CES Show Report

Sunday

  The Viola ($10,00/pr) by WLM loudspeaker company is a floorstanding unit with 8-inch paper cone woofer and unique tweeter/midrange unit. Specifically, it is called a Super PAC (Phase Acoustically Correct), which is a high range device that is not a ribbon, not an electrostatic, and they will not give me any more details. Some things are meant to be secret.

 

In the May Audio room was my fave contact cleaning and enhancing products. Caig's Pro Gold (now called DeoxIT GOLD) and Deoxit are awesome for insuring the contact between gear.

 

Furutech offers an astoundingly impressive variety of plugs, jacks, binding posts, etc.

 

Hyperion Audio, for their 960A ($6,500/pr) has redesigned their drivers over the previous model, all crossovers are first order. They say the most important thing to their new design is hat there is no capacitors in the crossover for the bass units. This is said to provide extreme phase accuracy between the midrange and woofers. Also new is that on the rear of the tweeter/midrange cabinet is a device to angle the cabinet to vary the directionality.

 

Many years ago i tried my hand working at a high-end store, one that was an authorized Threshold dealer. Upon walking into the Threshold Audio room i had a flashback at there was the old S/350e. But wait, this is a new amplifier! They have reissued this unit almost part for part and are selling it at $2,000. Chinese manufacturing helps to keep costs down of course. Still, this could be an amazing bargain for those who desire 150 watts per channel solid-state. So begs the question, is newer always better? i asked, make that begged, them to reissue the FET 10e preamplifier. Alas, seems they have no interest in reissuing this amazing classic preamplifer. Major bummer!

 

Pioneer BDP-HD1 Blu-ray Disc player ($1,800) will support DLNA and Microsoft's Play For Sure and have digital output via coax and Toslink optical output plus 6-channel analog and 2-channel stereo. There is an Ethernet jack, but not for streaming out so no digital audio out for that. HDMI output with 1.3 support can output audio and video, Pioneer is working on a receiver to receive this signal. It will upscale to 1080p for normal DVD discs.

 

And now some car items at the show...

Microsoft has the Acer computer Ferrari version.

 

A BMW open wheel race car at Samsung.

 

XM Radio had a Ferrari.

 

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