CES 08

The Isophon Arabba ($60k) featuring Acuton diamond tweeters and ceramic drivers and driven with an entire bevy of Western Electric gear sounded very good on some material and not so good on others. I enjoyed the sound so much I often returned back only to find the sound a bit disappointingly bright and wooly in the bass. Then, when I put on my own CDs the sonic splendor returned. What appeared obvious was how different this system responded to different types of music. The sound of the Arabba at last year's Munich Show was among the best at the show so I am pretty sure they weren't the culprit. 

Escalante Design's designer Terri Budge approaches an Electrocompaniet Classic series CD player ($7,700), a long time reference of mine, to keep the music flowing nice easy. His massive Freemont loudspeakers ($20,990 stands included) and the Electrocompaniet EC4.8 linestage ($5,800) and AW400 mono amps ($15k) kept my feet tapping to a nice selection of music. Bravo.

Siltech displayed their Pantheon 25 loudspeaker ($130k), in celebration of Siltech's 25th anniversary, sports dual 16" woofers built in a tuned isobaric enclosure and a battery-powered - boasting an 8-year lifespan - curved electrostatic tweeter . Driven by a CAT linestage, 100-watt Cat SL2 stereo amplifier ($17k) and the latest digital from dCS, I would have to say this loudspeaker sounded MUCH better than it did last year. Not bad sounding at all though very expensive. Heck, it's from Siltech, what did you expect?

PS Audio's new Memory Player ($2k prototype shown) and slated for release in late spring took on a new look entirely from the prototype I saw in Denver last fall. Can't wait to hear what potential lies in this newest PS Audio product.

Half Note Audio put on an absolutely excellent sounding demo using electronics I've seen before but never heard perform like this. The new Tidal Contriva loudspeaker of Germany ($44,900 shown in African Mohogany) sounded remarkably detailed and musical driven with an ASR Emitter II Integrated amplifier ($26,900). Digital was by way of another newbie I heard briefly last year at the Munich High End show, in the Ascendo room: the Stylos SYS dac ($15k), while an Oracle top loader was the transport of choice. Cabling throughout was Argento Serenity Master and Flow AC cords. No question, this was one of the best sounding rooms I've had the pleasure of visiting and spending a good amount of time in.

A very nice looking pair of Talon Audio Thunder Hawks ($25k), driven by VAC electronics and a Rives Audio PARC equalizer showed once again what proper frequency balance can do to improve room acoustics. Chris Huston of Rives Audio took me through multiple A/B comparisons to show what improvements even small amounts of equalization can offer. What Huston didn't know was he was preaching to the choir as I've been a huge proponent of not just EQs, but room correction as well for a very long time. Another very nice sounding demo.