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2005 Consumer Electronic
Show/T.H.E. Show
For those of you who, like me, traveled to Las
Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show and
T.H.E. Show thinking that you were going to be
treated to a nice warm weather getaway, you
were probably very disappointed. If you didn’t
make it out to the high-end audio industry’s
annual gabfest, consider yourself lucky … well
somewhat lucky. The weather was downright
miserable. On the first day of the show the
weather was cold and rainy and that night it
was downright frigid. Things didn’t get any
better Friday morning because it actually
snowed. It was interesting to see so many
people come outside to take pictures. Having
just left ten inches of snow in Chicago, I
laughed and wanted to let people know that I
knew where there was a lot of snow that they
could take pictures of. Once it stopped
snowing it simply rained the rest of the day.
Saturday gave us a bit of a warm up even long
enough to enjoy an outdoor lunchtime cookout
at the St. Tropez where T.H.E. Show was held.
The cool and dampness was back on Sunday as I
prepared to fly back home.
But despite being slapped around by Mother
Nature, there was actually a pretty good time
had during the weekend so let’s get on to the
show report. One thing that I noticed right
away was that there weren’t as many
multi-channel music demos as there were last
year. I did, however, see more home theater
demos. I have to confess that if I were an
exhibitor, and I was next to or underneath a
room where they were doing home theater demos,
I may have been a little annoyed by some of
the over-the-top assaults on the eardrums that
were coming from some rooms. But I wasn’t
exhibiting and actually had fun in several of
the rooms doing these demos. One of those
demos came from Sunny Lo’s
Sunny Cable
Technology. They had a particularly
fun demo that featured the movie “House of
Flying Daggers” to demo their cables with.
The system featured their 600 Series Tri-Wire
and balanced cables, and P1000 power cords
with their Anaconda Powerstrip. I cannot
comment on its musical merits, but in terms of
home theatre it certainly did a great job.
 Two
other worthwhile video demos were in the
Jaton Corporation
room and the Wisdom
Audio room. Jaton’s George Cheng
put on a very compelling demo with the HD-661
DX powered speaker system, while Wisdom
Audio’s A/V demo featured their
M-75 speaker system
and a DVD presentation of a live Diana Krall
performance. Both demos were excellent,
particularly the Wisdom demo, which made me
feel as if I was actually at the Krall concert
(publisher's note: I too felt a wonderful
sense of realness coming from this
Wisdom Audio setup. I found myself coming back
again and again, if just to relax).
Now let’s talk
about the music rooms. Having been an avid
reader of quite a few of the competing
periodicals and web-zines I have a pretty good
idea of what fellow reviewers like in terms of
exhibitor rooms and it’s typically the usual
stuff, i.e. Jeff Rowland, Krell, Thiel, etc.
What I shall do here is give you my picks for
the “Most Outstanding Rooms at the Shows.”
These were the rooms of relative newcomers or
companies that I genuinely enjoyed being in
and who I feel don’t get the amount of
recognition they deserve. One of those
newcomers was
Margules Audio (above). This
company from Mexico is doing some very nice
things. They had a simple setup that featured
their lovely Orpheus
loudspeakers being driven by their
U280sc tube amplifier,
Myryad CD player
and Vampire Wire
AI-2 interconnect and speaker cables.
Here the sound was so smooth, relaxing, open
and extended that I felt like I could have
really just stayed there and chilled out a
while after being bombarded by some
not-so-pleasing sound elsewhere. This room was
definitely a welcome haven.
April Music’s
room featured electronics by another new
company to the US called
Stello and a beautiful sounding
speaker designed by
William Eggleston’s new company
WEGG3,
affectionately called the
Stelar-1. The
Stello CDT200 CD
Transport , DP200 DAC-Preamp, and M200 monobloc
amplifiers, drove the Stelar-1s
brilliantly. The only way to describe this
system was “magical.” There was synergy
between the Stello electronics and the
Stelar-1 speakers that caused me to stop
thinking about what equipment I was listening
to and allowed me to just listen. The music
was rendered with transparency and lots of
detail and images were tightly focused. I
expect big things to come from this company.
I also liked the sound coming out of the
Calix International
room. There I listened to their Signature
Phoenix Grand speakers being driven by a
Conrad-Johnson
Premier 140 and Premier 17LS2 preamplifier,
McCormack Audio UDP-1
CD player and
Kubala
speaker cables and interconnect. I felt these
speakers presented a very nice soundstage,
especially for the room that they were in, and
had real good tone on female vocals.
Another room I had a good time listening in
was the Almarro Audio
room. This was another room that had a simple,
straightforward setup without really expensive
electronics but were getting very good sound.
They were using their new
M2A speakers and a
M50125A integrated amplifier with
an Arcam CD72 CD
player. There are some nice things
going on at this Japanese company that you
should keep your eye on. Look for reviews of
these products in the near future.
