The CES opening day...
     At Alexis Park, where most of the CES high end audio exhibits are located, the day opened with a public relations disaster.
     Alexis Park is a sprawling motel-like complex, with parking around its perimeter. Not enough parking, truth to tell, and there have long been complaints about that. The CES solution this year: eliminate the parking altogether!
     Oh, anyone actually sleeping at Alexis Park can get a parking pass to present to the blueshirted guards around the complex, but as of this morning no one else could. So who will be visiting?
     Has CES handed victory to its rival, T.H.E. Show? This year THE is back right next door at the St. Tropez. And show organizer Mike Maloney is much too smart to pull a dumb stunt like this.
     Tomorrow we’ll be going through the show next door in fact. Today we attacked Alexis Park itself.
     One of the first rooms visited was that of VTL. The company has produced some very big tube amps in the past, and isn’t about to give up the battle. The new S-400 (shown here) offers 400 watts per channel, using a dozen 6550 tubes. The amp includes sophisticated on-board diagnostics: it actually rebiases all the tubes automatically on the silence between cuts!
     We also spent some time with the VTL Siegfrieds, which look the same, but are monoblocks. Double the power...or the same 400 watts in triode mode! Awesome, and refined at the same time.
     We have a pair of muRata super tweeters awaiting review, but we got to hear them along with the company’s own speaker. It sounded very good, but the Vecteur I-6.2 couldn’t drive it to loud levels, and no wonder. The published sensitivity is 70 dB!
     Next door was a new floorstanding speaker from Toronto’s Fab Audio, the Brat (price: a little over C$2K). Very nice. The tweeter is a very small custom hyperdome. The woofer cone looks like metal but is actually...ready? Banana fibre. Yes.
     The Hovland HP-100 tube preamplifier gets glances for its sexy exterior as well as its performance. Now there is a new version, with full remote control, the HP-200. It’s not a replacement, and indeed it will cost more: $US7500. The optional solid state factory-installed phono stage pushes it up another $2000. We’re hoping to get one to try for ourselves, possibly for next summer.
     Jeff Rowland was back with a listening room, after half a decade of static displays. The new product: a pair of 500 watt monoblocks that (from a distance) look like large matchboxes. They’re a new departure for Rowland, who has always favored the steroid look. But don’t be fooled by the size: the price tag says US$6700.
     The most unusual speaker seen so far is from Gilmore Audio. The "baffle" is merely a very large chunk of Dupont Corian.. The four woofers, with shiny honeycomb fronts, face into empty space, not a box. The custom ribbon tweeters actually handles everything from 200 Hz up. The sound! We’ve heard some amazing results from open baffle speakers before, and we can add this one to the list. Limited bass? Not by a long shot.
     We spent some time admiring the new Pathos Inpol2, a hybrid integrated amplifier (tube low-level, solid state output). Lovely in every way. Also announced by Pathos is the Cinema-X, a five-channel hybrid amp (with a preamp but no processor). Four of the five channels can be bridged into two, if you’re not yet ready for surround.
     The current issue of UHF (No. 68) has a tiny but potent speaker from Focus Audio on the cover. If you associate Focus with small-to-medium sized speakers, guess again. Below left is the awesome Master II, a huge three-way speaker that includes several of everything.
     And we finally got to hear the new Reference 3a Dulcet, the smallest of the family, and much smaller than the original prototype we heard a year or two back. Way, way better too. The woofer is a 5.5 inch, but with the same motor size as that of the much larger MM de Capo. You can tell. You have to hear organ music through this little thing. And don’t worry about volume!
     The Dulcet is shown below right.
     That’s it for today. Tomorrow: the THE Show. At least they’ll let us park!

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