International CES 2010 & THE Show Report
   
Consumer Electronics Show & THE Show 2010
Thursday

  Here is our senior editor and longstanding audiophile journalist Dick Olsher with consummate gentleman and tube guru Lew Johnson of conrad-johnson. They just launched the new Art Amplifier ($32,000 per pair) and 250 chassis maximum production. Having known Lew for... ever. Since the old CompuServe CEAudio days back in the 80’s if you must know. Lew likes 78 rpm records, vintage tube radios and many other things of timeless beauty. Conrad-Johnson was showing a new preamplifier and offering upgrades to their Tea2 phono preamplifier. Said upgrades include better caps and other bits. Enjoy the Music.com has reviewed numerous c-j goodies.

 

Nola is another high-end audio company that is a family affair. The daughter in charge of crossovers, the wife does just about everything else and dad does nothing. Ok, seriously, dad does all the designing and the family "lets him think he is important and in charge" (the ladies of the family said that by the way). The missing, not show daughter, is in charge of IT and computer services. With that said, Nola was showing their new Metro Grand Reference speakers ($22,000) that are finished in truly gorgeous, stunning, eye candy true piano rose rosewood. Check out their website for more information about these sexy speakers.

 

Dan Schmalle is the wacky guy behind The Tape Project. You know, the place where reel to reel lovers wanting the closest experience to master tape sound. Cool guy, great stuff... enjoy the music.

 

This is a photo for carbon fiber lovers and racers alike. Here you see the new Furutech FT-808 loudspeaker binding posts. The posts are made with pure copper and they are easy to tighten. Furthermore, there is a torque guard so you can not strip the posts plus an added benefit is that you achieve a balanced tightness on each post. Note to all those reviews who tend to strip and break off things, your days are finally over.

 

Waterfall loudspeaker's Nadine Dewell is the representative for international markets. Cedric Abriot is the founder of Waterfall in 1996 and i remember seeing their deigns many years ago at the Milan show and was in awe of their designs. Now they have finally come into America and getting many praises for the sound and build quality. AVR Inc is their USA importer and really great people. Look for a review soon in our pages!

 

Always fun to stop into Win Analogue as the allure of those big and bright tubes draw me in like a month to a flame. The whole point is to have fun.... and enjoy the music.

 

Yes indeed more and more rooms were using laptops or some type of hard drive-based music system with FireWire or USB DAC. Frankly, have already converted thousands of albums and my seedies can go gather dust from now on. Good riddance to physical digital music media and hello multi-Terabyte NAS drive. Seen here is the Weiss INT 202 FireWire DAC.

 

Roy Hall and single malt scotch. Thank goodness some things in life never change. G-d bless Roy... and his scotch.

 

EveAnna Manley finally grew up and got married to mastering engineer Dave Collins and lives happily ever after. Dave was chief mastering engineer at A&M for many years and has his own studio today in Hollywood. He did the Soundgarden stuff and much more. Oh yeah, Manley Labs also had their new Stingray iTube that we did a North American Premiere review within the Review Magazine. See the many reviews of Manley Labs products within our archives section.

 

Israel Blume and Evie are a dynamic duo as Israel designs and builds the award-winning Coincident speakers and amplification devices. No need to tell you too much about those as we have reviewed them within our pages. They did have the new Super Victory speakers ($9500 per pair), which we recently had the World Premiere of within Superior Audio magazine. They are introducing a new Statement linestage and Statement phonostage ($4999 and $5499 respectively), you can check it out on their website.

 

Clearaudio's Robert Suchy is the second generation leader of his family's business that manufactures turntable, cartridges and amplification equipment. No worries as dad Peter having happily retired yet still keeping an eye on things from time to time. Having visited their factory in Germany (see my factory tour), these are indeed a very high precision production products. So what’s new? Well, since i have known Robert he met a girl and got married and now has a baby girl and a boy (1.5 and 4 years respectively). As for new products, the concept turntable package, Emotion SE/Satisfy carbon fiber package and Innovation compact wood turntable ($1400, $2000, and $7000 respectively.

 

    

Yes, it is none other than Dick Diamond.
(nothing more to say here)

And that rounds out my CES 2010 report, though will have a few more traditional report from other Enjoy the Music.com journalists in the coming days.

 

Click here for the main CES 2010 /  THE Show Report.