave.
The Masterclass components are hand-built and look
virtually bomb-proof. Paired with the sleek floorstanding two-way D38s (1" silk-dome
tweeter/two 6 1/2" midrange/bass drivers), the system also had a generous dollop of
audio magic. Rather than transporting me to the recording venue, it seemed to bring
the venue into the room -- a different, but equally satisfying feat of legerdemain.
And, as is ProAc's wont, the cabinetry was stunning. I'd
buy the D38s just to look at 'em -- but listening to 'em wasn't exactly hard work.
My absolute favorite moment of the show so far was an
impromptu gab session at Saturday night's Stereophile party. John Atkinson, Jon
Iverson, Fred Manteghian, along with Shawn Britton and John Wood from Mobile Fidelity were
hiding out on a balcony from all the hubbub of Club Risque, trading the worst jokes you'd
ever want to hear. (Q: What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend? A: Homeless.)
It wasn't hi-fi, and it sure wasn't deep, but it was the
closest I've felt to being at home all the way out here in Las Vegas -- and, in an odd
way, that reminded me of what I like about listening to music. It's a little island
of comfort in life's ocean of uncertainty. I'll take all of that I can find.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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