Wonderful sounds were to be heard in the
Ascendo/Convergent Audio
Technology room as well. Ascendo
makes some of my favorite speakers and they
were in at least two other rooms that I
counted (Zanden and Virtual Dynamics). Hearing
their speakers being driven by the spectacular
CAT JL-2 amplifiers
was an awesome treat. I had seen pictures of
the JL-2s before but you have to see these
beauties in real life, up close and personal,
to really get an appreciation for them. BTW,
all cabling was Virtual Dynamics new reference
line called Revelation Series.
 Another
room that I found myself staying in for
prolonged amounts of time was the
Ars Aures Audio
room. I had the pleasure of meeting Lee
Landesberg, who invited me to his room and
introduced me to the
Mini Sensorial speakers. They were
driven by the wonderful sounding
ART Audio
Quartet amplifier,
Gill Audio Design Alana preamp and
Elise dac. The system was definitely one of
the best at the show, for me, and on several
different levels. Here was probably the best
imaging I heard at the show. The performers
had a lot of “you are there” presence in a
room that used no room treatment, and was very
musical. To sum up my experience in this room,
all I can say is that I must have asked Lee to
play about 4 selections of my own music for
me. That’s how much I enjoyed listening there.
I found a musical haven in the
Black Diamond
Racing/Thor Audio/Discovery Cable/Sota room.
Because I own a Thor line stage and phono
preamp I was particularly delighted to hear
the quality of music that was played in this
room. Discovery Cables was showing off a
wonderful sounding speaker from
Phonar Acoustics called the
Credo.
 It
was part of a system featuring
Thor’s TPA-60
monobloc amplifiers, TPA-1000 MKII preamp,
TPA-3000 MKII phono preamp, a gorgeous
SOTA Millennia turntable
with
Triplanar tonearm and of course
Discovery Cable products throughout.
Everything was mounted on
Black Diamond Racing stands and
platforms including some stands designed
specifically for the Thor amps. I was very
sorry I didn’t bring any of my vinyl with me.
The sound here was open, detailed and dynamic,
but not at the expense of sounding natural and
lifelike. The TPA 60 is another amplifier
whose photographs do not do it justice. You
really do have to see it in person to
appreciate it.
Wonderful sounds were also to be heard in the
Acoustic Dreams
room (above). They were
showing off alongside the wonderful equipment
racks and amp stands, their new
Chameleon loudspeaker
(left) whose cabinet is actually
made of solid aluminum. The
Ayon 52B Classic,
George Mark Audio Technologies transport and
Overture dac drove the Chameleons. I
didn’t think it was any way possible that
these speakers would be as natural and
lifelike sounding as they were, given that
they were made of aluminum, but they were. I
kept thinking over and over in my mind of how
sweet and holographic they sounded without any
hint of metallic sound or ringing and
aberrations I would have associated with a
speaker using a metal cabinet. Impressive.
I found myself having a good time listening to
music in the Granite
Audio room. Everything in their
room, except for the wonderful sounding
Von Schweikert Research
VR4jr, was
made by Granite. The VR4jrs were driven by the
Granite 864SR KT-88
monobloc amps,
Model 770 tube preamp
and Model 657 tube CD
player. All interconnects, speaker
cables and noise suppression was by Granite as
well. The sound here was lively and dynamic
with a tonality that gave performers a “you
are there” quality that was refreshing.
The
Edge Electronics
room (above) was another stellar sounding
room. Edge’s electronics have long been a
favorite of mine but an added treat at this
show was their electronics driving speakers
that were designed by Edge’s Steven Norber.
Driving the speakers was the
GA Plus amplifier, G2
preamp, GCD CD player with
Shunyata Research
Constellation Series cable and interconnects
throughout. Steven appears to be a rather
modest guy, being that he wanted to talk more
about the system as a whole, rather than
elaborate on his speakers. Still, the sound
was captivating, intensely musical with good
extension at the frequency extremes, and the
imaging had a holographic quality.
The Audio Imports
room featured Zanden
electronics and
Ascendo
speakers (above). This room truly stood out at
this year’s show. The Zanden Model
9500 monobloc amps,
their Model 3000
preamp, the Model
2000 CD transport, and the award
winning Model 5000 MK
IV DAC drove the
Ascendo System Zs
to heavenly levels. This combination was
marvelous. The sound was palpable and lifelike
with excellent dimensionality.
My favorite of the best sounding rooms would
be the
Messenger/Acoustic Zen room. The
Dali MS5
were driven wonderfully by the new, yet
un-named, Messenger
monobloc amps, the fantastic
sounding Messenger
Reference Line and Reference
Phono preamps with
Acoustic Zen cabling
throughout. The phono front end featured the
fabulous Forsell Air
Bearing table and arm with a
Koetsu Onyx Platinum
cartridge using
Wasatch Audio phono cable. The
sound here had a great degree presence, a
believable soundstage where singers felt like
they were in the room, and musicians sounded
like they were in the room. This is not easy
to replicate under show conditions given the
room sizes, but this room was able to make me
experience it. Bravo!
There were other rooms that had good sound
that I feel deserve being mentioned. In no
particular order, those are,
Escalante Designs, Grommes, Vandersteen, Usher
Audio, Blue Circle Audio, Epiphany, Focus,
Hovland, Penaudio and Cox Audio Systems.
Mike Wright
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