CES 2007

It was good to see Arcici's Ray Shab showing his newest Suspension Rack. Shab, always cleaner than the Board of Health was anxious to show me his newest creation. Priced at $2995.00, I find the price of this attractive four-tier iso-base great when you consider what the competition asks for the same rack-space.

PS Audio's Mr. Vorm speaks with our own Dennis Parham on the virtues of the company's new Power Plants that now boasts an 85% efficiency quotient. Wow. Expect to see some print on these new devices soon.

A very interesting product was the Haniwa Electronics suite which featured a product that resembles the Tact Audio line of room correction products right down to their graphics display. The Haniwa Kobotec SP1W33 horn loudspeaker, composed of a 3" compression driver, 13" Kevlar cone woofer and pure Magnesium Ring tweeter ($60k) sports a fancy DSP based software called the Cybernetic Audio Concept model FPIC-100 Sound Signal Controller (whew). The company purports this product controls phase, delay and frequency INDEPENDENTLY! I didn't get the chance to sit and listen enough to form an opinion but I will say this company looks quite serious and in light of all the speaker and room correction devices to make their way into the market I am not surprised at all to see yet another attempt at sophisticated room/speaker control. For more info visit their website at www.haniwaaudio.com                                

Audes USA's aim is excellence in affordable products. The sleek Audes Excellence 5 ($6k) loudspeaker, paired with a VAC stereo amp and dCS CD player, proved to be an formidable setup at a not so insane asking price.

A best kept secret? Venture Audio celebrated its 20th anniversary last year and remains on my elusive list of audiophile components. Shown here are the Venture Audio solid state mono amps and L'Excllence loudspeakers. One thing's certain; this room was quite impressive sounding but unfortunately this level performance couldn't be considered affordable as I know Venture Audio components are big ticket items.

Another iPod demo featuring a floor to ceiling aluminum line-array from  PlastoForm Ltd.  My initial reactions were of curiosity and intrigue because despite the source being that dreaded iPod, the room actually didn't sound bad after all. In fact, I was impressed!

Anthony Gallo's new and attractive Gallo Acoustics reference line-arrays sounded quite impressive run with McIntosh electronics.

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