A few impressions from the CES/THE Shows

This was a fantastic show IMO . Great weather , good kharma everywhere and some excellent sound to boot. Running into old friends and meeting new ones is really the highlight so let me start there. Jonathan Tinn and Mike lavigne are often spotted together and its a geat treat to hang out with them for a while . There is so much incredible energy between them thats its impossible not to get caught up in it. Ed Meitner was often spotted and always had a moment to spare for the wannabes like me .David Chesky was seen everywhere and was always kind enough to stop and talk . Without people like him pushing the envelope , we would have nothing but hardware and lousy recordings . Craig Oxford was forthcoming about new exciting developments in the Nearfield Pipedream line and I for one find him stimulating to talk to . Mike Verreto , importer for ESP was a treat to get to know as he has some new products that were as good sounding as they looked. Tor and Lew at CJ are always the best , and Gentleman Mike Kelly was as usual gracious and kind from Aerial Acoustics . There were some incrediible products this year with the Von Gaylord liquid cooled tube amp at near 60 k the most unusual . Swedish Solutions plastered your ears back with some outrageous dynamics with their 250 k speakers that didnt quite look like 250k speakers. Burmester as usual had a sound to die for and I saw their electronics in another room I really was taken with... The Audio Physics room . The Scorpio was being shown and I was floored by its lifelike soundstage , clarity and accurate midrange presentation . This speaker is a winner for them . The Esoteric room was showing the beautiful 20 t speaker from Aerial Acoustics and it was so smooth you could listen for hours on end . I personally loved the MBL room . I will own a pair of these one day. The 101 E Radialstrahler is one of those products you love or hate but cannot dismiss as it produces effortless dynamics and a soundfield to get lost in . Personally , i fell for the TAD speaker they were showing this year . Not sure the model but at 40 k , I saw it as a bargin . Saving the beat for last , there were 3 rooms I could write a check for. Once again its Jonathan and Darren duking it out at the Alexis for top honors in my view. Darren and Bonnie controlled several rooms and while he was relentless in expressing enthusiasm and knowledge { the guy is brilliant }, Bonnie is cool , dishing out great hot chocolate. All of their rooms were meticously set up and they sounded that way. The Ascendo CAT Reimyo room was simply gorgeous sounding and easily some one of the best sound I have ever heard .Explosive dynamics yet intimate with lifelike, uncolored timbre. Top end extension was natural and the dimensionality was phenomenal . In another of his rooms I was floored by the Karan solid state amps . This is something you must hear to appreciate, it has an iron grip on the bass region and was liquid from the upper midrange on up. Worth a look if you ask me. One of the biggest surprises of the show was Frank TChang of Acoustic Systems. Frank is a Chineese acoustical engineer living in Paris with a name like... well Frank. What a combination ! He was showing [to great effect ] , a block of wood with a tiny cup on top . The cups come in various metals and do different things to some degree. The product was called a Resonator. He effortlessly manipulated the soundfield and soundstage by simply repositioning the cup. It widened , closed , deepened and moved forward the soundstage with the slightest change in position . It was atounding and has my vote for tweak of the .... century! Way to go Frank!! JTinns Von Schweikert VR 9, DarTZeel, Meitner room was once again at the top of the class this year. Its what we go to Vegas for. Jonathan carries only the finest gear and what i like most is he just lives for this stuff. His room was small but the system blew the walls away and was deep, rich in harmonic texture but transparent as hell. Air and decay was world class and the system was completely free of grain . I was blown away. He was also showing a new turntable for 16 k that took my breath. I may have to spring for this one. Last but far from least at THe Show at the San Tropez was the debut of Alex Peychev of APl and his proprietary system consisting of his own design of speakers , hybrid amp , cables and most importantly , his NWO -1. This is an Esoteric UX 1 that is gutted and rebulit with 10 dacs per channel and dual tube output stage. The sound was open , extended , cohesive and had a wonderful midrange. It was as linear a sound as I have ever experienced . The room stayed packed from sun up to sun down . I wasnt the only one who thought so. Great show , see ya next year!!

Out of curiosity: do either of you gents have any experience hearing the Linkwitz Orions? Very dynamic, very coherent active dipoles. Siegfried Linkwitz is an avid classical music listener. These might fit your bill.

Rethms: This year the speakers had large wooden extensions attached to the rear bottoms of the speakers. The extensions looked to me as large in volume as the speaker itself. I asked if they were subwoofers. He said not exactly but they are for the bass, and he can turn them on or off. So I may not have been technically accurate in calling them "subwoofers", but there was definitely something new sitting there designed to play the bass.

I was beguiled by the qualities that you mentioned, and particularly the coherence. This may just be where I'm at right now: I'm very attracted to the coherence of Ref 3a DeCapo i's too.

Art

Ok Art, now we're on the same page. Yes, the large wooden extensions were present and "on" as it were, but in my query regarding them, Jacob expressed that they weren't having the effect in his CES room that he had experienced in other rooms. To work optimally, the room apparently needs to be perfectly rectangular and not irregular like the CES room. However, he feels that the addition of a subwoofer is still most useful for bass extension. I wish he had demonstrated his system with a good sub, for if it had balanced the sound sufficiently I would have gotten real excited. I am certain that the room was a contributing factor, because merely standing from a seated position on the sofa brought the balance about 50% of the way home. While in their room on my second visit, I met Jeff Dorgay ever so briefly. Apparently he owns a pair of Rethms that he has added a subwoofer to, and feels that the tonal balance in his room is quite good. He did comment that he felt the CES room was responsible for the skewing, so I'm going to have to wait for another opportunity to listen to these in a different setting. And yes, that coherence you mention is most appealing and a quality that I find I must have in a speaker system.

Jimlevitt, are you an Orion owner? I do have some experience with the Orion in the early version, but would very much like to experience the latest version. Since I don't share Siegfried's feelings regarding interconnect cables, speaker wires and solid state amps, I would probably end up with a much greater investment in an Orion system than one that doesn't require so many channels of amplification. I mean, eight channels of amplification for a tube amp lover would be a bit much unless you lived in Alaska and could use the heat. And, the investment in interconnects and speaker cables for all those channels would break the bank if you chose anything other than Radio Shack wiring.