Laterglas, I would agree with you. Just using logical thinking, the possibility of Manepan putting out a speaker that marginally surpasses a 10-year old model is highly unlikely.
What is more likely is that the speaker had good days and bad days, as is common at shows.
I worked with Jonathan Valin at Fi and know how his mind works. If he says the bass choirs remind him of the Magnepan 1-U in clarity and that was his benchmark of bass realism, to this day, then he was either high or correct. I vote for the latter. Manepan has never been the kind of company to put out incremental improvements: the adjustments are usually extremely significant. However, the electricity of any room at CES is suspect, depending on the time of day.
I trust Jonathan's assessment. The only caveat is that he likes smaller scale music and vocals, not symphonies (it would be nice if TAS used musical examples, complete with the version, as they once did) so that one could hear what they heard (system variances withstanding).
I find it exciting that a speaker can be good from 35 to around 300hz, where so much power lies. If the upper midrange is equally open, this should be a killer speaker!
